Scanning old photos

[Ibonibo]

So a few simple questions:

What is the best way to scan photos? (what dpi?)

What program would you use? I have the programs from the canon printer and eos camera and photoshop

What format would you save the files? my guess is to save them as tiff

We have a lot of photos, some have become yellow or were blurry.
Is there a way to restore them (program)?

I also have a negative scanner. But for some photos they are missing or heavily scratched.
Will there will be a lot of differences between the quality of scan positive images and the negatives?

Also we have photos of the 50's. Is there some special way to scan those?

I planned on scanning the photos first, then the negatives, eliminate the bad ones, or should i start with the negatives.

Also is there a way to know what brand the film was, to convert the negatives?

All help is welcome.

 

[Hyundai]

A good rule of thumb is to scan your photos at a minimum of 300dpi to assure decent quality for enhancement and restoration techniques. 600dpi or greater is even better if you have the space.

As for restoring the photos, you may want to try an auto-enhance program first, before touching and cleaning up in Photoshop. I know www.350.com has a decent auto-enhance based on the ImageMagick library - see what you get out of that, it may clear up most of the problems for you.

Hope that helps.

 

[Ibonibo]

I now am half through the tousands of pics...

Started for now with the positives, negatives will follow later.

I am using 600 dpi, which gives a good print out quality.

I will try your recommended program and let you know how useful it was.
Thank for the tip

 

[mikehykes]

It is good creativity that you scan your old photos and make it different new. I really like that. Scanning a photo that you have to ability to take it out.