I've just started scanning negatives, slides, and prints for retouching in PE. I think I might be scanning for overkill, maybe I'm overshooting how big an image I need to work with. My issue is that I scan at a high dpi rate, and this results in elephant sized 45 MB (from 8x10 print) to 147 MB (from negative) tiff images. Sure, my 8x10 prints come out looking great - no visible pixelation or jpg style "chunking" like some prints I've cranked out using other people's files.

What is a good dpi to go for so I don't have these huge files that take forever to load up, and are a bear to store, but still give what looks like a photograph instead of something that yells "digital image"? If huge files are just the nature of the beast, I'm ok with that, but if I can make life easier on my storage, why not?

Scanner = Epson 2450 Photo, printer = Epson 2200. I print some color, but mainly b/w. Thanks.