Using Your Scanner

As part of my genealogical research, I make a digital back up of all my documents and old photos.  Hard copies are nice for scrapbooks, but going digital is the wave of the future for four reasons.  (1)Storage space is significantly smaller.  (2)A hard copy of perfect reproduction is only a minute away with your printer.  (3)Any document or photo can be resized smaller for sending in email or for putting up on a website.  (4)In JPG format, your research can now be viewed on TV through your DVD player.  Here are a few tips that I have found to be a good standard when using a scanner and use myself. 

SCANNING DOCUMENTS

Better that the original copies can be reproduced with the proper scanner settings.  I scan my documents with the black and white photo quality setting at 200 DPI.  Photo quality is definitely the way to go.  Lesser quality scanner settings, such as fax quality, produces a poorer quality reproduction than the original document.  Using the photo setting produces an enlargement of the original that many times makes it easier to read.  This has helped me numerous times to decipher the correct spellings of names vital in my personal research.  Hard to read photocopies taken from microfilm become much clearer at this scanner setting.  Further playing with the digital document with the "instant fix" and "contrast" features of a basic photography program can also improve document quality.

SCANNING PHOTOS

I scan all of my photos with a 300 DPI scanner setting.  For black and white photos I use a black and white setting.  For black and white photos that have started fading to a brownish color, I use the color setting.  If you use a black and white setting on these older photos, you will lose quality.  For color photos, of course, a color setting is used.  The results is a greatly enlarged reproduction of the original photo.  This brings out jewelry worn and many other hidden features that you can't see from the original.  You may opt to go to a larger DPI scanner setting, but the computer megs used for these photos may increase from 10 to 80 and may scare you.  Of course, when these photos are converted into JPG format, the photos are crunched to about 1/10 of its size.