Scanning old color snap shots to photos app.

When I scan pictures, I use the app Image Capture that's in the Applications folder on the Mac. Unfortunately, some, especially older, scanners don't play nicely with apps that are not theirs. But you should try that, if you can. HP software will be similar, once you get past their proprietary stuff.

I try to get enough pixels to make sense-- I often set the software to 600 dots / inch. For pictures the size of a sheet of paper, 300 dpi is fine. For little pictures, I've used 1200 dpi, but photo prints usually aren't really good enough to warrant that.

The scanner bed should be clean. The picture should lie as flat as possible on the scanner bed. This is tough when scanning books, but it works petty easily for individual pictures. If their normal snapshot size, I may scan 4 or 6 at a time, and then separate them later. But I have software to help with that.

Are you sure the pictures are clear to begin with? I'm pretty amazed at what I used to think was a nice clear image, but when zoomed in just doesn't compare to digital camera pictures. Older pictures are often covered in dust and scratches. A lot of that you can fix with the tools in Photos, but nothing beats cleaning the picture before you scan it.

Any of this work? Let us know....

Big Ron22 wrote:

I am using an HP printer/scanner combo.

Which one?

The phrase "not coming very clear" is pretty ambitious. So can you post a screenshot of the scanned image pointing out areas which best show the problem?

How are you doing the scanning? Are you using a flatbed scanner? Or a printer/scanner combo?

Great! The general rule is that, if a print is held at a normal reading distance, 300 dpi looks smooth and you can't actually see the pixels. At 600 dpi, you can blow it up to twice the size.