Whats The Best Resolution To Use When Printing Excellent Quality Photos?

Question

Hi all
My grandparents have given me quite a big task to do as they want me to edit, save on to disc or discs and print there old family photos, I am going to edit the photos from Photoshop CS3 Extended at the highest possible Resolution so the photos look amazing when printed from a normal printer or at a proper photo lab. What is the highest possible resolution I could use on the photos without making them look all pixelated (or what ever it looks like) when printed? I was told by a friend that 300 pixels/inch would yield better but is it possible I could go higher? they are family photos so I would like them to look as amazing as possible for the next generation which will be me, my cousins and our future families.
Many Thanks for reading this and Many Thanks to the people who will reply to it. Very much appreciated.
Kind regards,
Oliver

Answer 1

Hi ID. Awe
Thank you for the resolution pixel/inch number but I will use 300ppi on Photoshop CS3 Extended because it seems popular on here and my friend did say 300 pixels/inch would yield better, okay so I should not go over board blimey as I wont be able to control how it is down-sampled for output, I had better be careful then. My scanners resolution is 4800 dpi optical and up to 19,200 dpi enhanced and the colour is: 48-bit and 8-bit greyscale but when I look in the scanner settings it only goes up to 24 bit colour hmmm? How do I down-sample to 8-bit for output? Do I use Photoshop for that? As my printer will not allow me to down-sample the 8-bit colour. I just want the photos to look amazing thats all.
Hi John Joslin
If you ask you shall receive, I will be getting my photos printed at Kodak or at the Devon Camera Centre. I do have a inkjet printer it is the HP Photosmart 2610 all-in-one= printer, fax, scanner, copier. Thank you for the warning John it is nice to know if I was to use my inkjet printer but I am going to have my photos developed at a photo lab so the photos will last allot longer. My printer resolution is 1200 and up to 4800 dpi optimised.
Hi Donald Reese
The highest resolution my scanner can go up to is 19,200 dpi, could you explain to me what interpolation is please? is it another selection I can select within the scanner settings? That does sound logical to have extra data to downsize from, instead of trying to upsize from a low resolution scan because I suppose it would make the photo look a bit pixelated.
Hi Gernot Hoffmann
That is interesting that by using 300ppi or 288ppi which is good for an accurate pixel preview by zoom=400% and this is OK for the reproduction of photos by high quality offset printing and for large format inkjets and for inkjet proof printing thank you. Thank you for the simplified version:-D
Hi Ed Grenzig
I did think that scanning is more important but I did not know how high I should go with the resolution on that either, thats true that the scans can be no better than the picture that I am scanning. Yeah I suppose it also is trial and error using different settings. Extra pixels won't make your picture any sharper than the print. That is what they said about the freeview box until they found out that it made the picture clear as it had a higher resolution then the tv itself but I will give it ago.
Yeah good idea I will experiment myself on similar photos to see if increasing the resolution helps and how much it helps, depending on the type of photo. Yes I definitely will keep my original scans because as you said I can always go back and re-edit them in the future. I agree all editing software will get better as time goes on and they will probably laugh at my edits when they look at the capability of their future software. True that my present printed photos will not last forever as they will deteriorate. As johntolliday below said he usually scans his photos at 600 ppi and I will probably do the same or higher if needs be. Thanks for the great tips, I did think could I use my camera to take photos of the original photos if they are to big for my scanner and of course I can like you said, I would not shot the photos though as I do not want holes in the photo lol.
Hi johntolliday
Yeah I will be getting the photos professionally printed at a photo lab as you said Unless you are using they will not last as long as a print printed on photo paper by the very expensive photo lab machines and I do not have archive quality inks or paper and anyway they are to expensive. Cool that you do most of your prints and enlargements online and have been very pleased with the results. I also thought that inkjet printers are not really up to the job when it comes down to printing excellent quality photos.
I will try your suggestion and scan my photos at 600 ppi or more depending on the picture quality, I do not seem to have a selection for 16 bit colour on my scanner settings I only have Millions of colours (24-bit), 256 colours
(8-bit), 256 colour web palette, 256 colour system palette, 256 grey shades (8-bit greyscale) and Black & White
(1-bit) so I guess I will have to stick with 24 bit colour. Sounds like a good idea to down sample to 300 on Photoshop and print from there. I have never enlarged photos before but there might be a time when I might need to.
A huge thank you to everyone who has posted on here you all have helped me out allot and I know where I am going now before I have to say I was going around blindfolded, if you have any more tips about scanning or even printing please feel free to post. Thank You again.
Kind Regards, Oliver