Not much left at this point! Go ahead and resample to your desired size/resolution (4″ x 6″ at 300dpi for me), then sharpen up the image to compensate for the innate blurring of the scan process. Be sure to use the Unsharp Mask filter and not one of the plain Sharpen filters. It sounds backwards, but the Unsharp Mask is what pros use for a reason. The values you use will differ for any image, but for a file of this size you’re probably safe with something like 200%, Radius 1.0, Threshold 1. Don’t over sharpen; what looks OK onscreen may look funny printed. Trial and error may be necessary here, so save the unsharpened original until you’re happy. (In fact, saving the original, totally uncorrected scan until you’re positive you have it perfected is a good idea.)
Finally, convert to 24-bit color and save as a TIFF. Not JPEG, you ask? Well, you can if you really need to watch disk space; even a JPEG with very little compression is about 50% smaller than a TIFF. (About 5MB vs. 2.5MB for images of this size.) But be warned that JPEGs achieve those remarkable compressions by throwing out data that human eyes might not miss. Each time you open and then save a JPEG, more data gets thrown away. TIFFs never lose data.
I mentioned at the beginning of this ramble that film scans produce much better results than scanning prints. I’ll end by showing two final versions of the picture you’ve seen so much of. The scan on top is of the 4″ x 6″ print, which admittedly is at a disadvantage because it was developed at CVS 1-hour photo. The bottom was scanned from the negative. Both had Digital ICE, noise reduction, color correction, and sharpening. The print scan required manual dust removal, because Digital ICE works better on film than on prints. Both are presented at 100%, albeit cropped to show only the most interesting parts. As usual, the results speak for themselves.
Note: My negative scan isn’t exactly 4″ x 6″; it includes the entire width of the negative. Print developers have to crop to fit 4″ x 6″ exactly, which is why the man at right gets cut out in the print.
