Scanning Resolution

To ensure we capture all the details in your photo, at Scanpix we scan your prints at 600dpi (dots per inch) and your slides/negatives at 3,000dpi.  Everyone is talking in “mega pixels” these days and this resolution is the equivalent of 3 mega pixels. This will allow you to print your high quality photos at home, online or at your local lab.

File Formats
In the image industry there are many different file formats which are in common use such as TIFF, JPEG, GIF,BMP, PSD. 
At Scanpix we use the most common, which are JPEG and TIFF.

JPEG
The JPEG format, (Joint Photographic Experts Group, extension .jpg), is the one most commonly used in digital cameras and it is a good balance between quality and size.

This format compresses the image and makes the image size more manageable, but the down-side is that there is a quality loss if you open and save.  This loss, however, does not occur if you are only viewing the image. At Scanpix we use the minimum amount of compression to ensure a high resolution image.

TIFF
The TIFF format (Tag Image File Format,  extension .tif), provides the best quality and is often used by the professional imaging industry as they will want to edit and crop the image and want all the detail to remain intact.The downside is that this file format does not provide any compression at all, and as a result the file sizes can be very large and slow to open.