How to scan 35mm slides, scanning 35mm negatives and scanning photos.

Converting your older photos, 35mm slides and 35mm negatives into digital images can be confusing and results will vary based on the scanner you use, the settings you use and the condition of the film. Below are some tips for how to convert 35mm slides, negatives and photo prints into digital images. The primary things to discuss are scanning resolution, scanner settings, and file saving and handling.
Scanning resolution is expressed in terms of dots per inch or dpi and is sometimes also referred to as pixels per inch or ppi but these two terms mean essentially the same thing. This is a count of how many pixels are created per linear inch of film or photo scanned. A one inch by one inch piece of negative film scanned at 300 dpi will result in an image that is 300x300 pixels. If you multiply those two numbers (the height in pixels multiplied by the width in pixels) this gives you the total number of pixels in the entire image, which in this case would be 90,000 pixels. This may sound like alot but 300x300 is a very small image by professional imaging standards. A one megapixel digital camera, which you will find on many cell phone cameras, creates an image that has 1,000,000 pixels. One million pixels is one megapixel.
How much resolution do you need? For scanning 35mm slides and for scanning 35mm negatives the resolution must be higher than for scanning photographs. This is because a 35mm slide is smaller than a 4x6 photo. A 35mm slide has a film area of about 1 inch high and 1.4 inches wide. So if you scan a 35mm slide at 100 dpi the resulting image would be 100x140 pixels. However, if you scanned a 4x6 photo at 100 dpi the resulting image would be 400x600 pixels. The same dpi will result in two different size images because the material being scanned are different sizes. Therefore, your resolution needs to be higher when you are doing 35mm slide scanning and 35mm negative scanning and it can be lower when you are scanning photos, especially when you are scanning larger photos.
The first step in figuring out how much resolution you need is to determine what you might want to do with these images. You should aim for 300 dpi at the maximum size that you think that you will want to print your scanned image. Translation - if you want to print an 8x10 then you need 300 dots per inch at 8 inches by 10 inches so you would need 2400x3000 in your final image. If you are scanning 35mm slides you would need to scan at about 3000 dpi in order to acheive this size. If you are scanning 35mm negatives the dpi requirement would be the same since the film is the same size. If you are scanning photos you have think about how big the photo is. Obviously, if you are scanning an 8x10 photo and you want to be able to print an 8x10 photo at 300 dpi then you can simply scan the photo at 300 dpi. If you are scanning a 4x6 and want to be able to print an 8x10 at 300 dpi then you need to scan it at around 600 dpi. It may seem confusing and daunting but the math is simple. You multiply the desired print size (8x10) by the ideal printing dpi (300) and this gives you your required image size in actual pixels (2400x3000). Then divide the lower number by the shorter side of the item you are scanning, for example we would divide 2400 by 4 because we are scanning a 4x6 and want to print an 8x10. This gives us the minimum scanning dpi of 600. You may have noticed that if you scan a 4x6 photo at 600 dpi your image will be 2400x3600 but an 8x10 at 300 dpi is 2400x3000. All of the standard print sizes (3x5, 4x6, 5x7, 8x10) do not have a standardized aspect ratio. This means that an 8x10 is more square than a 4x6 and you will have to crop some of the image off in order to fit it to an 8x10. Because you might print a slightly cropped image at your target size it is nice to scan your images with a little more resolution than you really need according the just the mathematics. If your math dictates that you need at least 2000 dpi while scanning 35mm slides you might want to scan your 35mm slides at 2500 dpi instead.
Scanner settings will vary from one model of scanner to another but they all have some things in common. Type of scanning: With dedicated film scanners (not flatbed scanners) you only have to specify whether you are scanning 35mm slides (positives) or scanning 35mm negatives, and whether they are color or black and white. Flatbed scanners are made to scan photos and pages. Many flatbed scanners are all-in-one scanners that can scan photos and pages and also scan slides and film, sometimes with an adapter of some type that came with your scanner. If you are scanning with a flatbed that can also scan negatives and 35mm slides you need to specify in the settings whether you are scanning 35mm slides, scanning 35mm negatives, or scanning photos and pages. Scanning photos and pages may be listed in your settings as "reflective" scanning. This is because instead of passing light through and reading it from the other side (as is done in 35mm slide scanning) your scanner is reflecting light off the photo and reading the returning light.You will also need to set your resolution to the appropriate resolution for your scanning needs. Refer to the above discussion of scanning resolution for details but for average consumer use you can just remember that when scanning 35mm slides you want to use at least 2000 dpi, when scanning 35mm negatives you want to use at least 2000 dpi, and when scanning photos 4x6's should be scanned at about 600 dpi and 8x10's can be scanned at about 300 dpi. Increase dpi above these recommendations if you want to print large prints from your scanning but be careful not to increase too much. Some scanners will allow you to scan at extremely high resolutions up to 12000 dpi. If you scanned a 4x6 at 12000 dpi your computer would likely not be able to view the image because the file size would be outrageous. In scanning 35mm slides, or scanning photos, there is such a thing as too much resolution. Your scanner came with some scanner drivers and software package. It likely has some automatic color enhancement tool. Use this tool on a case by case basis only. Some scanned images look okay with computer driven color correction but because the computer driven color correction is not human and can not identify the things in the picture it sometimes results in bad coloring and the original non-color enhanced scan would have been better. The way automatic color correction works is by examining the full range of colors in a picture and then it uses an algorithm to map that color range to a fuller range of colors. This works for images that have some red tint and for images that have a wide range of colors but if you have a photo of an orange sunset it will try to impose a larger range of colors on that image than really should be there and your red and orange sunset will end up with some unnatural colors. We encourage using Photoshop or other photo editing software to manually correct the colors. If you are using photoshop you may want to use the import function to scan your slides instead of using the factory software that came with your scanner.
JPEG, Tiff or PSD? File Saving is another important detail of 35mm slide scanning, 35mm negative scanning, and photo scanning. Jpeg is the most common and widely used type of image file. This type of image file saves disk space because it is a compressed file type. This has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that you can fit more photos in less disk space on your computer. The disadvantage is that in compression there is some very slight information loss in the saving process. Tiff files and PSD files do not compress the file data at all so they have much larger files sizes but there is no compression damage done from saving and resaving the images. The amount of damage done to a jpeg image file by saving it once or twice is not noticeable visually. However, saving and resaving the images over and over again will cause enough compression damage that there will be noticeable changes done to the image. For this reason, if you are going to be editing an image in Photoshop and will be editing it a little at a time, resaving it and doing more later, you should first save the file as a PSD or Tiff so that your repeated saves will not damage the image. You should also have two folders of your scanned images. Once you have done your 35mm slide scanning, 35mm negative scanning and/or your photo scanning, you should copy those files to two folders. Label one folder with the name Original Scans or something similar and label your other folder with the name Pictures or you can use the My Pictures folder on your computer. Leave the folder with the original scans alone and edit and use the images from the other folder. This way if you crop too tightly or don't like the way an edit worked out you can always go back to the originals.
If you have a small number of 35mm slides, 35mm negatives or photographs these tips can help you to convert your 35mm slides, negatives and photos into digital images that you can access as easily as you do your digital camera images. If you have a larger collection you may consider sending them to DiscountDigitalArt.com for fast, reliable, high quality scanning. We use the best scanning equipment and photoshop artists to create the best results from 35mm slide scanning, 35mm negative scanning, and photo scanning. In addition to the steps mentioned our scan technicians check each 35mm slide for dust and fibers and we clean them as needed with safe compressed air, no chemicals, brushes or cloth touches your slide film. 35mm slide scanning is tedious time consuming work so if your collection is larger than about 50 slides you will probably want to reign in your do-it-yourself instincts and send them to us for processing rather than lose several full weekends sitting in front of your computer.
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