Tips on Scanning to Film

A question came up in the Forum that was really interesting. Someone asked how much resolution was needed for scanning film (not a photo). It's a great question. When you scan a photo at high resolutions, you're blowing up a copy of the original (which is the negative). So it's not always going to look better just because it's higher resolution--in fact, you risk magnifying the imperfections. But if you're scanning film directly, it's the original--plus, it's smaller to begin with. So you can get great results at higher resolutions. For more on that topic, check out Scanning Film in the Printer / Scanner Specs section. One trade-off, of course, is on the size of the digital file. Another related question is, how big will a printed image be, based on the resolution? A handy Scanning and Printing Resolution Calculator, of course!