If you are like the average family, you probably have a box of old photographs in your basement or attic that someone passed on to you. If you continue to store the photographs in that old box, they may not still be around when you are ready to pass them on to your own children. Old photos are delicate and require special storage if they are going to stay preserved for several generations.
Box Storage
Storing your photos in a box is not necessarily bad, but you need to do it properly. Purchase a box that is intended for storing old photos. Look for one that is “acid free.” Then, go through the photos and remove any tape, staples, or paperclips from them, as these will damage them over time.
As you remove these damaging items from your photos, take the time to label the pictures if they are not labeled. Write the person’s name and the age they were or the year the picture was taken. You may know exactly who is in the picture, but that does not mean your children will remember when they are adults and are inheriting the box from you. However, do not use a ballpoint pen to do this labeling. Purchase a photo safe pen so that the ink will not bleed through the picture and damage it.
Album Storage
Storing your photos in albums is a slightly better option. It makes it easier to find a photo when it is needed, and it also helps you sort through the pictures. Fancy, artistic scrapbooks are great, but not necessary if you need to get the photos stored quickly.
Again, when choosing an album for your photos, make sure it is acid free. If your pictures are already in an old album, take them out. Old albums are full of glue, paper, and plastic that are damaging to pictures. Purchase a modern, acid and lignin free album to store your pictures in. Only use glues or pens that are photo safe.
Digital Storage
Boxes and albums are great, but they do create a few problems. First, they take up space to store. If you have a lot of old photos, this can become problematic. Also, you can only pass the photos on to one person with this storage option. Finally, even with the most careful preservation methods, photographs will fade with time or get damaged as they are handled.
The best way to archive old photographs is to turn them into a digital file. Photo scanning companies can take those old pictures, scan them on high resolution photo scanners, and then give you a CD full of your family memories. You will also still get the picture back, so you can make albums or display them in frames while still having an archival image to pass on to the next generation.
With digital storage, you also have the opportunity to fix some of the flaws in the picture, such as a tear or worn area, by taking advantage of restoration and enhancement options. Digital storage for old photos is the best solution, because it offers the ability to preserve old photos indefinitely, share them online, and send copies to anyone who wants them, all at an affordable price.
With the digital age fully upon us, most everyone still has boxes and boxes full of photos of our family and childhood memories stored away in a closet somewhere; typically, the entire 20th century! These photos deserve to see the light of day again and be appreciated, but many of us wait until it is too late to take care of these priceless prints. You say you already have a scanner? And how’s that going? Here are ten reasons why you need to scan your photos today.
10. You can restore your photo once it is digital. Restoration can make your old faded and scratched pictures look brand new again.
9. You can resize your images. Do you have a big family picture that you wish was a lot smaller so you can carry it in your wallet? Once your photo is scanned, you can shrink down the photo with ease.
8. Scan photos for the ones you love as a gift. How many times were you stumped during a gift giving holiday to try and figure out what to get that special someone? Scanning their photos is a unique and caring gift to provide your loved ones. Every time they look at a scanned picture, they’ll remember how thoughtful you were.
7. Organizing photos is easy once you have your photos scanned. You can organize them chronologically, by person, place or event.
6. Scanapix makes it easy to do. You no longer have to sit in front of a scanner and spend two or three minutes scanning, straightening and cropping each one. Just gather them together and send them over so we can do all the work and you can have all the fun with your “new” digital images. Once your photo is scanned, you can shrink down the photo with ease.
5. Its fun to revisit your photos. You need to gather them together to get scanned anyway.
4. Consolidate all your photos. All your scanned photos reside on your computer.
3. Share your photos with your friends and family. A hard copy photo can only be shared with people that come into physical contact with it. Once you make your photos digital, you can email them, post them on blogs or use them for whatever social networking site you are into. If a special occasion is coming up, you can quickly and easily make a custom slide show for your guests.
2. Save your photos from the effects of time. Since photos are all chemical based, they will fade in color and deteriorate. Plus, they’re always at risk of physical loss due to fire, water damage, bugs and such.
1. You can be at peace knowing your photo legacy is forever stored away safely. You no longer have to worry about losing photos or some natural disaster. Once they are digitized, you keep them on a hard drive where you have instant access to them for when you need them. Keep multiple DVDs stored in more than one location, insuring your family collection’s safety.
Scanners are great tools for converting images from prints, negatives, and slides into a digital form for the purposes of storage, editing, and sharing via the internet or to produce actual prints. The quality of the images from a scanner depends in large part upon resolution. Some scanners offer significantly higher resolution than others but most allow the user to adjust the resolution used for any given scan.
Because higher resolution means more detailed and higher quality images why would a user ever select to lower resolution? There are actually a couple of reasons why someone might decide to adjust the resolution downward when scanning.
One reason that the choice to use lower resolution would be considered is that higher resolution images contain more information. The downside of more information is that file sizes are much larger, requiring much more storage space. When storage space is limited, higher resolution images can be a drawback. Users must experiment to determine what level of quality they are willing to accept in order to preserve memory.
In addition to the increased storage needs, the larger file size of high resolution images creates a second drawback. Such images are slower to scan, manipulate, and download. A user may not wish to spend exorbitant amounts of time dealing with larger file sizes and those receiving or waiting for a web page to open that contains such files may become impatient with the process as well. Again, the user has to determine how much image quality they are willing to sacrifice to get smaller files that save time.
Determining what resolution to use when scanning can depend on a number of things: the type of material being scanned, the quality of the image, and how the resulting file will be used.
Slides and negatives require a higher resolution than a print. Because they start off quite small, they will likely be enlarged for viewing purposes. When any image is enlarged, greater resolution is needed to maintain acceptable image quality. The number of pixels or bits of image information needed for the enlarged image to be of reasonable quality may need to be 2,000 or more.
If an image being scanned is a text document less information will be needed to create a clear image and, indeed, a resolution of only 100 should be sufficient. If the image scanned is a picture that will be shared only via computer, then a resolution of 100 or so may still be quite acceptable as the resolution at which a computer screen is able to display is generally limited. However, if that same image will be printed, resolution will need to be greater; perhaps 300 to obtain an acceptable image. Just as explained when scanning slides however, if a user chooses to enlarge that same image, greater resolution will be required to maintain quality. For instance, if a 4×6 print will be scanned and enlarged to a 10×15 print, then a resolution of at least 600 would be wise.
Clearly, scanning images at the highest resolution can create optimum image quality but when speed of scanning and downloading are important or storage space is limited, users are wise to consider adjusting resolution downward in situations where acceptable image quality is possible with lower settings. Some experimentation will be required to find the level of image quality that is acceptable to an individual user.
Scanning negatives and slides can seem a bit tricky, but it can be done with the right equipment and know how. First of all, negatives and slides can be scanned with a scanner, but you cannot just put a negative on the glass and push the button to scan.
The scanner you use has to be one with built in negative scanning ability. Usually, a scanner designed for paper documents wont have this feature, but some do. A good scanner that is suitable for scanning negatives will produce excellent quality scans quickly, and there are different models to choose from that can allow you to scan numerous negatives and slides at once.
Scanning Negatives: DPI and Resolution
To begin, since the image on a negative is so small, you will want to keep a high resolution so that you can enlarge the picture and still maintain good picture quality. A good rule of thumb is that for every doubling in size for the picture, maintain that same increase for your resolution. For example, to get a 4X6in print from a 4X6in scan, the recommended dpi setting is 300. To get an 8X11 from that same scan, double the dpi to 600, and so on.
Scanning Negatives: Files and Output Type
There are several different file formats for images that computers use. These are TIFF, JPEG, and BMP files, just to name a few. The best files for scanning negatives are TIFF files. TIFFs can be edited and saved easily, and without compression loss. However, TIFFs can be large files that take up much memory. Besides choosing a file format, Output Type is another variable to consider when scanning. The default output type is usually Millions of Colors which is the best for photos with lots of color. Grayscale is for black and white pictures. It is recommended, though, that you maintain the default setting for color output, because this maintains the highest picture quality, and photo enhancement software can easily take the color photo and put it in black and white for you.
A word of caution about storage space: Many people have found that file sizes can mount quickly with scanning, saving, and editing photos. Pay special attention to file sizes and how much space is available on a CD or disk that you are saving the pictures to. Try to see about how much space a picture file uses, multiply that by the number of files you are saving, and make sure you dont run out of space in the middle of creating your masterpieces!
Keeping these tips and other important points in mind will help you decipher the puzzle of scanning negatives. These tips will get you started on your way to turning your tiny negatives into meaningful photographs that you will treasure for years to come.
Those 35mm slides that you’ve been holding on to can now be digitally formatted with 35mm slide scanning. Most 35mm slides are in boxes stacked on shelves and closet floors. The owners don’t want to part with the slides, even though they haven’t brought them out to view in years. The slides hold memories and, in the case of businesses, important information. Improved techniques for 35mm slide scanning can help you preserve your photographs and illustrations on PC’s and DVD’s. You’ll be able to view them easily on any PC or television.
One of the best features of 35mm slide scanning is that now you’ll be able to print the slide images, email the images to friends or business associates, and include the images on digital videos or digital slide shows. Once your 35mm slides are converted to a digital format, you can download the images to your computer and organize, adjust, and transfer the images for any purpose. 35mm slide scanning allows you to quickly access your photographs, charts, and graphics for viewing or reference.
You can do your own 35mm slide scanning at your home or business. If you need certain slides to be scanned together, sort through the slides first and put them into groups. Some business presentations require slides to be scanned in a prescribed order. Keep in mind that you might have to work with different slide orientations (portrait or landscape), slide mount thickness, and film types when you group slides, and this could slow down your scanning process. While you are sorting through your slides, get rid of slides that you no longer need, are duplicates, or were never a good image to begin with. You don’t need to continue to keep slides that are of no value to you.
For good 35mm slide scanning, the slides need to be as clean as possible. Keeping slides clean is a never-ending process because they are dust magnets. It is also easy to scratch 35mm slides, and this can be a problem when you scan them. If your slides have a minimal amount of dust and scratches on them, your scanner may be able to take care of this. Many scanners have an infrared light used during 35mm slide scanning that passes through the film, but not the debris on the slide. The scanner software captures the dust and scratches and compensates for these by filling in the blank areas with colors that match the surrounding image. Fingerprints and oily films should be removed by a professional 35mm slide scanning service.
Do-it-yourself 35mm slide scanning can end up being an expensive and time-consuming project. You can encounter multiple problems, even with higher-end scanning equipment. If you are inexperienced at 35mm slide scanning or have hundreds of slides to scan, consider using a professional photography service. These services are equipped to handle every scanning problem imaginable, and their work is guaranteed. You can expect high quality digital images with high resolution, brighter colors, and no dust or scratch marks.
As you dig through a box of old wedding photos, you may come across the negatives from the event. When you open them, you will realize that they look quite different than the negatives you had from your older film camera. These negatives are much larger than the 35 mm negatives you are used to handling. This is because the wedding photographs were captured by a professional photographer on medium format film.
What Is Medium Format Film?
Photographic film comes in several sizes, but the three main ones are large format, medium format, and 35 mm. Medium format film is 56 mm in height, and the width varies depending on the type of camera used. Any film that is taller than 56 mm is considered large format. In contrast, the smaller 35 mm film is 35 mm in height. Interestingly, medium format film cartridges were first introduced for the amateur film market, but soon became the standard used by professionals, and even in the digital world of modern photography, medium format images are still quite popular among professional photographers.
Benefits of Medium Format Film
Why do professionals choose medium format film? Because the film itself is larger than a typical 35 mm negative, as much as six times larger depending on the camera used, much clearer enlargements can be produced. When 35 mm film is enlarged, it often has grain and blur due to great difference in size between the negative and the resulting image. Since the medium format negative is larger, there is less difference in size between the two, and the resulting image has a smoother gradation and does not show as much grain as a similar enlargement of a smaller negative. Since most professional photographers take images with the intention of enlarging them, medium format is the better film choice.
Getting Film Digitized
Even though medium format film carries a distinct advantage over 35 mm film, it does have a disadvantage in today’s market. The disadvantage is that medium format film is not a digital medium. The old negatives you have in a shoebox in your closet are difficult to share with friends because they are not digital. Professional photographers who use medium format film need a way to digitize the images in order to display them in a digital portfolio or on a website.
Medium format film can be scanned using specialized scanners designed to carefully handle these negatives and create a positive scanned image. The process begins with a careful cleaning of the negative to remove any stray dust or lint. Unmounted negatives are then placed into a glass film adapter that holds the image steady during scanning. Negatives that are mounted are loaded into a mounted film carrier. These negatives are scanned using high-resolution scanning equipment designed specifically for negatives. A typical flatbed scanner cannot accomplish this task and create a quality digital image as a result. Dust and scratch removal technology is essential to creating a clean digital image from a medium format negative.
Because medium format film is larger than 35 mm film, the scanned digital image will be more clear and crisp than the image that would be created by scanning a 35 mm negative. When larger film is combined with a high-resolution scanning equipped to handle medium format negatives, the resulting images are professional and perfect for creating a digital portfolio or simply preserving memories for a lifetime.
About thirty-five to forty years ago, 35mm slides were quite popular. Families documented their vacations and special occasions with series of slides, businesses used slide shows for important presentations, and students learned about faraway places and science from slide shows. Each slide was placed, in order and in the correct orientation, into the slide carousel, and the show began.
Image technology has come a long way since the 60’s and 70’s. PowerPoint presentations, digital cameras, and photographs on CD’s and DVD’s are used for displaying pictures and presentations. Many people have boxes and cases full of old 35mm slides that sit gathering dust because viewing the slides is too cumbersome or the slide projector is broken. Fortunately, slides can now be converted to a digital format onto CD’s and DVD’s for easy storage and viewing with slide scanning.
You can use a flatbed scanner or a film scanner to scan your slides. Film scanners can range in price from $300 to over $1,000, but they produce a higher quality reproduction. Some of the scanner features you need to consider before making a purchase are resolution, DPI, PPI, dynamic range, and bit depth.
The resolution of a scanned image is the measurement of how sharp, or clear, the scanned image is. The DPI, or dots per inch, is the measurement of the number of image dots a printer is capable of printing into 2.54cm (one linear inch) of space. A higher DPI typically results in a higher resolution. Pixel, a combination of the words “picture” and “element,” is a term that refers to the smallest unit of an image. This is typically a color dot. The number of pixels a scanner supports (megapixels) and the size of the image produced determine the PPI, or pixels per inch. As the size of an image increases, the PPI decreases. Scanners with higher megapixels produce images with higher resolution. Dynamic range refers to the capability of distinguishing levels of brightness in an image. A low dynamic range results in a blurry, undefined image, and a high dynamic range produces a sharp, crisp image. Bit depth, or color depth, is the measurement of how many bits, or single units of information, are used to create each pixel in a digital image. Higher bit depths result in brighter and deeper image colors.
There are some drawbacks to do-it-yourself slide scanning. As mentioned previously, the cost of a quality scanner may be prohibitive. You may also end up with a scanner that is difficult to operate or does not perform as you expected. Common problems of scanning slides at home or at your business are damage from fingerprints, choosing the appropriate settings on the scanner, and difficulty producing pictures without scratches and other unsightly marks. Slide scanning can also be a very time-consuming.
For an easier approach to scanning slides, try a professional photography business that offers this service. Professional slide scanning services use top of the line scanners, and the scanned images are clear and blemish-free. You won’t need to bother with purchasing special equipment to scan your slides, and reputable scanning services guarantee their work. Your slide scanning project will be completed in no time!
If you have been photographing for years, you likely have many photos that are not in digital format. Whether you have negatives or actual images, these photos have a limited life span. The only true way to preserve a photograph is to have it digitized. A CD is going to last much longer than a photo that can fade and lose color contrast with time. If you need to turn convert photos to digital formats, you have two basic options.
Scanning Them at Home
The most obvious option to get a digital copy of your image is to scan it at home using convert photo digital equipment. A flatbed scanner and the right scanning software can make a digital copy of a print fairly easily. This copy can then be transferred to a CD or memory card.
One downside of this option is the fact that you will lose image quality. The flatbed scanner that you have at home simply is not capable of producing high resolution scans. The image will likely look great on screen and might even print well at a 4 by 6 size or smaller, but if you need to enlarge the image at some point, you will notice a loss in quality. Also, unless you have specialized equipment, you will not be able to use a home scanner to scan negatives.
Another downside to scanning your photographs yourself is that it takes a tremendous amount of time. If you have hundreds of pictures, you will spend weeks scanning each one individually. This option really only works well if you have just a few pictures.
Having Someone Else Scan Them
Since scanning a picture is the only way to turn it into a digital file, but scanning it at home is not the best option, a better option is to have someone else scan your photo collection for you. You can hire an outside company that has a high-resolution scanner designed for this use and have them scan the photographs or negatives and convert them into a digital format. There is a cost involved in this, but when you consider the amount of time you would invest in scanning them yourself, having them scanned becomes more cost effective.
Not only that, but the companies that offer convert photo digital services have high resolution scanning equipment that produces a clean, sharp replica of the image you have. Some systems even allow for color correction if the image has faded with time. The file you receive when you have your images professionally scanned is a high quality image file that you can enlarge, post online, or otherwise use without any concerns for the quality of the image. Also, by doing this you can scan directly from the negative, if you have it, producing an image that is even closer to the quality of the original image, since negatives do not fade as quickly as printed pictures.
If you have printed pictures or negatives that you need converted to a digital format, you have two basic options. Because of the limitations of doing it yourself, hiring a professional scanning lab to do it for you is the best option. Be sure the lab will give you a finished product in the format you need, and get started converting those old pictures to a modern digital format.
Photographs are wonderful ways to preserve memories and capture life. Today, much photography is done digitally, so you can post pictures to your favorite social media site, put them on your blog, or email them to friends and family in minutes. However, if you have a box or album full of traditional pictures, you may find that you want to convert them to a digital format. Taking the time to convert pictures to a digital format is a great idea, and it is not difficult to do either.
Benefits of Converting Pictures
Converting pictures makes it possible for you to share one picture with as many family members or friends as you want. You can send an email to everyone you know with the picture, if you want. Those who want a print can print their copy from the digital file, saving you the money and hassle of mailing copies.
Not only that, but when you convert pictures to a digital file, you preserve them in the most archival way possible. Once a photograph has been burned onto a CD, it cannot be physically damaged. As long as you are careful with the CD, the photo will be preserved. No one can drip water on it, accidentally tear it, put a fingerprint on it, or lose it. It also will not fade and lose quality over time like a traditional photo does.
If you ever need a printed copy of your photo, you can take the CD to your local photo lab and have one printed, or you can print one in your own home. You can do this again and again, if needed. Even if you have the negatives for those pictures, digital storage is better. Negatives can fade just like pictures, but digital files do not fade.
Finally, storing your photos digitally takes up a lot less space. The number of photos that can be stored on one CD depends on the file size, but you can store hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures on one CD. So, you may be able to store all of your photographs on one small CD, instead of those boxes or albums you currently have stashed in your basement.
How to Convert Pictures
Having your pictures in a digital format makes sense, but you are probably wondering how to do it. After all, you do not have time to sit at your computer scanning picture after picture on your flatbed scanner, and that scanner does not make quality images from paper pictures.
The best way to convert pictures is to let someone else do it. Hire a scanning company to take your pile of photos and convert them into your preferred digital format. The benefit of outsourcing this task is two-fold. First, you do not have to spend your time doing it, and second, the scanners these companies have are much higher quality than the typical home scanner. When you are done with the process, you will have a high quality scan of each picture that looks as good, if not better, than the original.
We live in a digital age, so having your pictures in a digital format simply makes sense. Find a scanning company to use, bundle up those old pictures, and get them converted to a good digital format.
Storing film negatives can become a hassle quite quickly, and since today’s photography is turning more and more digital in nature, you may want to find a digital storage option for your negatives and slides. Scanning negatives and turning them into a digital file is entirely possible, but you need the right equipment to do so.
Scanning Negatives at Home with a Flatbed Scanne
If you have a scanner with the right adapter, you can scan negatives and slides at home using a simple flatbed scanner. Keep in mind that simply putting your negatives on a flatbed scanner will not work. Flatbed scanners are designed to scan photos by capturing the reflection of the light shown on them. Because negatives are transparent, this does not work. You need a transparency adapter to scan negatives. The transparency adapter, when used in place of the scanner’s lid, shines light onto the negatives from above, and the sensors can pick up this light and capture a digital image of the print. Without the adapter, a scanned negative or transparency will look like a big black square.
Scanning Negatives at Home with Film Scanners
If you plan on scanning negatives frequently, you may want to purchase a scanner designed to scan film. These scanners give you a better final image, because there is no piece of glass between the negative and the image sensor. Also, the light is more intense with one of these scanners. They also typically have a higher dpi resolution than flatbed scanners.
Another reason film scanners give a better final image has to do with the density of the image. Photographs have a density of approximately 2.0, and negatives have a density of about 3.0. Because flatbed scanners are designed primarily for documents and photographs, they are calibrated closer to the 2.0 range. This means that scanning negatives with a flatbed scanner will result in tonal loss. This is slight, as in a negative the tonal loss occurs mostly in lighter areas, but it does affect the final image quality a bit.
High Resolution Is Key
Regardless of whether you use a flatbed scanner or a film scanner, you will want to scan your negatives at the highest resolution possible. This will make the scanning process take a while, but if you intend to make prints off of the resulting digital photos, you will be glad you took the time to scan the picture at a high resolution.
Professional Help Is Available
While you can scan negatives at home, it takes quite a bit of time, particularly if you scan them at the high resolution necessary for images you wish to eventually print. To save yourself some time, consider sending your negatives away for professional negative scanning services.
Negative scanning companies will scan your images at an extremely high resolution using scanners specifically designed for scanning negatives, giving you high quality digital images that you can use for just about any purpose, from print to web to archival. In fact, the quality from a professionally scanned image placed onto a CD is so good that you do not have to hang on to those negatives any longer. You can dispose of them, using the CD as your record of the images. Hiring a professional to scan your negatives will save you time, and in the long run, it may also save you money, because you will not need to buy special equipment to get the quality images you need.