Hey Pat,

I scan my chips at two different resolutions, 100 dpi & 360 dpi. The former is for displaying on the screen, while the second is for printing. Yes you can scan at the larger then using a graphics program (Such as PhotoDelux, PhotoShop or others) and reduce the image (called re-sampling) - yet to me one looses detail. See the image below to see what I mean.

A good rule of thumb for scanning an image to then be printed out is to scan at ~1/2 the capability of your printer when it is set to the "BEST" or highest quality mode. My printer is an Epson ColorStylus (Yes an oldie - yet goodie!) and its highest quality mode is 720 dpi. Thus 720 dpi / 2 = 360 dpi.

I can most of my chips at 169 x 169 pixels - this gives a little border around the chip for future editing (like adding text, adding the image to others etc...)

When I scan my images in, the program scans in a tiff image, which I then save as a jpg with a quality factor of 8. Higher than this will produce a larger file, and smaller introduces distortions which makes the image less 'clear' - at least to my eyes...

Scanning a test chip at 100 dpi at 100% and 169 x 169 with a jpg quality factor of 8 results in a file size of 38,852 bytes. While a scan of the same chip at 50 dpi at 200% and 169 x 169 also with a jpg quality factor of 8 results in a file size of 38,794 bytes (or a file size difference of 58 bytes)

I hope this helps...

Dick