In this guide 1. Why the scan decides the final quality 2. Choosing the right DPI 3. Color mode and bit depth 4. TIFF, PNG or JPG? 5. Preparing prints for a clean scan 6. When you only have a phone 7. Batch scanning, naming and archiving

Restoration software is only as good as the file you feed it. A scan made at the wrong DPI, saved as a compressed JPG on a dusty glass, contains problems that no online tool can ever fully fix. Conversely, a careful scan of an ordinary old print often restores to a result that surprises the whole family. Digitizing your photo collection is therefore the single highest-leverage step in the entire restoration process, and it costs nothing but an hour of patience.

This guide walks through the exact settings to use on a home flatbed scanner, how to handle and prepare fragile prints, what to do if you have no scanner at all, and how to organize the resulting files. Once you have a clean digital master, the actual restoration — color, scratches, sharpening — is the easy part, and it all runs privately in your browser.

Why the scan decides the final quality

Every restoration tool works on the pixels in front of it. It cannot recover detail that the scan failed to capture, cannot sharpen a face that was scanned out of focus, and cannot remove dust that was sitting on the scanner glass at the moment of exposure. Think of scanning as photographing your photograph: a worse scan is like a worse original, and no amount of editing manufactures information that was never recorded. This is why we always recommend scanning rather than photographing prints with a phone whenever a flatbed is available — but we will cover the phone method too.

The good news is that you do not need an expensive scanner. An entry-level flatbed around 600–1200 DPI, kept clean and used correctly, is enough to digitize a whole family archive beautifully. The mistakes are almost always in the settings and the handling, not in the hardware.

Choosing the right DPI

DPI (dots per inch) is how much detail the scanner records across each inch of the print. Higher DPI means more pixels, a larger file, and more room to crop, zoom and sharpen later. But more is not always better, because scanning a 4×6 inch print at 4800 DPI produces a giant file with no extra real detail — the print simply does not contain it.

  • 300 DPI — the minimum. A standard 10×15 cm (4×6 inch) print becomes roughly 1200×1800 pixels. This is fine for viewing on screen and for small prints, but leaves little room to crop into a face.
  • 600 DPI — the recommended sweet spot. The same print becomes about 2400×3600 pixels. This is the best balance: enough resolution to crop out a single face from a group photo and still have detail, without enormous files. Choose this for almost everything.
  • 1200 DPI — for small or very detailed items. Reserve this for tiny photos — wallet-sized baby portraits, stamps, dense group shots — where you will crop hard. It is also the right setting for scanning film negatives, covered in our film scan guide.

A quick rule: scan at 600 DPI for normal prints, 1200 DPI only when the original is small or you know you will crop tightly. And always scan the whole print, edges and all — you can crop later with the Photo Cropper, but you cannot recover a border you cut off before scanning.

Color mode and bit depth

Modern scanners offer color, grayscale and film modes. For ordinary paper prints, choose 24-bit color (RGB) even for black-and-white photos. Scanning a black-and-white print in color captures the warm paper tone and any age stains, which gives you more material to work with when you later decide whether to keep it warm, neutralize it, or apply a proper sepia treatment. Scanning directly in grayscale permanently throws away that color information.

If your scanner offers a higher bit depth (48-bit), enable it — it captures more subtle shadow and highlight detail that helps when you fix faded contrast. Disable the scanner's automatic enhancements, auto-crop, dust removal and color correction: you want a raw, faithful scan, and you will do the artistic corrections yourself in restoration tools. Scanner "auto" modes tend to crush contrast and over-saturate.

TIFF, PNG or JPG?

The scan is your master file, and masters should never be saved lossy. Scan to TIFF or PNG if your software allows — these are lossless formats that keep every pixel the scanner captured. JPG is a compressed format that throws away detail and adds blocky artifacts; those artifacts become painfully visible the moment you sharpen or enlarge the photo. Save the original scan as PNG or TIFF and keep it untouched forever.

JPG still has a place — but only as a derived copy. After you restore a photo, export a JPG or WebP for sharing on family chats and social media, using the Image Compressor to keep file sizes small. The chain should look like this: lossless scan (master) → restored working file → small JPG/WebP (sharing). Never overwrite the master with the sharing copy.

Preparing prints for a clean scan

Preparation is where most digital dust enters. Do these steps for every batch.

  • Clean the scanner glass. Wipe it with a microfiber cloth; breath on a smudge and polish it. Dust on the glass becomes permanent white specks in every photo you scan.
  • Dust the print itself. Use a soft, dry brush or a rubber air blower — never a damp cloth on an emulsion that might peel.
  • Handle edges, not surfaces. Oils from fingers leave marks that show up later; hold prints by the borders, and consider cotton gloves for very valuable ones.
  • Flatten curled prints. Place them under a light book for a while, or scan with a second sheet of paper gently holding the corner down. A curled edge scans soft and out of focus.
  • Scan slightly off the glass line if a photo is warped. Keep the lid propped open rather than forcing pressure that could crack brittle prints.

After a good scan, the restoration itself — fading, spots and sharpening — follows the workflow in our family photo restoration guide. Good preservation habits for the physical prints live in the photo care guide.

When you only have a phone

No flatbed? You can still get a usable digital copy with a smartphone, though it will not equal a scanner. Shoot in bright, even, diffused daylight — near a window but never in direct sun, which causes glare. Lay the photo flat on a neutral surface, hold the phone directly above it, perfectly parallel, and tap to lock focus and exposure on the image. Turn off flash completely; flash creates a hot reflection. If possible, use a free scanning app that automatically detects edges and flattens perspective.

The biggest phone-scan enemies are tilt (which trapezoids the photo), glare, and uneven light. Tilt is the hardest to correct later — line the phone up carefully. You can fix slight angle problems later with the Perspective Corrector, but a perfectly straight photo from the start is always better.

Batch scanning, naming and archiving

Once you start, scan in batches rather than one photo a week — the setup time is the same, and momentum matters. Keep a simple, consistent naming scheme with year and people, such as 1965-summer-garden-001.png, so files sort themselves chronologically. When a whole album needs converting to a shareable format, use the Batch Converter to turn many PNG masters into smaller JPGs in one pass — but restore each special photo individually rather than applying one automatic fix to the whole album.

Finally, store at least two copies of your masters: one on an external drive and one in a cloud service. A digital archive you only keep in one place is an archive one hard-drive failure away from being gone. With clean 600 DPI masters safely stored, your family photos are finally out of the fragile hands of time — and ready to be brought back to life.