Scan and print very old photos

madmaggie

I don't know if this is the right forum for this thread, but any help appreciated. I scanned in some very old photos, quite small, and want to print them out to 4x6. How do I make them fit the 4x6 frame? I have Windows 7. Any ideas, please?

Polar Ice

You won't be able to print the images at a larger size without a corresponding loss in quality.

CreepingDeath

madmaggie wrote: »

I don't know if this is the right forum for this thread, but any help appreciated. I scanned in some very old photos, quite small, and want to print them out to 4x6. How do I make them fit the 4x6 frame? I have Windows 7. Any ideas, please?

What graphics program do you have and how computer literate are you?

Easiest attempt : Open up your photo with the "Paint" program.
Then go to "Print --> Page Setup".
Select the paper size most matching 4x6" paper (102 x 152mm)
In the "Scaling" panel of the page setup dialog box there's a section for scaling.... choose "Fit to:" and 1 by 1 pages.
Hit "ok" and try a test print of it.


The much more involved solution requires downloading a great free program called "Gimp" Gimp Download for Windows
And tutorials on Youtube about using it to restore old photos. ( requires a bit of background knowledge in computers & graphics )
Then you can enhance the colours, digitially repair the photo, despeckle it if there's noisy dots, airbrush out mistakes etc.... but that's a bit much if you don't normally use graphics programs.

As Polar Ice said... when you try blowing up small images and printing them as larger images, the quality will be blurry at best.

regards,
CD

mordeith

Polar Ice wrote: »

You won't be able to print the images at a larger size without a corresponding loss in quality.

This is only going to be noticeable if the originals were very small pyhsically. The OP should scan in the photos at 300dpi and save as tiff or high quality jpeg.
Picasa comes with basic image retouching tools plus a hand crop feature where you can select from a number of preset proportions including 6 x 4 / 4 x 6. You can adjust the frame over the orignal image and preview the crop to see what the finished product will look like. The saved images can then be printed out from CD/USB stick at any decent photography shop.

madmaggie

Thanks all for your replies, computer semi-literate would be a good description of my capabilities! However, I will try all suggestions.