Scan and Enlarge

I have a very nice Thanksgiving card 7.5 x 5 .5. I would like to scan it and use it as my desktop wallpaper for the season. I have 2 Dell u2711 monitors at a resolution of 2560 x 1440. However, when I scan I get a terrible image when I attempt to set it as by background in Windows 7 Professional.

Can anyone give me some tips on how to do this. I have Lr 4 and CS 5.



Thanks in advance,

This sounds like a problem directly tied to your scanner. Make sure your scanner is capable of at least 300dpi and you should be good to go. 7.5" x 5.5" at 300dpi would equate to 2250x1650 pixels and should be good for your monitors. If your scanner is old and scans at less than that, that could be your problem.

Also make sure your scanner's lid is correctly locking down your card and not letting it mov during the scanning process as that may result in a blurry image.

Another problem that can happen when scanning is when moire patterns (see image below) from the image are picked up by the scanner, which does happen a lot.
 moire.jpg   77.29KB   200 downloads
One way to remove this effect is to slightly blur (gaussian or surface) one or more of the channel layers.