To begin with check your print for any manual retouching. Professional portraits may have this on the larger prints. You would not want clean any of the retouching off. If they are just old family shots you would not have to worry.
Very old heirloom type prints may be paper based and sometimes cleaners can harm them. So the first step is to clean a corner of the print with isopropl alcohol. If there is no damage, go ahead and clean the rest of the print. You would be surprised at how much gunk gets desposited on prints from people handling them. No use scanning a bunch of dirt.
If the print is torn or cracked you may get reflections during the scanning process, so it is best to matte spray the print first. This will take the gloss away. You can buy matte spray at art supply stores. A few light coats will do the trick...allowing to dry between coats which will only be minutes. Basically you want to take away the sheen. Matte spray is pretty smelly stuff and not all that good for you so you will really want to find a well ventilated area that is realitively dust free. Outside on a mild day is great if your climate allows this time of year.
Now that the print is ready for scanning you need to figure out the resolution. Here is where it gets just a little bit tricky. To get the right sized scan you must know what resolution it will be printed at plus the largest you would like to print it. You also must take into consideration the size of the original (or the area that you intend to use of the original)
Here are a couple of examples....
- Original is 8 x 10, you want 8x10 output at the largest, and are printing at 300 dpi ( which most commercial printers print at...Wal Mart for example...they will do great prints for cheap) Since you are not changing size you would scan at 300 pixels per inch.
- Original is a 4x6 and you want an 8x12, printing at 300 DPI. To figure this out simply figure out how many pixels you need. 8 x 12 at 300 ppi would be 2400 pixels by 3600 pixels. Now that you know how many pixels you need, a bit of simple math says that 2400 pixels over 4" would be 600 pixels per inch. So you would scan at 600 ppi
- Original is 8x10 and you only want a 4x6. Now 4x6 printed at 300 DPI would require 1200 by 1800 pixels. 1800 pixels spread out over 10 inches is only 180 pixels per inch. Of course you only need a medium res scan for this because you are printing smaller than the original.
Many people find the whole resolution thing confusing. Basically just figure out how many pixels you need. Pixels per inch (ppi) and Dots per inch (DPI) can basically be thought of as the same thing, DPI is usually used for output (printing) and ppi is normally used for input (scanning).
Just a couple of tips with scanning. Check the manual for your scanner and look for the OPTICAL resolution. This is the true resolution of your scanner. We'll say you find out the optical resolution is 600, but your software to scan with says you can scan at 1200 or 2400, well you can, but your scanner is still scanning at only 600ppi, but software is resizing. I would recommend scanning at your scanners optical resolution and resizing in photoshop.
Also try to scan without auto settings. A fairly low contrast scan will usually do the best job. If you scan with too much contrast any information that is lost in highlights and shadows will be gone for good, and consumer scanners are weakest in the brightest and darkest areas. Always scan past the edge of the print if you can.
The more you can do in photoshop the better.
Once you have your scan done save the file as your master. You can do all of you restoration on this file and once complete you can save it with extra borders and all. Then save for example as 8x10...now you can crop and resize. If you want 5x7s also, then reopen your master and resave as 5x7, crop and resize. The whole point being you do not want to resize any more than you have to as no matter how good the software is, you will lose some sharpness every time it has to come up with new pixels to represent your image.
Some general tips for restoration....
- save, save save.
- copy to a new layer when experimenting.
- normally it is best to do the colour correction and contrast correction before you start to manipulate. Like resizing, it is best if you can do this only once. After these corrections, make a copy of this layer and work on it, so if you mess up you can steal from the other layer. I usually like to do most of the restoration on it's own layer. Depending on the job it is not always possible though.
- Whenever possible do your work at 100% view. This is the only way you can really see the actual pixels with one pixel of the file being represented by one pixel of your monitor. With high res files you may be tempted to work at 33%, but it can fool you, but then sometimes you have no choice if you need to see more than just a nose and mouth if you know what I mean.
- In general when making selections try to keep them feathered so there will not be abrupt changes.
- Finally sometimes with heavily damaged images and heavy restoration, you can cheat a bit by adding a slight texture to the overall image. Before doing this though it is wise to do the following....
Make a copy of every single layer...then merge all of the copies into one layer. You should still have all of the original layers, you only want to merge the copied layers, be sure that you are not flattening, you want to merge. Now with this 'composite layer you can add a bit of the noise filter...less is more, or under filter/texture/texturizer the sandstone filter set low can give a nice paper look. What this does is blends the retouching abit. Basically it gives some more in common between the retouching and the original image. You would only use this for heavy retouching.
Last thing I can suggest is less is more, do not be afraid of using the good old CTRL-Z.
Hope this has been of some help. Sorry to be so wordy, but it should help get you off to a good start... Good luck!
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