Scanning Slides: Resolution

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When I first bought my CanoScan 8800F and set about scanning my old slides I was a bit enthusiastic and scanned at the default resolution. The resulting images, when printed, were poor quality. I have now started re-scanning all 124 slides at 4800dpi (or is it ppi?). The trouble is that when I enhance them or change their sizes Photoshop takes age to complete the operation. Should I scan at 4800 or 2400 then resize the images to 600 before doing any enhancing? Is there some way to scan slides so that they print at an acceptable resolution but do not involve hours of waiting?
 

Ian

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Yep, it's DPI (dots per inch) :)

Is the only reason you use Photoshop to enhance and resize the images before printing? It might be worth using a lighter tool such as Picasa if you are only doing basic work, as this should be much quicker. Working with any high resolution images will take time when performing image manipulation, but if you are just printing them then the Vista image wizard should do quite a good job.
 
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Thanks Ian,

Yes, I use Photoshop to resize the images to postcard size (for future printing) as the image produced by the scanner is the same size as the original slide. I also use Photoshop to remove blotches and improve the colours of the old slides. I didn't know Picasa allowed you to resize images (unless you mean the option to print in various sizes). Although I plan to print copies of my slides I also want to add the images to my other images so that I can burn them to a DVD.
 
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After I scan a film and have it in my computer, I open it in Photoshop LE (old but useful and this should work in newer versions) and using the cropping tool I crop to the area and size I want to print (fixed target size) setting the resolution to 300 or 400 depending on the size of the print. 300 gives me high quality prints (up to 8x10 in.) even with quite a bit of cropping. 400 with much cropping.
 
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