[Cigogne]

Luckily, we live in the digital age. You want a scanner that is capable of higher resolution and the ability to scan in 48-bit. Stick with Epson, Microtek, Umax brands... no name brands or cheapo scanners will give you problems.

1. Use gloves when handling them. Oils from your fingers will cause more damage. At photography shops they are available.

2. Scan them at a minimum of 600 dpi. That will allow them to be worked with and improved. If scanned at a lesser resolution, 300, it will be at par, but won't gain you anything to really restore and improve the image quality. Bigger is better. Also, these old photos come in different sizes. The smaller the image, the higher the resolution. I had some photos that I scanned for somebody that were from an old Kodak that were maybe 2.25 inches wide. I scanned them at 2400 dpi to give me the equivalent of a good 11 in x 8.5 in photo.

If higher... scan at 1200, or 2400 (multiples ot the number. Don't do 400, 500... they need to be multiples of each other. The best optical results are what I noted above.

3. Have the scanner color settings set to RGB or Full Color mode or at least 24-bit which is millions of colors. Don't scan at 8-bit or grayscale as that will limit the tones that will be scanned from the image and you'll lose delicate detail in the shadows and highlights.

4. The native format setting to save the scans should always be TIFF file format. Never save the raw scans as JPEG. That is a compressed format that makes for a smaller file... at the cost of a loss of information.

5. Also, you'll want to make sure you have a good hard drive or backup external hard drive if you are scanning a lot of photos.

Let me know if you have any other questions.