Hi, does anyone have good experience of uploading 6x4 (inch) glossy colour prints?

I have up to 1,000 good quality photo prints taken between 1984 and 2004 at various locations around the world. If I don’t ‘show’ them now and commit them to data my family will dump them after my demise (I’m 71 although don’t plan on leaving just yet). By good quality prints I mean registrations are legible where visible, which is in most cases (the old spotter in me), and they have been kept in dust-free albums.

Before I receive more rejections for poor compression are there any recommendations from experienced print uploaders? I have read Airliner.com upload advice, which advises using a high DPI. What is a high DPI? I have a scanner in which the DPI can be adjusted from 001 to 1200. I have tried 175, 300, 450, 600, 750 and 900 DPI with the same Air Algerie B727 photo but I can’t see much difference between the DPIs on my 64bit 1920x1080 laptop screen (with latest Google Chrome browser).

A screener has advised me to use a width of 1024 but has not commented on DPI. Is there a one-format that fits all as it will take quite a time to scan, resize, and sharpen several hundred photos and I don't want to do that if they're going to be rejected.

Thanks in advance for any advice and apologies for sounding dim.
Crispy

Hi Crispy,

Your prints are of a similar timeline to my own and have uploaded quite a few scans of 6x4"prints here over the last two or three years. I am using a CanoScan 9000F MkII set at a resolution of 300 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). This should easily give you good enough quality for uploading provided your photographs are of decent enough quality in the first instance of course. Other than cropping and levelling (where possible), I don't do much else in the way of editing except for some noise reduction and colour correction. I find the colour correction to be a great tool in PS for correcting badly processed prints, as was often the case back in the 80s and 90s. Feel free to message or email me if you need any further help, or even help editing scans if you wish.

Cheers
Mark

Many thanks Mark, I'll take your advice although I haven't got PS and my scanner is an Epson XP-202. I have been using Snapfish to adjust cropping, centering and sharpening, and Paint to adjust to 1024 width. I'll have another 'go' with my 1997 AH B727 at GVA and put it up for your critique. Thanks again, Crispy.

Sorry, this may be a dumb question, but how do I upload an image to the forum (or to a PM)? There is no intuitive selector that I can see. Thanks Crispy

Hi Crispy,

You will need to use an external source to link. For example you can upload it to https://imageshack.us/ and then link it here. You may need to make a free account there though. There are other sites that you could use that do not warrant a signup.

OK, many thanks.