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From the Start Menu or on the Desktop - launch “Epson Scan 2”.
The Document Source is automatically set to ADF (Auto Document Feeder).
For Scanning Side, select if you are doing Single-Sided or Double-Sided Scanning. Photos often have hand written notes on the back, they may also have manufacturing information about the type of paper and the negative number or digital files used to create the photo.
Under Folder, select where you want to save your files. Always remember to set where you are saving your files first, so you don’t lose them! The files are named automatically by date and time code.
The most you can scan is 600 DPI (dots per inch). The 1200 is a marketing lie*. A good rule is that 300 DPI is 1:1 so 600 DPI is like scaling it 2 times in each direction. Use 300 DPI for copies and 600 DPI for doubling in size.
Your photo might not contain 600 DPI of information; it depends on how and when it was printed. Photographs printed at a modern photo lab were usually only processed at about 400 DPI. If they are pre-digital (pre-2000) and are real photographs you can possibly get the full 600 DPI, but you might also start to see the fibers in the paper rather than more of grandma’s smile.
*scanners have an optical resolution which is the true resolution of the scanner, the software may offer you interpolated resolutions higher than this but it isn’t real data.
The Document Feeder isn’t perfect, and your photo might run through the scanner at a slight angle. You can have the software try to correct this by looking at the edge of the scan (Paper Skew) or by looking for horizontal lines in the image (Contents Skew). Generally, it is best to leave it set to Off and correct it in Adobe Photoshop when you make other corrections after scanning.
Set your Image Format to TIFF, as the file is uncompressed and saves quickly. PNG files are good quality but they take longer for the machine to process. Don’t select JPEG as the photos will lose quality, and you can make smaller JPG copies later.
