Transfer:
The Best Way to Digitize Slides
Two words: Flatbed Scanner. Flatbed scanners have been the best way to convert slides to digital for decades now. Line-by-line scanning rather than a photograph of a photograph. A decent flatbed scanner will also perform color and light correction as it scans as well as light dust removal.
A quality flatbed scanner will also give you the choice of resolutions from basic to very high, depending on your needs. If you are going to view your slides on a large screen or if you are publishing the pictures, you might want a very high resolution. Most people are very happy with the basic 1800 dpi (dots per inch) resolution.
You also have the option of different formats, usually jpeg, but tiff is available too. Tiff is good if you will be doing extensive editing or publishing, but jpeg is great for most of us.
Finally, I always take a look at every single picture in Photoshop to check for minor dust and scratches, a final look at any needed color correction and to make the lighting as good as possible. While there are plenty of quick and dirty options out there to scan slides to digital, it takes a little more time to do them right, but well worth it.
If you are really serious about quality, hand cleaning of each slide might be a great choice for you.
Also Read – Well, Technically, VCR Can’t Be Converted to Digital!
Make Sure You Get A Real Scan of Your Slide
Scanning systems that just take a photo with a digital camera don’t even approach the quality of a true scan. A true scan will actually scan (slowly) line by line to get the most accurate and detailed colors and contrast on your digital slide (or photos or negatives for that matter).
Why Convert Slides to Digital Now?
Slides are made of film, just like 8mm film. The film itself can become brittle over time, the surface can become scratched, the ink will fade, and film is food for mold – the #1 enemy. Those slides with the paper/cardboard frames will crumble and the glue that holds them together becomes dust.
Sooner or later, the film becomes too faded for color correction to work and mold simply eats away your pictures. The choices are simple:
- Convert them to digital now
- Throw them away (same as storing them permanently in the attic)
- Pay next year’s prices!
Sharing Digitized Slides With Friends and Family
That is the beauty of converting your slides to digital! With today’s technology, once a slide is in digital format, it can be shared so easily via the internet using email, cloud services, or digital storage (USBs). Anywhere in the world at your fingertips. Just think about sharing your 50th wedding anniversary slides with your wedding party scattered all over the world – instantly!
The Easiest Way to Convert Slides to Digital
If you are like the rest of us, you have boxes or carousels or baggies full of slides. You don’t know what is on them but you have to see those that have images of your friends, families, and memories.
The easiest way to achieve our goal is to scan them all and then separate the digital images into folders on your computer or even delete the ones that you don’t want. You can arrange by family, by date, by event, or by individual. Then dispose of the extras with a delete key.
The Cheapest Way to Digitize Slides
The old saying goes: Its all about time or money. If you’d like to save money, then be ready to invest time. What I mean is to eliminate those slides that you don’t care about before scanning. This saves the cost of scanning unwanted slides with the tradeoff of sorting through them ahead of time.
I have found that the best way to do this is with a slide viewer. There are many choices, so choose one that has:
- Backlight so that you can see the slide clearly
- Magnifying lens so that you can see an image larger than the actual slide (I suggest 3X)
- Choose an LED backlight to avoid excessive heat
Click Amazon Slide Viewer to see several options.
Make a Slideshow From Your Scanned Slides
Many people, in addition to scanning each slide, want to view them as a slideshow, you can also arrange your slides into a video slideshow that will view your slides automatically for about 5 seconds each, fading in and out to the next image. This can be shared just like the individual slides over email, via USB or the cloud.
Convert Slides to Digital – Next Steps:
- Call or text Jamey (About Jamey) at 720 204-5464
- Set an appointment (every project receives my individual attention)
- Drop off your tapes (and records, cassettes, slides, or negatives, too)
In a week or less, pick up your new digitized VHS (and other).
