Best Resolution For Scanning Documents & Photos: Best DPI

Want to know what is the best DPI for scanning documents and photos?

Then you’re in the right place!

Nowadays people scan documents and photos often because it is an easy and fast way to get certain files on your PC or Mac. The most important thing to do when scanning photos and documents on your computer are to chose the right DPI (dots per inch). Read this article and find the right DPI for your documents and photos to get a clear scan of selected files at all times.

Best Resolution For Scanning Documents

Best DPI For Black-and-white Documents

You can get any black-and-white document or text scanned fast and easily in just a few simple steps and obtain a great resolution. Scanning documents is a smooth process that doesn’t take up much of your time which is a great thing, especially if you have a high-speed scanner. Choose the document you need to scan and let’s get started.

The lowest DPI needed for good results for your scanned text and black-and-white documents is 300 DPI. You can choose this option and get a clear scan out of any text and black-and-white document out there. Also, choose 600 DPI for a better deal if the text is going to be reprinted.

Another important thing is the font size of the documents. The 300 DPI will be fine for the documents with font size 10-point and up. On the other hand, if the document has smaller fonts they’ll be harder to read so you’ll need to choose 400 DPI to get better results.

Best DPI For Color Or Greyscale Scanning

The grayscale documents are composed of gradients of black. These documents and images can be saved as a PDF file of 200 up to 600 DPI. You can always convert PDF to Word easily. When it comes to online use, businesses tend to choose a smaller resolution of 200 DPI.

To capture every detail of color photographs, scan them at higher resolutions, typically from 600 up to 1200 DPI. However, if you’re scanning images online, most businesses choose the standard choice of 200 DPI to save hard disk space. Another tip: if your files are for the web, save them as a .GIF to reduce the file size! This is just a part of the fastest way to scan photos.

Best DPI For Line Art

Line art is used in print media and on the computer to enhance documents that consist of lines and curves without the use of colors or gradients. The line arts include comics, cartoons, glyphs, and ideographs. To get the best results when scanning line art, it’s best to choose 900 DPI for print and 300 DPI for online use.

Scanned line art files should be saved as a .GIF.

Best DPI For Scanning Negatives

There are two ways to get the best results when scanning negatives. First, you need a quality large format negative scanner, of course. If you don’t care about getting the negatives perfect and are scanning them to have some nice pictures, then choose 2000 DPI. This will get you good quality for most people and will not take up much of storage on your computer.

On the other hand, if you want to get the best resolution and care about getting the negatives scanned perfectly, it is recommendable to choose between 3000 and 4000 DPI. By choosing these two options you’ll get the best quality of the image possible for you and your family.

In case there is too much grain on the scanned negatives when using 4000 DPI, go back to the 3000 DPI and the pictures will look much better. It is not recommendable to get under 3000 DPI when scanning negatives.