Very interesting. We are all so concerned about size and megapixels
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Today's Question:
I have two 4 x 6 pictures of my daughters and would like to make them into 16 x 20 posters for our wall. I own an Epson flat bed scanner (4490) and am wondering if I can scan them and then send them out to be printed.
Tim's Answer:
In theory this would most certainly work. If you scan the 4x6 prints at the maximum optical resolution of your scanner (in this case 4800 dpi) you'll end up with an image that is approximately 19,200 pixels by 28,800 pixels. If you assume the image will be printed at an output resolution of 300 dpi, that means you'd be able to produce a print of about 64x96 based on the amount of information you have, which far exceeds the size you're looking for.
Unfortunately, reality isn't always that friendly. In this case the biggest factor working against you is that you're starting from a print. So while you could produce a relatively huge number of pixels by scanning that print, they're not exactly going to be pixels of the highest quality. The print lacks detail and tonal range by its nature, and scanning that to a huge size won't magically create information where it doesn't exist. What that really means is that you could indeed produce the posters you're looking to create, but they will look obviously soft. Think of taking a low-resolution image on your monitor and resizing it by a huge amount, and then examining the fine details. As you can imagine, the results won't be great. If all you have is that 4x6 print though, it is really your only option. The poster won't look like a sharp photographic image, but in this case perhaps the aim is more for a fun piece to hang on the wall than it is to have a print of the highest quality.
If you happen to have the transparency (presumably a negative), you'll be able to get much better results. The transparency contains much more information than the 4x6 print could possibly contain, so it is always a better starting point. In this case, with the maximum resolution of your scanner you'd be able to produce a scanned image of about 4800x7200 pixels. While this is fewer pixels than the scan of the 4x6 print would yield, they are higher quality pixels. Also, this scan would still produce output at 300 dpi of about 16x24, so it would be more than adequate for your needs. The quality with such a flatbed scan would still not be as good as that from a dedicated film scanner, but it would still be more than adequate for this purpose, assuming the original capture was of good quality.
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