Photo scanning will not produce as good a result as scanning from the original Negative or Transparency that a print has been made from. Often this is not possible and only the photograph or print as it’s sometimes referred to is available.
Often old photographs were made from large 5″ x 4″ negatives and then prints were made on a 1:1 scale producing a 5″ x 4″ photograph. These type of larger format negatives would often be used by studios and rarely would the home family photographer have negatives larger than 120 medium format.
One instance where you will only have a print and no negative exists is a Polaroid instant photograph, you can normally identify these prints as they have one thick border and three thinner borders, and the image will be no larger than 3.1″ x 3.1″ in size.
