What does interpolated resolution mean?
It s a fancy way of saying faking it. Let s say a scanner is capable of scanning 300 pixels per linear inch. Wouldn t it be great if you could say it s capable of producing 1200 interpolated pixels per inch? Well, that s what scanner makers do! They take the 300 ppi data, quadruple it and then mathematically smooth it all out. No information is added to the original scan, but the image can (depending on the sophistication of the software algorithms used) look much better nonetheless since jagged aliasing lines can often be minimized. Does it look as good as a true 1200 ppi scan? Nope. Could you take your 300 ppi scan and enlarge it in Photoshop using Photoshop s bicubic interpolation software and get pretty well the same results? Yep.
