Help with PP on scans of old prints

wellman

I've resolved to make this the year I finally sit down with my grandmother to talk about all the people in all the pictures she has up in the attic. I basically want to get some of our family history preserved.

I'm planning to make my scans at 1200dpi with the intention of down-rezzing to 600ppi for archival (I trust PS's bicubic more than whatever the scanner is doing). I'm using one of Canon's LiDE scanners (i.e. the light source is R+G+B LED, not fluorescent). Of course, many of these photos have fading and color issues, so I'd like to make a stab at fixing those problems.

Any tips? I assume some combnination of levels adjustment, color correction, and sharpness will need to be addressed. I'd like to have as simple a workflow as possible, because I will have hundreds of pictures to deal with.

Thanks for any tips. RAW edits in Canon's DPP or Adobe Lightroom are second nature to me, but I don't have a heck of a lot of experience with PS (at least with photos - I've created a graphic or three of my own).

-Greg

wellman

OK, after some more reading and an excruciatingly slow experience with the CanoScan LiDE 30 I borrowed from a friend, I'm thinking I have enough prints to scan to justify me purchasing my own decent scanner. (The LiDE 30 is a USB 1.1 interface, making my total scan time about 15 minutes at 1200 dpi. That's just not acceptable.)

So, I'm looking at the CanoScan 4400F. It seems to get great reviews all around, and it's not too hard on the wallet. The bulb is fluorescent, but apparently I was wrong about that being important (other than that the scanner is AC-powered and not USB bus-powered). Also has the advantage of 4800 dpi, although that may be overkill for me.

Come to think of it, what kind of dpi would you recommend for archiving old prints? Some I have are 8x10s, while some others are small square polaroids.

So, unless anyone has any horror stories with the Canon 4400F, I'll be pulling the trigger tonight. Thanks!
-Greg

JBurt

wellman wrote:

I've resolved to make this the year I finally sit down with my grandmother to talk about all the people in all the pictures she has up in the attic. I basically want to get some of our family history preserved.

I'm planning to make my scans at 1200dpi with the intention of down-rezzing to 600ppi for archival (I trust PS's bicubic more than whatever the scanner is doing). I'm using one of Canon's LiDE scanners (i.e. the light source is R+G+B LED, not fluorescent). Of course, many of these photos have fading and color issues, so I'd like to make a stab at fixing those problems.

Any tips? I assume some combnination of levels adjustment, color correction, and sharpness will need to be addressed. I'd like to have as simple a workflow as possible, because I will have hundreds of pictures to deal with.

Thanks for any tips. RAW edits in Canon's DPP or Adobe Lightroom are second nature to me, but I don't have a heck of a lot of experience with PS (at least with photos - I've created a graphic or three of my own).

-Greg

I have found the RetouchPro forums extremely helpful with restoration and retouching info and techniques. Almost as friendly as here.
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/index.php?

Just remember to come back here.

wellman

JBurt wrote:

I have found the RetouchPro forums extremely helpful with restoration and retouching info and techniques. Almost as friendly as here.
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/index.php?

Just remember to come back here.

Thanks for the tip. I got some good advice over there.

wellman

Well, my Canon 4400F should be arriving today! I'm looking forward to getting started with some scannin'. My plan is to scan at the optical max, and archive at 900dpi (downsampling via PhotoShop). I figure I only need 300dpi to do the kind of reprinting I'll do, so 9x the data should be plenty of protection against future needs.