Choosing the Right Resolution
The main thing we ask our customers when they are trying to decide what resolution they need is: “What do you plan on doing with your digital images?” 3600 dpi is usually more than enough for most people unless you plan on creating large prints from your slides or you want the highest quality possible. A 3600 dpi scan of a 35mm slide (which is about 1.3” x 0.9”) will give you about 4550 x 2890 pixels. This is much higher resolution than a 4K TV at 3840 x 2160 pixels. Therefore, if you just want to watch a slide show of your pictures on TV or on your computer, 3600 dpi is more than enough. If you wanted to create a photo print of your slide, a general standard for print resolution is to have about 300 dots per inch printed on paper minimum to give great image quality. Most photo kiosks at your local superstore or pharmacy print at 300dpi. So if you were to enlarge your 3600 dpi image, you could make it about 11”x 16” and still have enough pixels to give you 300 dpi. If you planned on printing a larger image, or you would like the ability to zoom in and crop digitally, then you would want to scan your slides at a higher resolution such as 6400 dpi. The quality of this process is excellent and is often chosen by customers who want to regularly enjoy their pictures and/or use them for special events.