Slide Scanning News

Photographs bear a huge significance in our culture. Sometimes, pictures may be all that we have to remember a specific person or event in our lives that was monumental. A good picture can bring back all of the memories of happier times, so it’s important that these keepsakes be preserved as best as possible. The problem with photographs is that they can be easily damaged or destroyed. With pictures as fragile as they are, many people are turning to a photo scanning service to preserve their precious memories. If you know someone who is very “picture” oriented, having their photos scanned might be the greatest gift idea you can imagine. Photo scanning, or photo digitizing as it is called in some circles, refers to scanning pictures into a digital format for safekeeping. The benefit to this is that digital information is never really lost.

Any pictures can be saved to an additional flash drive and they can be copied an unlimited number of times without damaging the file or producing second-rate copies. Also, with digital prints comes the possibility of digital picture frames. Think of someone like a grandparent who has dozens of photo albums lying around the house. A slide scanning

When choosing a service you need to look for one that delivers high quality reproductions as well as corrects issues such as color fading. Also, you need a company that can transport the photos both quickly and safely. You really don’t want to have reproductions of your images but lose the originals in the process, or have to wait several weeks for everything to be copied. If you live in the Los Angeles area and are looking for a high quality photo scanning service, consider using a local drop-off or pickup service with low prices and high quality scanning.

Photo slide scanning plays a very important part in the process of photo restoration. Photo slide scanning provides a workable foundation for restorers to work on photos that need work, without having to alter the original photo in any way. When an original photograph is tinkered with, there is great risk for irreparable damage to occur to the photograph.

When people handle their pictures and negatives, they do many things, unintentionally, that are very harmful to them, and most do not even know they are damaging their photos. Photo slide scanning can produce corrected copies of old photos and photos that have been damaged.

Photo slide scanning can help with restoring photos that have been damaged by common wear. Besides sticking fingers all over the pictures, there are more than fingerprints that can slowly destroy your paper memories. Pictures are actually made of gelatin and tiny silver particles. This makes them susceptible to bug infestation, mold, mildew, and humidity.

Unfortunately, many things that are made for use with pictures are the very things that hasten their disintegration. Photo slide scanning can give you a picture that is free from the damage that has occurred to your originals. Many picture boards, cardboards, and most glue contain an acid that slowly eats away at the pictures. Even the chemicals that are used to develop the film from negatives are to blame for the eventual demise of these photographs. Photo slide scanning can give you corrected duplicates of your original, damaged, photos.

Photo slide scanning can correct sunlight induced fading damage. Most people are commonly aware that sunlight will ruin photographs. Even pictures that were never intentionally put in the sun can still show damage, even if the sun hit the picture for a few minutes each day.

Photo slide scanning can provide a smooth replacement for a sticky, corroded picture. Never use rubber cement to adhere photographs to anything. The acids in rubber cement will ruin the picture quickly, cracking the emulsion and paper backing. Rubber cement contains sulfur, which reacts with the silver that sentences pictures to certain death!

Scrapbooking and photo album hobbies have become very popular ways for people to store and share their photos. It is best to use pictures that have undergone photo slide scanning for these projects, with the original pictures stored properly. You should not use originals in these albums, but the photo slide scanning copies work well. Do not use the photo albums that have the self adhesive pages covered by clear plastic film.

The glue, again here too, is acidic. Never display your pictures in vinyl sleeves. The sleeves are made out of a certain type of plastic that will cause both color and black and white photos to fade. However, if you find pictures that are dear to you that have fallen victim to any of these damaging mishaps, photo slide scanning can make it all better, and can even make your pictures better than they originally were.

Photo scanning services can bring the most damaged of photographs back to life! Photo scanning services are those businesses who can professionally scan photos for you, repairing them and restoring them along the way. When your irreplaceable pictures need to be put into good hands, photo scanning services do a great job. Just what do they do with the pictures that customers need scanned?

Many photo scanning services will have you mail to them your photos that need scanning. Once they receive your photos, they will start out by looking up your order that you placed with them previously, either on their website or via phone, usually. Photo scanning services will start by cleaning the printed photographs that you sent in to them using only compressed air. Sometimes, in addition to the air, they may also use a soft cloth to clean them. Photo scanning services should never use any chemicals or liquids to clean your pictures; this could obviously have devastating effects for the surface of the photo.

Photo scanning services will then place the prints on a high quality flatbed scanner. You may want to check with your photo scanning service to make sure they do not use an automated scanning system, because the automated ones do not turn out as good as manually scanned ones. Your photos should be scanned at around 600DPI, just to be sure to capture all of the details of the photo.

When photo scanning is done, the photo scanning service can complete a number of different post scan restoration steps. Some of the services that they can do to the scans for you include color correction, rotation, exposure correction, and cropping. For images that are heavily faded or color worn, extra treatment can be done for color restoration to enhance the photos.

When the photo scanning and refinishing are finished, your preview versions of your images usually are available online for you to view. The great photo scanning services will usually let you delete any images that you dont want; you only pay for what you are happy with. After you have reviewed the scanned images online, the Slide scanning service will return the digital images to you on DVDs or CDs and your original photos. Photo scanning services will help you turn your faded, worn images into the great works of art that they were meant to be.

A Buyer’s Guide to Film Scanners

Film scanners are made for the sole and express purpose of scanning film directly into your computer. Unlike their flatbed counterparts, which may be able to handle media of various sizes and thicknesses and can even scan film if a transparency adapter is installed, film scanners scan only one thing: film. But because the image to be scanned is taken directly from the original material – from the film, and not from a print – film scanners allow more direct control over image elements such as cropping and aspect ratio. In addition, film has more detail and dynamic range compared to prints – which invariably lose tonal range and color data during the printmaking process. These are real concerns to photographers and graphic artists, who rely on original slides and film – and film scanners – to ensure the integrity of scanned images in professional and commercial applications. So, if your work relies on scanning negatives, slides, and other types of film, a film scanner is the right choice for you. This buying guide tackles some of the more important things that you need to know when looking for a film scanner.

Style and Type Some flatbed scanners include either an external or built-in transparency adapter that is used to scan film. Other flatbeds are of a dual-bed design; i.e., with one bed – the glass flatbed part of the scanner -for scanning prints; and another bed – a transparency bay that looks like a pull-out drawer – for scanning film. If you intend to scan only the occasional slide or stray piece of film, and don’t mind the lower resolution as well, a flatbed scanner that can accommodate film may well serve your purpose. Be aware, however, that the resulting film scans will not be suitable for commercial or professional use. To obtain the best results, nothing less than a dedicated film scanner will do.

Bit Depth

A scanner’s bit depth determines the number of bits captured per pixel, which is related to the number of possible colors. The higher the bit depth is, the greater the number of colors that can be shown. Bit depth for film scanners on the market today can be 30-bits, 36-bits, 42-bits, or 48-bits. Always aim for higher bit depth when possible, as this allows the scanner to work with and retain a greater amount of color information. A 48-bit scanner, for instance, produces 65,536 levels or shades of color per R,G,B (red, green, blue) channel, resulting in a mind-blowing possible combination of about 250 trillion colors. In contrast, a 36-bit scanner produces 4,096 levels of information, or a paltry 68.7 billion colors.

Resolution

For scanners, the optical, or “true”, resolution is what matters, as this is the actual number of pixels being read by the scanner’s optics. Film scanners have much higher resolution figures compared to flatbeds, with optical resolution in film scanners ranging from 2700 dpi to 5400 dpi, and 4000 dpi being the most common. The high resolution in film scanners allows you to enlarge small images, creating enough pixels in the process to print in full-page size.

For instance, a full-frame 35mm color negative scanned at 2400 dpi will result in a size of about 3400 x 2200 pixels. If this 2400-dpi image is printed at 300 dpi, the resulting printed image will be 8 times larger than the original film size (2400/300=8). In actual terms, this means that your original 1.4 x 0.9-inch film (36 x 24 mm) can be increased by 8 times to 11.2 x 7.2 inches when printed at 300 dpi – without any loss of image clarity or detail. A word of caution: Because film scanners can scan in such high resolutions, file sizes can be big. Scanning the 35mm negative at 2400 dpi in the example just cited will result in a file size of 22 megabytes.

Film Formats

Most film scanners work with 35mm film. Some can scan APS film, but an optional APS adapter is needed to batch scan the full APS roll. Other film scanners, such as the Microtek ArtixScan 120tf, can scan medium format film as well, ranging from 6×6cm to 6×17cm panoramic. Check to see what types of film holders are provided with the film scanner; most models will include a 35mm slide scanning holder as well as a 35mm filmstrip holder. A few models offer optional autofeeders that accommodate 50 mounted slides to allow efficient batch scanning of film.

Interface

The hardware interface of your film scanner will determine how long it takes to transfer digital data to a computer for processing. Together with the actual operational speed of the scanner, the hardware interface plays an important part in determining scan speed. Most older film scanners have SCSI ports; the newer film scanners feature FireWire or USB (Hi-Speed or USB 1.1) interfaces. Models with either USB or FireWire interface are hot swappable – which means the scanners can be plugged or unplugged from other devices to which they are connected without having to turn the scanners off and on.

Dynamic Range

The dynamic range of a scanner measures how well it can capture the tonal range of an image, ranging from the brightest highlights to the darkest shadows. Dynamic range is a more important spec in film scanners than it is for flatbeds, because film and other transparent media have a broader range of tones compared to photos or prints – something that film scanners are perfectly equipped to capture and show. Dynamic range is measured on a scale from 0.0 (perfect white) to 4.0 (perfect black), and the single number associated with a scanner indicates how much of that range it can tell apart. The minimum and maximum density values that can be captured by a scanner are called Dmin and Dmax, respectively. If a scanner’s Dmin was 0.2 and its Dmax was 4.2, then its dynamic range would be 4.0. The dynamic range of film scanners are usually advertised by their manufacturers as falling somewhere between 4.0 and 4.6, but these are intrinsically difficult figures to prove or validate, and a model claiming a higher number may not necessarily have better results to show, mainly because of variances in testing and determining the figure. A more practical way of assessing would be to visually check how shadows and highlights are reproduced by the scanner and then compare the results to the original image or to how other scanners reproduce those same tonal colors.

Dust-and-Scratch Removal, Film Repair

Software provided with film scanners can be specialized and varied. Like flatbeds, film scanners will include their own driver or scanning software, as well as bundle an image-editing program – such as Adobe Photoshop – into which scanned images are delivered and placed. In addition, higher-end film scanners may include a color calibration and ICC profiler program, which ensures consistent color by creating a color profile specific to the film scanner. With the ICC profiler program, an image – known as an IT8 target and containing industry-standard color values – is scanned, and then compared to values that the scanner actually recorded. The differences are then translated into a compensation scheme to even out color variations, so that accurate color results can be produced in the future.

Dust and scratches on film can present a big challenge for film scanners, as imperfections can take on gigantic proportions when the film is scanned at the scanner’s very high resolution. Film can also be damaged through improper handling, and what appears to the naked eye as a tiny scratch may render the image on a film practically useless. For this reason, a number of film-repair technologies have been developed to remove imperfections, allowing an image to be reconstructed and printed flawlessly, as though it came from a pristine original. These film-repair technologies may be implemented either through software alone, such as the dust-and-scratch removal feature from the SilverFast program by LaserSoft Imaging; or through a combination of hardware and software, as is the case with the DIGITAL ICE technology built-into some models.

Other technologies

Depending on the model, film scanners may incorporate proprietary technologies unique and exclusive to their manufacturer. Such technologies may include an auto-focus mechanism to ensure perfect image capture, a patented feeder mechanism, or specially designed holders for making film stay flat. These features may make a real difference in improving the quality of your scanning or streamlining your workflow.

When slide scanning pictures, it’s important to remember to remove all superfluous items, such as staples and paperclips, as all these can result in damage to your scanner. To learn more slide scanning tips, read the following article.

For maximum quality pictures, be sure to remove all superfluous items, such as staples and paperclips as all these can result in damage to your scanner. Also, always remember to first fan the paper to ensure that there are no papers sticking together, especially if you’re slide scanning multiple documents. And don’t forget to take extra care with odd-sized items. Odd sized items should be scanned separately, especially if they’re of different widths. And all small items like paycheck stubs should be photocopied before scanning or you should attach it to a standard-sized sheet of paper and then scan. The actual scanning can be done in five easy steps:

First Step: The first step to slide scanning an image is placing it on the scanner. Lift the lid and place the photo on the glass bed, image-side down. To scan your prints on a scanner, usually there are arrows on the slide scanning bed to indicate exactly where to place the photo. If possible, anchor the picture on a corner so it will be less likely to move. Now comes the part where you decide slide scanning resolution.

Second Step: Before you give the command to scan the image you need to select the slide scanning resolution required from the options given. To determine the best slide scanning resolution, you need to consider the resolution of the final output device and the type of artwork you are slide scanning. All artwork falls into two basic categories, black-and-white line art and continuous-tone images. So, set the resolution accordingly.

Step Three: Verify the basic settings for the scanner controls. For this, select the resolution of the scan based on the content of the image. For example, for Web or 150-300dpi you should set the resolution to 72 dpi for print. And the option should be set to “pixel.”

Step Four: This is when you decide if you need to make any adjustments to the quality of the image. You can also make adjustments to the photo like, sharpening or cropping, or adjusting the brightness, contrast, and color balance. This facility is available in most scanning software or you could use an image-editing program.

Step Five: The next step is to save your scanned image. The photo can be saved in a folder on your hard drive or on to a CD or Zip disk, commonly in JPEG format. You can also save in a TIFF file which will give you a better quality, since there is less color compression. However the TIFF file will take up a lot more memory space than the other options.

Don’t be scared to play with the different scan settings. If you don’t like the results of a scan, you can always discard it and try again. A few trial-and-error exercises will give you the feel of the best settings.

To manage Record, you have to do various task. It involves identifying, classifying, storing, circulating and disposing of documents. The process of record management becomes time consuming and costly. Through computer and other latest technological equipment, it becomes easier and less expensive.

When the Records are in bigger size and consume more time and money, it is wise decision to hire some scanning services. There are various scanning services are available in the market. I mention some of them in bellow mention list:

• Document Scanning – Document scanning services converts important data into electronic format. This will help any business to access any document easily and quickly. Document scanning give feature of data portability. It also minimizes data storage space as well as improves data efficiency.

• Paper Scanning – Paper Scanning Services can make your life easy by having all you papers available at you finger tips. In business there are various paper require for day-to-day transactions and it is very difficult to maintain huge amount of paper records. Very rare time it is available at appropriate time. Paper scanning services is very impressive way to decrease the stress of paper management from the head.

• Periodicals Scanning – Periodicals are having vital data and not always handy or understandable. They are without doubt damageable and consume much space for storage. Periodicals scanning will provide electronic format, easy access and safe storage.

• Photo Scanning – Any small thing can make photo defective. Climate change also can damage the photo. So the managing photo is very difficult task. You can manage photo easily by scanning and converting it into the electronic format.

• Drawing Scanning – Drawing scanning services can support wide variety of drawing such as, Blueprint, Survey Plans, Topological maps, Mechanical drawings and other. This type of drawing needs more storage space. With the help of drawing scanning services you can get all your data in small amount of space.

• Microfiche Scanning – It is very important peace of document that stores huge amount of information. To read this document any one needs a microfiche reader. Using microfiche scanning service you will find the document readable without having machine to read the document.

• Film Slide Scanning – Digitalization will help the business to move ahead from others. For film slide scanning you needs more professional and experienced people.

• Medical Record Scanning – Compared to paper medical records, electronic format will ease your processing time. Scanning medical records consist of the patients’ symptoms, clinical findings, diagnosis, and treatment details. Some times, this type of document will be misplaced and you meet with huge loss. Scanning of medical record will give you fast and easy access to the document.

• Aperture Card Scanning – There are two type of aperture card; 35mm aperture cards and 16mm aperture cards. This type of card is mainly used to have important data in record. But to read this type of card you must need the machine. Outsourcing of aperture card scanning services will help you to save on aperture card reader.

• Microfilm Scanning – It is near to microfiche scanning where data is very important but hard to read. So microfilm scanning will help you to have electronic format on hand with feature of easy readability.

These are the some of the scanning services which can be utilized by business to improve their standard in this competitive market.

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

Simple process of developing negative 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 slide 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 film 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. This scanner can cost you a lot so it is better to outsource your film scanning requirements.

Benefits of scanning film negatives are as under:

• 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 scratch and dust, crop, rotate and sharpen in digital image.

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

The art of digital scrapping is soaring in popularity. A quick online search will give you an idea of how many free or low cost tools, templates, and tutorials there are for the taking. It’s easy to find design concepts, creation software, and personalized help. Online scrapbooking chat rooms and communities help with technical information and ideas. It’s never been easier to produce gorgeous custom creations.

You don’t have to restrict yourself to the photos you took with that new digital camera either. Find yourself an inexpensive photo slide scanning service and make all of your photographs available for digital scrapbooking. There are scanning services that will scan your photos for as little as 5 cents each.

When you scan photos for a digital scrapbook you are also protecting them from loss, damage, and destruction. If you make digital copies of all of your photos and store them on a DVD, you will be able to put a copy in two or three different locations for complete safety. You will also be able to give a complete copy to each of your children and to other family members and friends.

If you’ve ever wanted to build a photobook or upload your photos to a photo sharing site then you’ll have an additional benefit to scanning photos for your scrapbook. Want to build a slideshow to view on TV? You can do it online or buy inexpensive software. You can even add your own music. Want to create a T-shirt with a crazy photo on it? Just search “photo t-shirt”. It’s that easy!

The optimum resolution for slide scanning your photo prints is 300 dpi. Don’t accept lower and don’t pay for higher. Nothing is gained by scanning at a higher resolution than 300 dpi, and you’ll be handling much larger files. That means any use of the scans will be slower. Do make sure your scans are saved as high quality jpeg files. This means that the scans are saved with very low compression and thus higher quality. You will be able to use free photo editing software to reduce the file size for copy to use on the web, if needed.

Automatic photo enhancement can improve many of your photos. But don’t pay a lot for this service because it won’t perform miracles, and it won’t make a difference on some photographs. Insist that your photo enhancement is performed on a copy of your master scans. Manipulation of your scans causes them to be recompressed and that, if repeated, will cause quality issues. Make sure your slide scanning service provides both set of master scans and a set of enhanced scans.

Spend a few minutes searching the web and you’ll find educational E-books, classes, organizational software, layout ideas, and scrapbook embellishment of every kind. Then find an inexpensive photo slide scanning service and make your precious memories come alive.

A photo is important. It always delivers the message of happiness. It is helpful to rememorize our past. To keep those photos safely is difficult task. One more problem is to store the photos. You have to check for storage place where environment can’t do any damage to your photos. The solution against these problems is, photo slide scanning.

Photo slide scanning helps you in various ways:

• It is one of the most powerful ways to save storage space for your photos. By scanning, it gets converted into digital and requires very less space.

• It becomes portable. So you can easily carry the photo wherever you want to.

• Through scanning, it becomes very safe. Scanned photo can’t be damaged easily. So you can be worry free about you photos and focus on important work.

• You can access them very easily.

You can do photo slide scanning at your own, but it requires setting of dpi, resolution and professional touch. To get all those you can outsource project to scanning services provider who have excellence in scanning photos. Here question is about what points must be considered for outsourcing.

Check the below mention checkpoints while outsourcing photo slide scanning:

Specialist: You can outsource to a company having specialist to scan photos. This type of company will carry out best quality scanned photo for you. A Specialist can enhance you image clarity with consideration of other important points.

Quality: You have to check the quality they deliver. You can view their sample posted online and can get idea about the quality of company’s work.

Promptness: You have to discuss with offshore photo slide scanning company about time frame of project.

Formats: Check the formats they offer you for photo slide scanning. Outsource only if company offers proper output format as per your requirements.

Structured Information: You must check that the company you are going to outsource is providing organized output. If not then it is not recommended to outsource any scanning work for photo.

Cost: Price is having less importance when photo slide scanning comes into the picture. But it has to be economical. Outsourcing can be beneficial to you if you get high quality with cost benefits.

If you search out, you can find some company in industry are offering free trial service. Just post a sample project and get better idea about their quality, promptness and service support.

Photos are an important factor for every business and person. It plays vital role in life span. It helps both in different ways. As an individual, photos are most important to cache important moment of life. For business, photos are helpful for branding and selling product easily.

If photos are available physically, why have to scan photos. Photos get easily damage with environmental changes, fire, etc. The dyes of photo also degrade over a period of time and photo become dull. So it is wise to scan photos. Through s
slide scanning, you can save lots of space compared to physical photos. You can take backup/copy of digital photos in very less time and store them in another place. You can get the photos back through backup/copy very easily. Digital photos can not become dull over period of time. So scanning of photo is very much helpful to avoid such problems.

If you scan the photo your own, there is huge possibility that you can not get expected result. As you are not expert in scanning photos, you can not get best result from scanner. To scan, photo scanning company can help you in scanning photos. You will get below mention benefits if you transfer your requirements to photo scanning company:

Higher Quality: Company is having photo scanning experts as well as latest scanner and software to operate any scanning requirement. Experts are having knowledge of various techniques to improve the quality of scanned photo. Latest scanners and software make an addition to the efforts of experts and offer better result. At the end of process, you receive high quality digital photo.

Speedy Services: Company is having high speed scanner and timely tested process to deliver quick output. You can get benefit of speedy service with high quality output through hiring such company.

Cost Saving: It is worthless to purchase special high speed photo scanner just for scanning small numbers of photos. You also need to have the knowledge about technical aspects of scanning photos. Without such knowledge, you can not get quality result. Through hiring photo scanning company, you can save cost without loosing quality.

Outsourcing photo scanning requirements to photo scanning company can save you money and time without disturbing the quality of digital photo.