Scanning Photos for a Photo Book

[countrykid]

I need to scan loys of old photos to create a photobook. I bought the scanner, Cannon 4400F several months ago, but have only just started to use it. Can anyone advise about what is the best resolution to use.
The scanner has lots of options and allows scanning at various resolution settings, depending on what the scanned item is to be used for - viewing on screen or printing out, but I don't know how this compares to making a photbook.
The instructions talk of "output resoltion" and also of "scanning resolution" for example output res 300dpi has scanning res of 1200dpi and the file resulting size is 6.5mb. My scanner instructions talk more about dots per inch (DPI) rather than pixels. I will be using a site like Truprint to get the book made. I have emailed them, but the automated reply was a waste of time. Any help is appreciated.

[pingu748]

approx 200 dpi output for printing is sufficient .. 72 dpi is suitable for web publication .. but the higher the res the better the quality .. but also the bigger the file size .. 200 will be fine

[countrykid]

Many thanks pingu748

[jaydah]

dpi & pixels are print density quality. The lower the number the less dots/pixels per inch = less memory. If photos are for viewing then quality isn't as important as for printing. The bigger the file (dpi) the longer it takes to upload/download.

Huge ?mb photos attached to emails can be a bore to download when the receiver is just viewing & not wanting to print.

[woofgang]

I do digital scrapbooking and the standard for that is 300 dpi. Yes the files are big. If you are going to improve the photos in an editing program then after you have opened the jpeg, save the photo in the programs own format while you are editing, only saving the finished result as a jpeg. This is because everytime you resave a jpeg you lose some picture quality.

[countrykid]

Thanks jaydah and woofgang. I'm learning! I guess I may be looking into things too deeply, rather than doing what most people might do, and just switch on and go. 300dpi is one of the suggested sizes in the instructions, so I'll go with that after reading woofgangs answer. Cheers to all