MEDIA
IMPROVE YOUR
SCANNED PHOTOS
I have a load of old photos to scan in –
some of them are quite small. What’s the
best way to blow them up and preserve
as much quality as possible?
Gregory Dahl
The following step-by-step guide is
based around Dell’s scanning tools,
but other scanner makers provide
similar controls – and in some cases,
better ones too, particularly when
adjusting lighting and colour
balance.
Open your scanning tool and click
Preview. Use the selection tool to
crop around the photo — the scanner
will automatically adjust its lighting
settings to adapt to the photo,
ensuring a better-quality scan.
While it’s tempting to preserve
sepia tints in older photos, choose
the greyscale option from your
scanner’s colour settings to deliver a
more vibrant scan — you can always
tint it back again afterwards using
an image editor such as Adobe
Photoshop Elements.
The default 300 dpi setting
preserves the original size of any
scanned photo or document. For
2x3-inch photos, increase this to 600
dpi. Try 1,200 dpi or 900 dpi for
passport-sized photos but be warned:
they may come out blurry.
Some programs enable you to
manually adjust lighting and colour
balance to try and correct image
issues at the scanning stage. Others
- like our Dell scanning utility –
merely offer basic fixes like toggling
automatic settings on or off.
Catherine Ellis
WINDOWS
RESINTALL-PROOF PC
I’ve been forced to bite the bullet and
start preparing to reinstall Windows 10
thanks to the fact I can’t get Windows
Update to work in any circumstances.
How do I make this task easier in future?
Francis Pyke
Windows needs reinstalling every 18
months to two years thanks to
frequent feature updates, which are
effectively brand-new versions of
Windows. You can reduce the pain by
following our reinstall guides where
we reveal such useful tips as moving
your user folders to another drive or
partition so the latest version of
your data survives the reinstall
procedure with no hassle.
After reinstalling open File
Explorer to your user folder. Right-
click Documents and choose the
Properties > Location tab. Click
‘Move’ and select your newly created
folder, then say ‘Yes’ when prompted
to move all your existing files to the
new location. Repeat for the other
user folders.
With your data moved, check out
portable apps – these are programs
that store everything they need
(including your user settings) inside
their own folder, making them easy to
move, back up and restore.Check your programs’ websites for
portable versions; if they don’t exist,
start your search for alternative apps
on http://www.portableapps.com where
you’ll find office (LibreOffice), email
(Thunderbird) and other programs
are well represented
Carrie MarshallFusion Drives of fer a
good compromise
between the speed of an
SSD and the cheaper
capacity of a hard disk.Increasing dpi can help when scanning
smaller photos, but too big a change
could distort things.Por table Switch enables you to keep all
your Windows settings between reinstalls.