What Do You Get For Final Image Size?
What do you end up with after your 35mm slides are scanned? What will your final image sizes be?
Your 35mm slides will be scanned so that your final image is 6.5 " x 4.375" 300 pixels per inch. That is 1920 x 1293 pixels per image. The image contains 2482560 pixels. That's almost 2.5 million pixels or 2.5 Mega Pixels. File size will vary from approximately 1 MB to 2 MB depending on the image color/brightness/contrast. Just for comparison, HD TV is 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Your Paper Photos that are smaller than 5x7" will be scanned and
saved at their original size and 600 ppi. 600 ppi is high enough
resolution to take to a print shop and they
would consider it such a high resolution image that it could be blown up to three times it's size. The same holds true
if you wanted to take one of the files to a One
Hour Photo, Target or CostCo. The best
print quality for a 35mm slide scan is going to be 5x7 although
many people will be perfectly happy with the results of an 8X10
or even a 10x15 print. Click to see some examples of
prints that we have had made from
our slide scans up to 10 x 15 inches.
We think that most everyone is going to be perfectly happy with our normal scanning resolution.
The files are saved as JPG at a quality of ten. On a scale of 1-10, saving at 10 would be the highest quality.
File size will probably run from a very low of 800kb to more than 1mb. If you want to squeeze more images onto a disk, we can save at a slightly lower JPG quality which will reduce the file size but we don't recommend this.
This image resolution is more than adequate for 99.9% of any uses anyone would have. If you do not need to make huge enlargements prints, you are going to be perfectly satisfied with these images.
There are two terms we are dealing with - Scanning resolution and Final resolution.
Standard 35mm Slides are scanned at 2500ppi or dpi and saved at a final resolution of a 6 " x 4 " image, at 320ppi or dpi and JPG quality of 10. This is a high quality scan and is going to be more than sufficient for most uses other than blowing up to a huge size for printing. Click to see some examples of prints that we have had made from our slide scans. Paying a higher price for a higher resolution scan is not going to benefit most people. They are just wasting their money. 2500 pixels per inch scanning is more than sufficient for making prints from your scans. Why pay for extra ppi if you don't need it? Its like paying for high octane premium gasoline when your engine will run perfectly fine on regular unleaded. It can make the difference between having your slide conversion be affordable or just unreasonable. Why don't you take advantage of our free sample scan and demo disk offer and see for yourself exactly what you are going to get?
Somewhere along the line, this ppi vs. dpi issue got confused and it has never been straightened out. What should really be referred to as ppi (pixels per inch) is normally referred to dpi (dots per inch). Dots per inch is a printer term referring to how many dots are on the print film or printing plates. Pixels per inch are referring to the digital image and how many pixels are in the image.
Click here for PowerPoint Resolutions and 35mm slide scanning.