Scanning advice

[Good Ol' Batmanuel!]

Peep this, homeskillets.

My mother has a picture cut out of a magazine of a painting done by a foot and/or mouth artist. She has phoned the school where they do their art to try and find out more info on it and no dice. We can't make out the signature, and since it's so old, they don't even know if they have the original.

Long story short, it's around 4"x5" and I'd like to be able to scan it and have it printed at...I dunno, 11x17-ish? That would be nice. So...what sort of scan setting should I use? Is 300dpi enough or should I use more or what?

Any advice would be much appreciated. :)

[darkdetective]

I'd say 800-1200dpi, if at all possible. 600dpi should work, if left with no other choice.

[Good Ol' Batmanuel!]

Thanks, d.d. :) It'll do up to 1200, so I'll try that.

The hard (but possibly fun) part is going to be fixing a few blemishes on the picture, plus one corner got dog-eared. My mother wanted to just take the picture to Staples and get it blown up, but I know I can do WAY more with it than they would do. They would do no "fixes" whatsoever except trying to get the colors to match.

This reminds me that I still need to bring in a picture of her cat I fixed to be printed. Here's the before and after:

http://www.deviantart.com/download/132544404/Minuet_before_and_after_by_Ripplin.png

[darkdetective]

Nice! Yeah, I much prefer to do mine and my father's pictures myself, cuz I have more control and can do so much more. :D

[Bic]

Yeah, I agree about the 1200dpi. And great clean-up of the kitty. Looks way more natural and sharper than the blue tinted one.

[Good Ol' Batmanuel!]

Thanks, Bic! :) It was actually you that gave me the basic info on removing the blue. http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=230816

[Glitcher]

On a related note, if you ever need to enlarge pictures without losing quality, the Genuine Fractals (http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=7) plugin for Photoshop is a great wee tool.