FIDELIUM / HOW TO SCAN OLD PHOTOS

How to scan old photos.

A good scan is half the restoration. Small faces, fine scratches and faded colours all need the pixels a careful scan keeps — and none of it needs special equipment.

With a flatbed scanner

• Resolution: 600 dpi for normal prints; 1200 dpi for small prints (under 9 × 13 cm) and for group photos with small faces.
• Colour: scan in colour even for black-and-white photos; colour keeps the paper’s tone, which helps an honest restoration.
• File: TIFF or PNG, or JPEG at the highest quality.
• Clean the glass with a dry microfibre cloth; dust on the glass looks like dust on the photo.
• Turn off the scanner’s own “restore”, “dust removal”, sharpening and colour correction — they throw away detail the restoration could use.

With a phone

• Lay the photo flat by a window in daylight, out of direct sun. No flash.
• Hold the phone exactly parallel to the photo, so the edges stay straight and nothing reflects.
• Fill the frame with the photo; zoom with your feet, not the lens.
• Glossy prints: tilt the light, not the phone, until the shine disappears.
• Take the photo out of the album sleeve if you can do so safely; plastic adds glare.

Before you upload

• Crop to the photo’s edge, but keep torn corners in the frame — they can be filled in.
• Don’t use filters or “enhance” buttons; upload the plain scan.
• Keep the original print and the scan. A restoration is a new copy, never a replacement.

Black-and-white and sepia photos stay black-and-white when Fidelium restores them; faded colour photos get their colours back.