Scanning grayscale photos - poor resolution

[Karen Alexandre]

I am creating a brochure which requires me to scan photographs (headshots) from a publication. I scan them at 300 dpi in 256 shades of gray. They look OK in PS but when I open them in Quark they are pixelated. I have tried saving as both TIF and JPG. Neither seems to provide decent resolution. Is this a function of the original photo in the publication? Am I trying to get blood from a stone?

Thanks

[YrbkMgr]

Karen,

If the photo is from a publication, that implies that it was printed (like from a printing press). If that's true, then what you are likely seeing is the result of how presses work - to wit line screens. Images printed that way are made up of little dots. Often times, at varying magnifications, those dots produce an anomaly called Moiré patters.

Most scan software has a feature called "descreening" which removes, to some extent, the dots by smoothing or blurring them.

There are also various techniques that one can use to remove them manually. Often they include a gaussian blur followed by an Unsharp Mask. If you were to do a google search on Moiré pattern removal in Photoshop, you would probably find abundant resources to help you remove them and produce an acceptable image.

Peace,
Tony

[Lundberg02]

You say they look "ok" in Photoshop. Are you looking at them at 100%?
Moire will show up in scans from pubs to some extent in Photoshop unless you have specifically done something to remove it, such as descreening, gaussian blur, rotation by 15 degrees at scan time, or whatever.
Are you placing them in Quark at the right resolution if there is a choice?

[John Kallios]

Besides the moire issue, Xpress only displays a low res preview. (I assume you are not using 6) So, yes, it will look poorly in Xpress. Print it to check the resolution.

Now, if you used InDesign, you would have the option of high res preview. Transparency, optical kerning, opentype support, tables and a slew of other features as well. 8@)

John

[Neil Keller]

Karen,

Assuming that you are not violating any copyright in scanning these published images, there are a couple of options that I might try.

Method A: First, scan them at 450-600ppi, not 300. Filter --> Noise --> Despeckle. Resample to 300ppi.

Method B: Use the "Descreening" option in your scanner.

Be aware that scanning halftones is never an ideal solution. Sharpness, detail, and color are all compromised.

Neil