Hello Sheila,
I’ve scanned many thousands of items over the years but never once have I scanned them directly into a photo editing program. I scan them into a folder. If I am working on photographs I never scan them one at a time and work on them one at a time. I scan them by the hundreds into a folder and then when I want to work on them I open one or whatever number using a photo editing program. Your scanner software should have options of which program if any you wish to use and it should also have an option of scanning it into a folder which you can create for the purpose. You can do some trial runs to make sure that what is coming from the scanner has the right number of pixels etc and looks exactly right.
I wouldn’t recommend scanning as a jpg if only because you will regret it later. Scan as a tiff. If the file sizes are too large you may be scanning at too high a resolution. If you’re scanning old photographs 300 dpi is the absolute minimum and you could go higher but possibly no higher than 400 unless it is something special or something of very small size but very high image quality. You can’t improve a box brownie quality photo by scanning it at extra high resolutions just as you shouldn’t insult a 19th century cabinet photo taken by professional equipment on a full size negative by scanning it at 200 dpi. If you need to print a particular photo a bit larger than the original size and it is of good quality it may be advantageous to scan at a slightly higher resolution.
Keep the original scan unchanged and work on a copy. Save that copy with your restoration work in its original tif format. If you don’t you will regret it later, take it from me, I know, been there, done that. You can run off a batch of copies in jpg format any time you later need them using a program like Irfanview. If you start running out of hard drive space buy more or transfer your original scans onto high quality CDs or DVDs and access them from there.
The trouble with claims by inkjet manufacturers about the durability of photographs printed at home using their particular brand of ink is that it’s all theoretical. The only way that you will ever know how they will look in ten, twenty or thirty years is by looking at them after that period of time has expired. Any sort of guarantee from these companies is for all practical purposes completely worthless. How would they honour such a guarantee, even if they were still around after ten or twenty years let alone two hundred? How do they replace a photo of granny.
Why are inkjet ink producers making all these claims about durability? Simply because inkjets have had a bad reputation as far as durability is concerned. No other industry on the planet would ever feel the need to claim a 200 year product life for which they could never be held accountable. We all know how long old black and white photographs can last. If you keep them out of the sun the image can last almost forever. The next big advance in photography was colour and that was a disaster as far as durability was concerned. The best preserved of the old colour variety are actually black and white photos that were professionally hand coloured.
Printing your own colour photographs can be very expensive and it can be very much cheaper to have them done at a shop. Which are the most durable, the ones printed at home or the ones done at the shop? Your guess is as good as mine. Don’t spend too much on them because in reality they are an unknown quantity. That said it can be very satisfying to see a photo you’ve worked on yourself come out your own printer.
The most precious thing is the original photograph, the original digital scan and the separate copy you’ve spent all your time on. The one you’ve worked on you may decide later needs a bit more attention, or maybe you’ll think that a particular part of it, say a face, can be done better now that you have more experience. You can just copy the face area from the original scan onto your working version and work on just that little bit. That’s bound to happen and if you only have a jpg then you’re in trouble as far as quality and flexibility is concerned.
The original photograph will continue to deteriorate unless looked after carefully. The scanned and restored images will never deteriorate. They will either be absolutely as perfect as the day they were born or not be there at all. In other words if you protect and backup the data you will be able to print them again in 10 years time or whatever on the very latest of printers with the very latest of inks with the very latest of guarantees and compare them side by side with the 2008 version to see how they stack up.
And if you are scanning very old photographs remember that they tend to be dusty and to lose bits of themselves. Make sure that you keep the scanner glass dust and fragment free. And scan them in colour. There’s some good scanning info here
http://www.scantips.com/
Hope all that helps,
Alan
When I scanned my photos to the Paint Shop Pro X1 program, I cannot enlarge them without a great deal of pixelation. 
I have set the scanning to 600dpi.
