Question : What scanner settings are best for archiving old family photos?
I want to scan and archive a bunch of old photos, and save them on CDs. I want to use photoshop to do some basic editing such as cropping, adjusting contrast, and saving them at a manageable file size.

I’m a little unclear about the relationship between things like pixels, actual image size, resolution and file size. After editing each photo, I think I’d like to end up with two images– one that could be as big as 1000kb for archival purposes, and another saved at about 200kb for convenient e-mailing, etc.

My questions: What scanner settings (as far as size, pixels, etc.) should I use in order to avoid losing too much image information in the editing and saving process? Is it best to scan and edit as a tiff and then save as a jpeg? Should I save the larger of the two files as a tiff? Should I use the “save for web” function? What settings are best for the final saved images in terms of actual image size, resolution, dpi, pixels, etc.? Thanks for your advice!
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Best answer:

Answer by yeperdoo
If you’re gonna have them pinted, then 300dpi will do. That may take up a lot of disk space, but if you’re gonna archive them, you might as well make them worth something when you want to retrive ‘em. Disks are cheap…memories ain’t.

To get the most out of your disk and make ‘em look good on-screen….then go for 72dpi.

hope it helps