Railfan Technology > Photo Software Question

I'm in the process of scanning my slides, taken mostly with
Kodachrome 25 and earlier variants plus some Ektachrome 100.
One of the nice things about getting them scanned is I can
blow them up to look for details. However, a lot of the time
what appears to be a sharp exposure loses its resolution as
I magnify it. So, is there software that can enhance the
resolution? Feel free to PM me if you want to.

TIA for any replies.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

You cannot legitimately add (increase) resolution in a bitmap image. Doing so with software is called interpolation and it's not the same as native resolution from the input device (scanner in this case).

What kind of scanner are you using? What is the resolution of the images (in total pixels, not ppi or dpi, which is useless information)? What are you viewing them on and with (hardware, display resolution, software)?

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You cannot legitimately add (increase) resolution
> in a bitmap image. Doing so with software is
> called interpolation and it's not the same as
> native resolution from the input device (scanner
> in this case).
>
> What kind of scanner are you using? What is the
> resolution of the images (in total pixels, not ppi
> or dpi, which is useless information)? What are
> you viewing them on and with (hardware, display
> resolution, software)?

Well, here are the questions I can answer. I'm using
a Canon Cannoscan 9000 Mark II. Total pixels I have no
clue. Totally useless information is they are scanned
at 2400 dpi.

Somehow I think I knew this was just movie magic.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

You might want to read my post in this thread explaining resolution. I'm not sure that is what you are even after.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,1315869

If you scanned a 35mm slide at 100% at 2,400 ppi you would have an image that is about 3,300 pixels wide, which isn't terrible. More resolution won't make an image "sharper".

I think what you are after is sharpening. If the image is being scanned as sharply as possible with your particular scanner, software sharpening may help achieve what you are after. But as you didn't mention what image editing software you are using, I can't give you any specific steps to follow.

There may be other explanations for what you are seeing that have nothing to do with image resolution and everything to do with display resolution. But again, there isn't really enough information here to determine that.