Sometimes you find yourself in a situation when you have to scan paper prints, negatives or slides and store them as digital photos on your computer. Although the reason for doing that can vary there are some common considerations to scanning paper prints. In this article we will go over some of them and try to make your scanning experience easier.

There are three types of prints that you might be scanning:

Paper prints: the most common, usually at sizes like 4X6 and 5X7.

Negatives: also known simply as film. This is the processed film usually 35mm from which paper prints are made.

Slides: very similar to negatives used for projecting photos on a large screen.

Scanning paper photos prints.

Photo paper prints are easy to scan. You can choose to scan them yourself at home (purchasing a scanner that can do the job is usually cheap and costs less than $100.
There are pros and cons to both scanning at home and using a professional service. If you have a small number of photos scanning at home is easier. If you have plenty of photos using a service might be easier but you can end up spending more money.

When scanning at home consider the following:

Resolution: the resolution of a scan is measured by the number of dots per inch that the scanner can produce. Most scanners can scan at 1200 DPI or more. Usually the scanner can be set to scan at different resolutions. The higher the resolution the slower the scan and the bigger the photo file size will be. For most paper prints scanning at 300 to 600 DPI is enough but you can experiment scanning at higher resolutions if you feel it provides better results.

Speed: If you have a small number of photos speed is not an issue. If you have hundreds or more of photos scanning speed becomes important. To get fast scans you would have to scan at the lowest resolution possible that results in good enough scans – for most paper prints 300 to 600 DPI is enough.. Also if you’re going to buy a scanner check the scanning speed (usually measured in the number of scans per minute make sure that you check the speed at the DPI you’re going to use).

Photo feeding: if you only have a small number of photos this is not an issue. If you have many photos make sure that the scanner you buy allows fast and easy loading of photos. Some higher-end scanners will let you load a stack of photos and will automatically feed and scan them for you. These scanners are the right choice if you are planning on scanning hundreds or more photos.

Scanning negatives and slides

Scanning negatives and slides is harder than scanning paper prints. In most cases it is easier and maybe cheaper to invest in a usb slide scanner. If you want to scan at home your standard flat scanner will not be good enough. In most cases you will need to spend money on purchasing a film/slides scanner. Those scanners are more expensive than the flat paper scanners. Negatives and slides are small high resolution sources and thus require scanning at higher DPI than paper prints. In most cases 2400DPI or higher should be used.

The considerations for scanning negatives and slides are similar to scanning paper prints. If you need to scan just a few negatives or slides speed and ease are not important but if you’re going to scan hundreds or more you should spend more money on scanners that can feed the negatives or slides automatically or can just load a roll of film and scan it.

About forty years ago, 35mm slides were a favored way to chronicle vacations and special family events. Businesses used slide presentations for instructional and sales purposes. Today, 35mm slide shows have become almost obsolete. Not many people take the time to bring a slide projector out of its storage area, set up their 35mm slides in the projector’s carousel, and then show the slides on a screen. If you’re one of the many people with boxes and cartons of old slides that have accumulated in closets and drawers, you might want to try scanning your 35mm slides. This will free up storage space and give you a quick and easy way to present your old pictures. Scanning 35mm slides will give you high quality pictures and even allows you to make additional prints.

One of the first things you need to do before you begin your project of scanning 35mm slides is to select the slides that you really want to keep. Most people have a very difficult time getting rid of photographs, and this is true of slides, too. Since you’ll be spending both time and money to scan your slides, you’ll need to decide if you really need to keep all of them. Choose the best slides and the ones that have the most sentimental value for you, and you’ll end up with a great collection of pictures to view and share with family and friends.

Scanning 35mm slides is something you can do at home. There are many different models of 35mm slide scanners, ranging in prices from under $100 to well over $1,000. If you’re short on time, consider using a professional photography service for scanning 35mm slides. You can probably find a local photography business or you can use an online photography service. Compare costs of the various businesses, but also consider the reputation and services offered.

If you decide to try your hand at scanning 35mm slides at home, look for a scanner that fits your budget and provides features that you need. Some scanners only allow you to view the scanned prints from the scanner, and other models have software that lets you scan your 35mm slides to your computer and then transfer them to a CD or DVD. You can then view your slides at any time with a computer or DVD player and television. This means you will need much less storage space for your slides, and you can easily carry your slides and show them anywhere. Make sure the scanner software is easy to learn and use.

One of the great things about scanning 35mm slides is that your pictures can be enhanced. You or the photography service professionals can crop the pictures to include only what you want to see, and the colors and brightness of the pictures can be adjusted. Debris that can’t be cleared from the slides and scratches are not a problem. Scanner software fills in the blemished areas with color for a professional-grade picture. No one will suspect that the slide’s image was ever less than perfect!

There are several ways to scan slides to turn them into digital photos. Many people remember the small square cardboard cut-outs containing negatives that would be popped into a tray at family gatherings, and with some light and a projector screen (or blank wall) people could reminisce over photos that were larger than life. Today, slide screens have given way to large screen televisions and computer screens. The slide has been rendered all but obsolete, but how do people save the pictures on the slides and keep them viewable? The answer is simple-scan them. These are some of the different ways to turn slides into great, state-of-the-art digital pictures.

Scanning Slides: The Scanner

One of the easiest ways to scan slides is to use a scanner with a special attachment. The attachment is like a mirror box, which diverts light around to the back of the slide so that the scanner picks up transmitted light instead of reflected light. However, this method does not produce the best results; scanned pictures can look soft, unrefined, too dark, and often appear with white spots all over them, which is actually just dust that is being lit up. Some scanner models have special transparency adapters that can be bought to scan images from negatives and slides. These can be very pricy, though, averaging about $1800.00 for a decent one.

Many people claim that the image results using the adapter are no better than the scanner that uses the mirror box attachment. One advantage of the transparency adapter, however, is that an entire large image can be scanned all at once, making it easier to restore old photos than it would be to piece several scans together and then start the restoring process.

Scanning Slides: The Digital Camera

It makes sense to use a camera to get a picture of a picture. However, although this can be a simple way to get results, it often proves to turn out some pretty disappointing photos. Missing hues, colors, highlights, effects, and downright blurry, fuzzy images are very common. Devices exist that can link your camera and a slide projector so that when a projector changes display images, the camera is set up to snap a picture of it. These can be frustrating, and the obvious downfall is that you must have a working slide projector to use the method. Other devices are on the market that attach right to the camera and hold a slide to it; however, you can only insert and deal with one slide at a time, and the devices are usually specific to a certain make and model of camera.

Scanning Slides: The Professional Way at Home

If you are thinking about those boxes of slides stuffed in the basement from your 1973 trip to see the worlds largest coconut and want to turn them into digital pictures, do yourself a great favor and buy yourself a usb slide scanner that can scan the slides for you. You will be glad that you did when Aunt Mavis’ portrait isnt restricted to appearing on a slide screen anymore and has gone digital for all the world to see.

One of the questions that I am quite often asked is the following:

Which is better to scan, film negatives or prints?

It is always best to scan the original negatives, provided that they are in good shape and the colors have not faded. The reasons for this are explained below.

To begin with, you have to realize that a photograph is merely a copy of the original, processed negative. In most cases, a copy is never as good as the original. Typically, photographs are printed out at 240-300 dpi when done at your local photo lab. That means that a 4×6 print is, at most, 1200×1800 dpi. This is why prints are typically scanned at 300 dpi as scanning at a higher resolution does not bring out any further detail other than what is on the original print. The only time that scanning a photograph at 600 dpi, or greater, would be if the original was either very small or if it is going to be edited at a later date.

The size of a typical 35mm negative is 24mm x 36mm or, roughly, 1.0in x 1.5in. This means that the film was essentially scanned at 1200 dpi in order to produce the 4×6 print in the above example.

Most 35mm film negatives are capable of being scanned at up to 4000 dpi. This is especially true for the slower speed films (100, 200). When scanning negatives the general rule of thumb is the higher the resolution, the greater the detail.

For example, a negative scanned at a lower resolution of 2000 dpi may not be able to clearly display the time on a clock in the background or the fine print on a paper or sign when the photograph is blown up. By simply rescanning the same image at 4000 dpi you are providing 4x the resolution of the original scan. This type of resolution can display these details much more easily and clearly, especially when a larger print is be made.

Another reason for choosing to scan the film negatives instead of the photographic print is that the original film contains much more contrast and detail as compared to a photographic print. This is because prints tend to fade over time due to exposure to sunlight, etc. Negatives, if they have been stored in a dry place, are much more immune to this behavior.

Most of the people are confused between what to scan? Negative or Photos? Photos are just a copy of original negative. An original film negative provides you better detail and contrast. So scanning originals gives you better result.

The simple process of developing negatives is to invert colors in the image removing the orange shed from the negative. You can do it automatically with the help of scanning film negatives. It helps you to ease your work. You can get various benefit of scanning film negatives. Before that we move to benefits, let’s check out some important points. These concepts help you to have good scanned images.

•    There is a simple rule that ‘higher the resolution, better the detail’. You can’t scan your print image with higher result. It doesn’t provide you better result. You can get the detail information by scanning negatives at higher resolution.

•    “User the original”, it is wise that use only original for scanning. Negative film contains more contrast and detail compared to images/photo. Because of exposure, sunlight and other reasons, photos lighten over time. If negative are placed at dry and safe place, it doesn’t get affected by such complexity.

•    For better result just use a film or usb slide scanner. A regular scanner can’t offer you a result that film scanner offers. You can’t scan at higher resolution in regular scanner. This will leads to poor quality of scanned photo. You can scan film negative at higher quality with film scanner.

Benefits of scanning film negatives are:

•    Scanned image is highly immune from sunlight and environmental changes which affect paper images.

•    You can get organize the photos very easily. Today’s software can help you to organize photos by date, size or special tags. This helps you to find the picture very easily.

•    You can share the image with family and friends. Scanning make it easier for you to share.

•    You can edit the digital image as per your requirements. You can resize and modify the photo as you want.

•    You can also do processing over scanned photo. You can give the better look to your photo. You can correct color, remove scratches and dust, crop, rotate and sharpen in digital image.

An automated scanning system helps you to save time. It also helps you to get a high quality output after scanning film negatives.

The concept of photo negatives can be confusing. You see them in film developing centers, cameras, and photo envelopes, but you may not understand them. So what exactly are photographic negatives and why are they used? Hopefully this article will shed some light on the subject, so to speak.

A photo negative image is an exact copy of a normal image, but the colors and tones are reversed. I’m sure you’ve seen the reddish film strips that come with developed photos in envelopes. Those are negatives. If you want more copies of your photos you take them from the negatives. Look at them and you’ll notice that the bright and dark tones are reversed and the colors are opposite as well. What should be blue is yellow, what should be purple is green, and so on (based on the Red Green Blue color model).

Negative images are created by the film’s chemical reaction to light. The unexposed chemicals wash away and the negatives become opaque, or seen through. To make a copy of a photograph from a negative, another negative is made off of that, actually creating a positive. This might remind you of algebra, where two negative numbers multiplied by each other become a positive. This is considered the two step process in photography. There are other processes such as positive, or slide, but the negative is the most common chemical based process.

The most common color negative film is called C-41. The negative is made up of different colored emulsions layered onto an acetate or polyester base. Each layer is sensitive to certain colors and underneath each layer are collodial silver or dye filters. When exposed each filter removes light and exposes the layer beneath it. When developed, the dye couplers inside of each emulsion layer produce the colors.

So why still use photo negatives when we now have scanners? Convenience and quality. Typically when you scan an image you’ll lose detail, whereas with the negatives, you have entire original albums intact in a small envelope. If you have photograph negatives lying around that you’d like prints of, your best bet is to scan them into your computer using a usb slide scanner and then simply print out as many copies as you want. You can scan negatives yourself though if you own a properly equipped digital camera or photo scanner. Most regular flatbed scanners won’t do this, but with a fluorescent lamp and a high resolution scan you can manage it. Of course with the popularity of digital cameras photograph negatives are needed less and less. But it’s still good to understand the basics of photo negatives.

If you have boxes of slides stacked on closet shelves in your home, you’re not alone. Preserving photographs on slides was very popular at one time. With a slide projector and a screen or blank wall, you were all set to entertain family and friends for hours with pictures of your latest family excursions or events. Over time, your collection of slides grew, and you may have inherited even more slides from other family members. If you know where your slide projector is, there is a good chance that it’s broken or that you just can’t find the time to bring it out and set up the slide carousel for an hour or two of reminiscing. If you don’t want to lose the treasured memories contained in your slides but find keeping your slides and projector a nuisance, consider scanning your slides. Here are some of the reasons you might find this to be the perfect solution for you.

Scanning slides is easy. You can buy your own slide scanner and complete this project in your spare time. Others in your family can help, too, which will make the scanning process more fun and less time consuming. Slide scanners are available in stores and online in a wide range of prices.

You can choose to have a professional photography service scan your slides. This is a good option for those with a limited amount of spare time or those that don’t want to invest in a slide scanner. Professional photography services can usually return your slides within a week or two, and they guarantee their work. You might want to scan some of the slides yourself and send some of them to a photography service.

You can easily carry your photographs with you. When you scan your slides, they can be transferred to CD’s or DVD’s. You’ll be able to carry hundreds of pictures on a few thin, lightweight disks. If you want to take them to view somewhere else, it won’t be a problem.

You can keep your pictures organized any way you like. Your slides might be grouped together according to the year they were taken, the locations, the people in the photographs, or some other categorization. If you own a large collection of slides, you know how easy it is to misplace a slide or drop a box of them, leading to a jumbled mess. When you scan your slides, you can choose which photographs go on each CD or DVD. You can label the disks, making it easy for you to locate favorite shots.

You can improve the quality of your photographs. Slides tend to collect dust and other particles, and they can be accidently scratched. The color on slides will fade over time. Scanning slides enables you to enhance the quality of the photograph by adding color to the photographs and covering up any scratches or other marks on the slides. You can also crop the photographs to focus more on the subjects in the pictures and exclude unnecessary background areas.