First Album help please

[yvspeck]

I have posted this in the General and Beginnings forum also...I am working on a baby photo album of my 25 year old son... The pictures a pretty awful (mostly 110 snaps)... I have scanned and cropped and corrected most of them to look some what better... Does anyone have any helpful tips on the best way to improve them. I also read the 12x12 thread in beginnings forum and am really worried about having to use such small pictures to do my layouts... Most are between 3x3 and 4x4 and that's bumping them up a notch....Is there a good way to increase thier size without stretching the already poor quality? Or should I just do the best with what i have? I think I am going to do this album 8X8.. Any helpful tips would really be appreicated.. I reall want this album (my very first and a gift) to turn out nice!!!!!!!!

[Amanda]

Why are they so small? What resolution are you scanning at? If you scan at higher resolutions then they will be bigger on your scrapbook page. It's all about the pixels.

Scan a 3x3 photo at 200ppi - 600x600 pixels - if you insert this on a 200ppi scrapbook page then it will be 3x3.

Scan a 3x3 photo at 300ppi - 900x900 pixels - if you insert this on a 200ppi scrapbook page then it will be 4.5x4.5

[Victoria]

Adding to what Amanda has said, I also had a lot of old photos which were very small. I scanned them at 600 dpi, and was able to improve them and also increase their size. If you haven't tried Picasa2 software to enhance photos, it's worth a try. It's a free software program available at picsa2.com.
You can also print out instructions for use from their site. Good luck and let us know how they turn out.
Victoria

[yvspeck]

Thank you both.... Amanda I thought I had scanned at 600 dpi but found I really only scanned at 300..... So will start over.... Oh well at least I hadn't set them on layouts yet or even worse printed them out... Victoria I have not heard of the software you mention so I am going to go check Picasa2 out now...

[Abby]

Another thought .. if you increase the size by 10% increments, it is possible to make a fairly decent copy of a small photo. If you try it at bigger increments, it gets all pixellated .. you can do the 10% more than once if the photo is not suffering too much. Also, what program are you using .. there are different work-arounds in different programs.

[yvspeck]

Another thought .. if you increase the size by 10% increments, it is possible to make a fairly decent copy of a small photo. If you try it at bigger increments, it gets all pixellated .. you can do the 10% more than once if the photo is not suffering too much. Also, what program are you using .. there are different work-arounds in different programs.

Abby i am using PSE 4.... Are you talking about increasing my already scanned at 300 DPI photos by 10% or the new 600 dpi scans?

[Abby]

It should work for either of them Kim .. it won't work for a lot of repetitions (if that makes sense), but you should be able to do it a few times without too much pixellation. In PSE you can use your noise reduction feature to great advantage too with small pictures. I think going with 8 x 8 is a really good idea as well. Do you have Virtual Photographer? If not, get it, it's free and can do amazing things with small, somewhat nasty photos!! I use it a lot for photos that aren't too good to start with. Let me know if I can help any more :)

[yvspeck]

Check out my oh so improved scanning & restoration skills..... And a big Thanks everyone!
http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=69416&cat=500&ppuser=16608