3,200 PPI or DPI

Our normal scanning resolution for your 35mm slides and films is 3,200 pixels per inch. Could you settle for less? Maybe. Should you settle for less? Its up to you. Our standard service scanning at 3,200 ppi includes expert Photoshop editing by one of our highly trained Photoshop Artists.

Just a note: Some people say DPI, which is taken from the printing term of "Dots Per Inch" which are actual dots on a printing plate. Since we are talking about digital images here, which have pixels and not "dots", we use the correct terminology of "Pixels Per Inch." Just a small technicality. We know what you mean if you say DPI, so don't worry about it.

Question: What would be an advantage of scanning at 3200 ppi instead of a lower resolution?

Answer: You will be getting more detail in your image. If you want to blow it up, you will be able to blow it up to a much higher size.

Pixels and megapixels:
Pixels are the basic building blocks of every digital image; the more pixels in your photos, the better the Print appearance.

A megapixel means one million pixels and is the unit of image-sensing capacity in a digital camera, or the amount of information the camera can capture. Generally, the more megapixels a camera has, the better the print resolution will be.

An image that is 1024 x 768 at 100 PPI is the exact same file and has the same resolution as an image that is 1024 x 768 at 500 PPI. Both files contain a total of 786432 pixels in a grid that has 1024 pixels on one side and 768 pixels on the other side. A more reliable measure for digital photo-finishing is the actual resolution, which represents the number of pixels that make up the image. Our images have a total of 2,578.00 X 4,104.00 = 10,580,112 pixels

KODAK Optimum Print Quality for Professional-quality Prints
Desired Print size	DPI	Minimum recommended resolution (pixels)
4 x 6"	250	1000 x 1500
5 x 7"	250	1250 x 1750
8 x 10"	250	2000 x 2500
11 x 14"	250	2750 x 3500
16 x 20"	150	2400 x 3000
OLD PHOTO 3,200ppi Scanning		2758 X 4104

Here are some examples of PPI differences:
See the arrow pointing to the green box in the full image, below. The examples to follow will be of the part of the image in the green box. This will show you the difference you can expect at different resolutions.

This is a detail of the scan at 3200 ppi.	This is a detail of the scan at 3000 ppi.
This is a detail of the scan at 2600 ppi.	This is a detail of the scan at 2400 ppi.
This is a detail of the scan at 2000 ppi.	This is a detail of the scan at 1500 ppi.
This is a detail of the scan at 1000 ppi.

Below, you can see what you get if you blow up the the lower res scans to the same dimensions as the 3200 ppi scan.
3200 ppi	3000 ppi
2600 ppi	2400 ppi
2000 ppi	1500 ppi
1000 ppi	We think you can see that, the higher the resolution of the scan, the more detail you can see and the bigger you can print. The higher resolution scan has more details and you can see the pixelization of the lower resolution scans. It all depends on the quality that you want for your scans. Each step up represents higher quality of the scan.