300dpi vs 600dpi: which should you choose for photo scanning?

When you order photo scanning you are usually asked to choose between 300dpi and 600dpi. Here is what that means in practice.

What dpi means

Dpi stands for dots per inch. It is how many pixels the scanner records for every inch of your photo. Double the dpi and you get twice as many pixels across and twice as many down, which is four times the detail.

The numbers for a standard 6×4 inch print

When 300dpi is enough

300dpi looks sharp on a phone, a tablet or a TV, and is fine for sharing on WhatsApp or Facebook. If you simply want to see your photos again, it does the job at a lower price.

When 600dpi is worth it

• Group photos. Faces in a wedding or school photo may be only a few millimetres across. At 600dpi you can zoom in and still see who is who.
• Small prints. Old square prints and small snapshots benefit most, because there is less to start with.
• Cropping and reprinting. If you might crop one person out of a group, or print a larger copy, the extra pixels matter.
• Restoration. Repairing tears and damage works better with more detail.

What 600dpi cannot do

Scanning captures what is on the print. It cannot add sharpness that was never there. A blurred or out-of-focus print will look the same, just larger. Going beyond 600dpi for ordinary prints mostly produces bigger files rather than more detail, because the print itself runs out of detail.

Which to choose

Our Standard option is 300dpi. It is ideal for viewing on phones, tablets and TV, and for reprints at the same size. Choose High detail (600dpi) for enlarging, cropping in on faces, or very small photos. Very small old prints, such as 2x3 inch snapshots, look better at High detail. Our price calculator shows both options side by side.