Share Your Original Photo as well as the Cropped Portion

If your original contains an amazing photograph of a family member, of course you are going to get an incredible scan at a high enough resolution to capture that photo and print it any size you desire. However, be certain to take into consideration what other family members will be looking at if you don't share the entire original image with them, as well. Using these images as an example, look what would be missing from the family's story if all you shared was the amazing cropped portrait. Does your collection contain any photos that cause you to wonder what the original looked like?

What if You Don't Know Everyone in Photograph?

It's great to scan a group photo based on the size you want to print it. Again, printing same size as original--scan at 300dpi; twice the size--scan at 600dpi, etc. However, be sure you take into account it just might contain the only image of a relative you don't readily recognize. If the photo is on loan to you, and you have to return it after scanning, think through your options. A good overall scan plus some detailed scans of individuals really won't take long at all, and may well give you images that prove integral to your family's pictorial history later on. This photo ended up providing us with a couple's only photo from that time in their lives. It also yielded the only picture we have of two sisters together.

Uncle's Gotta Go...Just Need Dad

This fabulous photo has so many amazing historical details and is truly appreciated by the family holding it in their collection. However, it also holds an opportunity to gain the one and only photo of their ancestor taken at this period of his life. Fortunately it is a very sharp and well-lit photograph, so a close-up of any size was definitely an option.

Cropping this closely means making a higher resolution scan of the original. A closer crop can make for a better image and helps keep the work of removing other people to a minimum. However, it is a personal decision as to how much of the original photo's details will be cut off in the process. Sometimes it is more important to keep the details in the entire photo, especially if it helps link the item to a particular period of time. If you aren't sure exactly how much you want to cut off for the final print, then restore the entire photo and make the decision after you have totally removed the other image(s).

Put the Scissors Down...There's an Easier Way to Remove Someone from a Group Shot

Is your favorite photo of a relative that one where everyone else is in the way? This happens a lot so most people who work with photographs have a "stash" of digital files they fondly call "backgrounds." You can make your own using fairly plain digital paper from a digital scrapbooking kit. Just turn it black and white to use with B&W pics, or change the color and tint to make it work with your color photos. A marvelous set of tools exist in Photoshop Elements and Photoshop to help extract a person from a group without touching scissors to your picture, so it's not as tedious or destructive a task as in days gone by. Add a bit of shading around the edges of the entire photo or just the background if desired and you may just end up with a an amazing new portrait of your ancestor! Just remember that scans of group photos need to be at a higher resolution to ensure your ability to print the cropped photo at your desired size. That means measuring the height of the person you want to extract, figure out how large you want to print the final photo, do the math and scan appropriately. Same size = 300 dpi, twice as large = 600 dpi, three times as large = 900 dpi or more, etc.

Yellowing Photo

Ah, those yellowed 70's photos...They just might hold enough color to recover an amazing print. Scanning an image printed on that "bumpy" paper of old yields "dots" which can be overcome by blurring the scanned image a bit. However, if your original is blurry to begin with, you might want to keep the speckled look rather than risk having too blurry a final print. Many of these old pictures need some cropping, so be sure to scan at a high enough resolution to increase the size of the wanted images. In this instance, the original 3.5" square was scanned at 1200dpi, producing a cropped 5" x 7" print.

Tintype Restoration

Tintypes are awesome to restore, and well worth your extra time and effort! Details were amazing in this image taken around 1883. We can even see faces and some letters on the campaign banner hanging from our politically-active ancestor's lapel. This tintype was identified as "John Stuart Weddle and friend." We have no idea who the friend is so he's now out of the picture, and his removal actually enhanced the photo's interest and composition.