Do Not Throw Away Your Old Photo Paper Prints

Many people still have large number of old fashionDifferent scanning methods vary in cost and quality.
photo paper prints in their homes. Even if you threwWhile you can spend a large sum of money to
away your old film camera and you are exclusivelyprofessionally scan your photos for most home users
using digital there is a good chance that you still havea cheap and simple scanning method will suffice. Photo
many photos that are important to you in paper printspaper prints can be effectively scanned by a simple
format. It is a good idea to upgrade those prints to thescanner device that you can buy for less than $100.
new digital format - here is how,This process is time consuming though since you will
It is most likely that your photo prints are organized inneed to manually feed every photo to the scanner. For
this way or another in photo albums. The old fashiona large number of photos you could choose to either
photo album book had two main purposes. First it wasby a more sophisticated scanner with an automatic
intended to allow for easier organization and browsingphoto feeder or to mail your photo prints to a
of photos as photo albums can be categorized byprofessional scanning service.
event, year or any in any other way that make senseOne thing to consider when scanning photo prints is
to you. The second purpose was to protect the paperthe scanning resolution: The same way that your digital
prints. Paper ages it fades and turn yellow. Albums arecamera has a mega pixels number that determines
safer provide a safer environment allowing paperthe number of pixels in a digital photo - scanners have
prints to last longer.a similar attribute that determines how many mega
There are three main types of old fashion prints: paper,pixels are going to be in the converted digital photo file.
slides and negatives. Paper prints are the mostThis is also known as the scanner resolution and it is
common format. The usually come in standard sizesmeasured by the number of dots per inch that the
like 4X6 and 5X7. Negatives which are developed filmscanner can produce. Most scanners can scan at
are saved to allow future new prints of your photos.1200 DPI or more. Most scanners can also be set to
Slides are similar to negatives but they allow projectionscan in less of their maximum resolution. The higher the
of the photo on a big screen using a special slideresolution the slower the scan and the bigger the digital
projector.photo file size. So what is the right resolution? The rule
Upgrading your old photo paper stack involves someof thumb is that for most paper prints scanning at 300
technique of converting paper photos to digital pixelto 600 DPI is enough as usually the print quality itself is
based photos. This process is also known as scanning.not higher than that.
While there are many different techniques andAfter you have converted your paper prints to digital
equipment for scanning in essence all scanningphoto files you can do anything that you can do with
process are similar. Some device is used toany other digital camera generated photo files. In
electronically read or view the paper photo andaddition to simply viewing them on your computer
convert it into a series of pixels each with its uniquescreen, you can share them with family and friends,
color and intensity. All those pixels put togetheruse photo processing software to enhance them and
comprise a digital photo that can be store as amore. And the most important thing, once converted to
computer file. This computer file, usually in the commondigital photo files they will never fade, turn yellow or
JPEG format can then be used as any other digitallose their quality.
camera photo file.