Enlarging and framing old B&W family photos...

[DFWallace]

I hope this is the right forum for this post. If some of my below comments are 'noobish', I apologize. I'm considering having some very old family photos enlarged and framed. I do not have the negatives. I want to maintain the resolution/quality level of the photos while enlarging to 8x10 I hope.

Are the key factors the quality/condition of the photo, the quality of the scanner/software/printer to be used, and the professionalism of the technician at the camera shop?

We have friends who were quite disappointed with the results when they went through this process. Others had their photos lost by the local company.

What would be good questions to ask the local outfit I'm considering to do the work?

Thanks for any help/ideas....

 

[DiskoJoe]

Local outfit? Dude, get one of your neighbors kids to scan the photo then go to to a site like cafepress or deviantart and make an account and print the stuff. deviantart is free and you can upload what ever you want and print it in a 100 different ways.

 

[KmH]

Scanning prints pretty much precludes the chance to "maintain the resolution/quality level of the photos". Particular when increasing the size to make a new print.

It takes a lot of fairly specialized image editing done to the newly digitized scan to "maintain the resolution/quality level of the photos".

How many photos?

You want to be sure the scanner gets profiled regularly with a spectrophotometer, and that the scans are done at the scanners highest resolution.