

Making these before the scan can greatly improve image quality. Here’s where it pays off-your scanner driver should have some buttons that adjust levels and saturation. The basic preview and scan buttons work as normal here, so we will be skipping right to the more technical parts. The exception to this is if you’re doing enlargements. You also likely have greater options for pixel density, although a photo scan higher than 300 DPI is almost a waste of your time. Most graphics files are 24-bit color, so we’ll start there. If you have the option to scan in 24bit color, it’s your best bet. There are a lot of various options, most of which will be okay set to default. The professional mode gives you more options and isn’t that intimidating. Usually, these drivers start out in a “Home,” “Basic,” or “Office” mode for beginners. Advanced Scanning: Using Your Scanner’s Driver If you can help it, only use JPG to email files, never to archive them. TIFF or PNG are the best formats as they compress the image file without creating artifacts or destroying the image quality. If you’re not patient enough to do them one at a time, this how to may not be for you.)

(Author’s note: Not everyone is going to appreciate the difference in quality that requires scanning photos individually. They’ll have drastically different shadows, highlights, and midtones-even the automatic adjustments made by the scanner will likely be more accurate if images are scanned one at a time. It’s more or less impossible to properly adjust three images at a time. In addition to this, since we’re going to learn about making adjustments pre-scan, we’re going to only scan one image at a time. Straightening photographs smears the pixels and can result in a loss of resolution, so scan your photographs square to the edge of the flatbed lip. But there are several mistakes being made here. Modern scanners are very well engineered to replicate a good image straight out of the box. This is a good mode for scanning line drawings, but horrid for photos. All edges will be jaggy, and no anti-aliasing is allowed.

And while the difference between “Color” and “Grayscale” is obvious, keep in mind that “Black and White” is actually a single color mode.

300 DPI is a good pixel density to scan at for printing.
