These days, if you have a printer at home, the chances are that you also have a scanner built into it. Even these combination printer/scanners are good enough to caputure the photos that you want restoring.

This way, you don’t have to risk losing your precious memories in the post. But how exactly do you need to scan images to enable the best possible restoration?

Well most scanner software packages give you some presets that do a wonderful job of scanning documents and photos for viewing on a screen, but won’t necessarily capture the detail that we need for restoration. So we’ll need to delve a little deeper into the settings of your scanners software.

  • Clean the photo thouroughly.
  • Clean the scanner thouroughly.
  • Position the photo onto the scanner glass.
  • Scan the photo using these settings:
    • 24 or 48-bit colour.
    • 1200dpi.
    • High quality Jpeg or Tiff.
    • Auto enhancements turned off.

1. Clean the photo

With a soft lint free cloth, gently wipe down the surface of the photograph to get rid of any dust that has settled on it.

Try to only handle the picture by the very edges to avoid getting fingerprints on it.

Alternatively you can wear some cotton gloves.

2. Clean the scanner bed

Even if it’s a brand new scanner, it’s always a good idea to keep the glass bed of your scanner as clean as possible.

Give it a dust down with a soft cloth each time you use it.

Try not to touch the glass with bare hands, as greasy fingerprints can show up in your scans. If there are any greasy deposits on there, you can use ‘screen wipes’, ‘optical glass wipes’ or a little isopropyl alcohol on a lint-free cloth to clean them up.

3. Placing the photo on the scanner

Most scanners will have a ‘home corner’, usually marked with an arrow. This indicates the top left corner of the image.

Place your photograph, faced down onto the scanner bed & align the top left corner with the marking point.

Ensure the the photo photograph is on the glass section and not raised up over the edges. You may need to place a large hardback book or similar ontop of the photograph to keep it in even contact with the scanner glass.

Once happy with the positioning, close the scanner lid gently to press the image flat to the scanning surface.

4. Setting the scanning options

Whenever we scan images, we use VueScan. It’s a paid for software that works with most scanning devices. Your scanner will have come bundled with it’s own software, so it will look different to ours, but the settings will be named similarly.

Colour…

Even if the photo that you’re sending is in black & white, scan it as colour. This is because when we are working on a black & white photograph, it is often important to see the photo exactly as it is in real life. Also capturing the scan in colour can bring out much more detail than scanning in grayscale.

If you have the option of Bits per channel or similar, select 24 or 48 bit RGB.

Resolution / Quality…

The value is usually measured as DPI. By default it is most likely set to 300 dpi. This is fine if you intend to print pictures exactly as they are, but we want to enhance them. To do that we need as much detail as possible. However, more resolution means bigger file sizes and longer scanning times, so unless we’ve advised you otherwise, a good place to start is 1200 dpi.

File type…

Your software may offer you the option of saving the images as different file types. The most common of these is a JPEG (sometimes written JPG). If this is the only option, see if you can save it at it’s highest quality (no compression).

Even better would be if you have the option of saving it as a TIFF file. This file type is much less compressed than even a high quality JPEG.

Enhancements / Adjustments…

No. Just don’t.

Lots of scanners are sold based on their softwares built-in capability to enhance detail, retore colours and removed dust and scratches. Most of the time these ‘enhancements’ cause more damage to a scan that repair as the ‘AI’ is making its best guess at how to fix a problem & in the process obliterating detail that may be important to the retoration artist for working on the photograph.

Above all, remember that we are always here to help if you need any advice.