cropping and resizing old photos

hi everyone.
hope someone can help with my queery.
after a few years of tinkering with a bit of basic photo editing using my 3 year old version of ms Pictur It 7.0, im ready to step up to some more serious stuff like restoring about 500 old family photos i inherited from my parents (circa 1915 to 1965)
i initially bought the new ms PhotoShop picture it premium 10, thinking cos i liked the old version, this might suffice, anyway, as it turned out it was missing a few of the features that the older version 7.0 had, so i took the plunge and got a copy of Photoshop Elements 3.0 which appears to be a much better program like all the reviews say it is.

all the old photos (some sepia, some b&w) varied in size from the old 2"x2" up to some 6"x4" and others a bit bigger, and i scanned them all at 300dpi scan resolution and 75dpi output resolution.
i now need to do some restoration work and RESIZE the photos in elements using the "image>resize>image size" section and resizing using the resolution setting to increase the pixel size of the photos.

QUESTION, do i resize the photos first, saving them as a new seperate file from the original, then do the touch-ups and restoration work after i have resized, or do i do the restorations first and save them as new files, then resize the finished photos after all the work has been done.

my thoughts were that i should RESIZE first then do the restoration work, saving each step as i go so as not to mess it up and have to start again.
some of the photos, as small as they are, have wasted bits on them i can crop out like lots of sky or scenery etc, do i leave the photos as they are and do the repairs and resizing on the whole photo, then do the cropping and additional resizing at the time i want to print them.

i hope i have made sense, maybe not, but if i was able to get to a photo editing school or similar i would take lessons, but sadly im not able to and learning this stuff on my own is fun and quite a challenge but just need a bit of advice.

thanks in advance for your thoughts (if any) much appreciated.....GLEN

>> QUESTION, do i resize the photos first, saving them as a new seperate file from the original, then do the touch-ups and restoration work after i have resized

yes, that's a good plan.


>> my thoughts were that i should RESIZE first then do the restoration work, saving each step as i go so as not to mess it up and have to start again.

Yes, definitely save intermediate steps - particularly if you're new to using Photohsop.


>> some of the photos, as small as they are, have wasted bits on them i can crop out like lots of sky or scenery etc, do i leave the photos as they are and do the repairs and resizing on the whole photo, then do the cropping and additional resizing at the time i want to print them

That is an interesting point.
What do you want to do, restore the original photos?
Or do you want to create sometihng different from them by cropping?
Perhaps do both?

Some people want to clean up the original photograph, and leave it as composed by their parents.
Others want to improve them, straightening horizons, cropping off sky or cloning out things.
It's a really difficult personal choice.

hi there again.
i want to do a variety of things but mostly all i need to do is restore the old photos as much as i can, sharpening up, adjusting colour,contrast, saturation, hue and removing blemishes that have appeared over the years.
i dont want to over kill them as they are old photos (some sepia) and i just need to clean them up and some i need to crop out a lot of sky or scenery that isnt needed.
here are 3 examples of original photo i scanned at 300dpi, with output res at screen 75dpi.
the original scanned sizes were approx 950x650 @75dpi res @ 12"x8" @ 110kb.

i have sinse resized them in PS Elements 3.0 to approx 3700x2500 @300dpi @ 12"x8" @ 2.3mb each and will work on them at those sizes, maybe crop them a bit etc.

im absolutely loving PS Elements 3.0 but i admit i didnt like it to start with cos i was used to uing MS Picture It 7.0 then i got version 10 which lost a few features that 7.0 had, and elements stacks up a whole lot better than all of them and i see now why people rave about elements so much.

anyway, thanks for your input and will plug away.....GLEN