Re: NNG - Scanning B&W prints

Some negatives you come across are too dark to print or otherwise view without photo editing, some prints are no different. It makes no difference whether the scanned image comes from a negative or a print. I suggest scanning at at least 600dpi, saving as a Tiff, then working on the image in your favorite photo editing program. The raw image from the scan is just that. It may be difficult to discern what you are looking at, and what minute details may be revealed until you do some photo editing. There are numerous photo editing programs including "Photoshop" which everyone has heard of to do this. Some of the free or included with photo editing programs do what is needed most of the time. I use MS Office Picture Manager (which used to be included with an office suite that included MS Word and Excel) most of the time for my work with the SVRR Archive. As others have said, save the raw scan and copy it to use in you editing software, so if the result is a flop, you always have the raw scan that you can copy and try again. Some scanning software includes the ability to automatically edit the scan, but I tend to avoid using this feature reserving the raw scan for manual editing. "Photoshop" is a great system, but takes a lot of time to master, which I haven't. Case in point is a fantastic rare photo which I repaired in various ways using Photoshop with great results. I believe I can successfully print the repaired image, but now I can't seem to post the jpeg version, nor manipulate it with another program, so there are a lot of quirks and hard knocks learning to this side of the hobby. Passing on a bit of further guidance, if you are going to scan 35mm film strips or slides, scan at 2400 dpi works well. I have ran in to small negatives which are not 35 mm, but are still quite small. Picking a resolution which might be 1200dpi will work nicely to get a raw scan that will yield good results after editing.