Q: Should I scan it color or grayscale, what is the difference? 8 bit or 16 bit? and what is unsharp mask? Should i adjust this in Photoshop or while I am scanning? Thanks confused about scanning.
A: Well 2 things are going to hold you back on a regular scanner. The resolution is nowhere near what you need to scan film negatives (many thousand dpi native is needed, not software enhanced) Next standard scanners work by seeing the light "reflected" off a surface, some of the light will go through the negative hit the lid and come back through the negative again before it hits the scanners ccd pickup causing distortion of colors and a focusing issue The dpi you can't get around the larger you want the picture the higher the dpi needs to be The light through the negative can be solved by scanning a negative with the lid open and a diffused light source above the negative so the ccd "sees" the negative the way it is meant to be seen (light one pass through) A general rule for basic is scan the picture at the native resolution of the output device if you want it to appear the same size Say you want a 4x6 to appear as 4x6 on your monitor, you would scan it at 72-80 dpi, that is about your monitors resolution For a printer you would scan it at 300 or the "native" resolution of you printer. (a photo printer may be higher) So lets say you scan at 300 dpi, and send it to the printer, the printer prints at 300 dpi so it uses 300 dots of the scan for each inch it prints, giving you the original size, on your monitor it will look about 4 times as large You can get film scanners but they are a bit more than standard scanners http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=1103910450&Description=film+scanner&name=Film