TIFF, JPG, Photo Editing

I've been pondering lately the potential worthiness of re-scanning all of the family photos that I have. See, when I started this whole thing, I didn't do it right. When I brought home the old family albums after visiting my niece several years ago, I immediately went out and bought a scanner. I dug right in and started scanning. Didn't do an ounce of research. Just started scanning.

Now, three years later, I learn that it's better to scan in TIFF format and not JPG format. I learn that it's better to scan at a minimum of 300 dpi and not the scanner's default of 200 dpi. I learn that 600 dpi is even better. I also learn that TIFF files are bigger, and 600 dpi is quite burdensome too.

So here I am pondering the enormous task of re-scanning at least 809 photographs in the right format. As I was pondering all of this in the back of my mind, I organized my computer room once again, in preparation of the task at hand. This meant putting up the folding table in an aleady crowded room, so I'd have some room to work without the risk of spilling drinks on the pictures, since I tend to always have a drink by the computer.

Then I ran up to Michaels to see if they had any photo-handling gloves. They didn't, but they did have lots of other stuff. I decided to buy a few packs of scrapbooking paper kits to experiment as I work on the scanning.See that red, white and blue paper? Aunt Marianne would look SO GOOD saluting in one of those frames. Then I came home and scanned a picture of my father's mother (Marianne's mother, too!) on her wedding day. I saved it first as a 600 dpi TIFF file, but boy did my computer slowwwwwwww down! So I deleted it and re-scanned it at 300 dpi, and saved it in TIFF format twice, once smaller for a blog post and once at the default. The smaller one ended up a bit blurred.

After I scanned the image and saved it in the formats, I opened up my MS Picture It! 2003 to clean up a little of the dust.

As I was working on the picture, I noticed that, on the MS Picture It! Program, it gave me the option to save it in several different formats, including TIFF. So I opened an old photo that I've had for a long time, then clicked on "Save As" and changed the format from JPG to TIF. It worked!

So tonight I learned that I do not need to re-scan all the pictures to save them in TIFF format. Now it's simply a matter of whether or not it would be worth it to re-scan the photos in order to gain 100 dpi (remember, all photos scanned up until about a month ago were scanned at 200 dpi). I guess my next test will be to scan one picture in 200 dpi and then again in 300 dpi, then print them up.

What do you all think?