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scanning your own image

Mark Haysom Photography can scan your photographs using our professional and high-resolution scanners ready for the photo restoration and repair services we provide. It is worth considering scanning your own images and sending over the digital file ready for us to commence work on.

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The biggest advantage of scanning your own photo is that you do no thave to send the original images to us, this not only reduces risk (getting lost or damaged in the post) but is faster and cheaper, we don't have to scan on your behalf.

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If you have an all-in-one printer you should be able to use it to scan your photo, you might have your own dedicated scanner or have access to a scanner or scanner enabled printer at work, all of these will allow you the get a suitable scan ready for restoration work. If you are not sure how to scan a photo on your particular device YouTube is a mind of information and should help you get started.

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There are of course some considerations and tips you need to consider and adhere to when capturing a scan that is suitable for restoration work, after all, we are trying to avoid the "Oh that will be okay I guess" approach to scanning.

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  • Ensure the scanner glass is clean and free of dust, use a blower.

  • Ensure the photograph to be scanned is clean, remove any dust and dirt where possible, without damaging the original photograph, if in doubt leave any stubborn marks, we will remove them in the restoration process.

  • When placing the photograph on the scanner ensure it is square to the scanner and can lay flat on the glass when you close the scanner lid. If the photograph does not lay flat the resulting image will not be properly focused and will not be a sharp image.

  • Always scan in colour, even if your photography is Black & White, chances are is will have a colour cast on it, especially if it rather old, this is normal deterioration due to light and other factors.

  • Turn off all those helpful settings! Often these reduce the quality of the image produced, we need the best quality we can get for photo restoration. Examples are as follows.

    • Unsharp Mask​

    • Descreen

    • Reduce Dust and Scratches

    • Fading Correction

    • Grain Correction

    • Gutter Shadow Correction.

  • If possible set the scanner to scan just the photograph, not the Full Platen.

  • Set your Dpi (dots per inch) to a minimum of 300dpi. If your photo is physically small increase the Dpi. For example, a 5*7 photo the DPI can be set to 600 Dpi for a smaller photo increase the Dpi further to 1200dpi. For a very small passport size photo set the Dpi to 2400 Dpi.

  • Save the scanned image as a JPEG at 100% quality.

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Once you have your scanned image you can use the Customer Image Upload to send it over to us or email using the following address, hello@markhaysom.co.uk

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