How good should scans of old prints be?

[PatrickO]

I have just had about 25 prints scanned at a high street shop and I'm really disappointed with the results. When I look at the digital files the colours are definitely off and all images appear grainy. In addition small blemishes (some almost invisible on the original prints) seem hugely emphasised on the scanned images.
The original prints were a mixed lot of family pics for which I have no negatives or digital files. Mix of mono and colour. Some were pretty poor prints to begin with, but the scanning seems to have made them all a lot worse.

Am I expecting too much from images scanned from prints?

 

[PMN]

It's absolutely impossible to say unless you show us some examples! Can you post some of the scans you've had done and are disappointed with?

 

[joxby]

You'd expect a fairly close reproduction of the original really.
Reflective scan technology is pretty good these days, its not like its 35mm film at silly res or anything.

 

[excalibur2]

At the very least scanned prints should look the same as the original print......in fact a scanned good quality small print can look very good enlarged with a bit of Photoshop work, also I used to scan 10X8" prints on an old SCSI scanner and get great results.

Etrs print about 3"X 5" scanned and a bit of Photoshop work:-

 

[Steve]

I scanned in hundreds of old family photos over the last year or so. Some came out great straight away, but others need a bit of work in photoshop to get them to an acceptable level. As others have said, maybe best to post some here for an assessment.

 

[Jao]

Before I got my Epson V500 I made quite a lot of scans of photos on a pretty basic all in one printer scanner thingummy and with a little PS tweaking I was pretty impressed with results. so you should be able to get some good scans assuming the originals are OK

 

[ChrisR]

I've done some comparisons of scans of old prints and the negatives. There's definitely more colour cast in the prints, and to my eye less detail as well. Someone on here did show me that a bit of PP made the print-scan colours pretty much as good as the neg-scan colours, although I do have problems correcting colour casts myself, with Aperture.

But a lot of Hig St stuff is just badly done.

 

[medwaygreen]

Like the above I scanned to an Epson flat bed the 4820 something I think, 100's of old prints and almost all gave a very good looky likey of the original.