Need basic photo editing software, and ???'s on archiving scanned images.

[Jonestown]

My wife has decided to scan in her family's old photos. I need to find basic photo editing software that would allow her to edit the photos (duhh), and organize the photos into some sort of album so we can burn them to cd. I've been looking at Microsoft Picture It! Photo software (trying to keep this relatively cheap).

My wife has MS Picture It! Publishing (I think), and we have attempted to edit the photos with this program, but it doesn't like messing with any file size greater than ~.5Mb. I don't think this proggy is built for photo editing, hence my question about Picture It! Photo edition (I would guess this proggy is tailored for photo editing).

I would like to scan the images in at the highest possible resolution. What file type should I save the image as? Would it be possible to scan in 4-5 images at a time and then cut the images out individually? Like I said, I'm pretty clueless as to how to go about doing this and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for any help.

Jonestown

 

[Damascus]

Well if you really really want the highest resolution, then perhaps you should go
looking for the negatives. If the negatives are still in good condition, then you
may want to consider renting a film scanner (they are expensive to buy). These
things scan in entire rolls and spit out images that are 6 megapixels+. That's
plenty of resolution...

 

[Jonestown]

Damascus,

Sorry, we don't have any of the negatives. I guess I should say that I would like the best quality given the pictures we have. I am truly clueless when it comes to this type of thing. Thanks,

Jonestown

 

[mrbass]

highest resolution. For what is the intended output for? If you want them to be printing then 600dpi. Remember though if it's a 4x6 then your resolution can't be that much higher. In other words you can't print out an 8x10 from a 4x6 scanned image without it looking like crap. What I've been doing is with the scanned images (most of mine are from digital camera) but my brothers, sisters come over to scan in their friends photos, etc. Then we make a vcd with $29.99 Ulead PictureShow. It can play on a ton of dvd players out there. Before this it was impossible to get my family to visit my website to look at any photos. But with a simple press of the keypad on the dvd remote they can sit back and view the slideshow with nice background music. For simple editing look at costco and get Adobe Photoshop Elements with rebate I think it's around $50 or so.

 

[Jonestown]

Thanks for the reply. I checked out the review of Photoshop Elements on cnet.com. Cnet seemed relatively positive on the software, but really recommended Ulead PhotoImpact. Does anyone have experience with PhotoImpact?

Thanks again,

Jonestown

 

[snowguy]

I'm by no means a pro when it comes to digital photo editing but I've used a few editing software programs (Ulead PhotoImpact is not one that I've used)...I am very happy with Photo Elements II..it's easy to use...seems to improve most of my photos. I'm not sure it will do exactly what you're looking for but I have no problem recommending it for general phot editing purposes.