I scanning in my old paper photos from the 80s and 90s.
What DPI level should I be scanning them in? I've tried 150dpi (default) and 300dpi and don't see any difference (other than the size of the resulting image).
Answer
Scan them at a high enough resolution that you'll never need to scan them again. i.e. "archival" quality. I'm assuming the old photos are important and you want to keep them for a long time, and view them both on screen and perhaps re-print later.
Generally, space is cheap, but your time isn't. I suggest 600dpi minimum, and more if you can handle it.
Finally, make sure you save your scans in a non-lossy format such as PNG. Avoid JPG as an archival format.
If you ever want to put the images on a web site or email them, you can scale them down and use a lossy format at that point.
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