Odd white line around my scanned image ? Please help

attached is a scan of a med format negative in BMP format. My local lab did

the scan ( 15mb ). If I look very closely, there is an odd white line

outlining some of the image...what is this? thanks !

 

<img src="http://members.aol.com/dcolucci/choo.jpg">

That's a jpeg file, and typical.

 

If it is in the BMP then chances are they erred in their scanning.

yes, this is from an original BMP scan...I just converted it to jpg for photo.net

I may be wrong, but this looks like the kind of halo effect that occurs when sharpening with unsharp mask.....

You get halos when USM sharpening is applied in excess, and by unskilled technicians. JPEG compression is probably not at fault here - that usually shows up as aliasing.

I'd try someone else, or look into getting your own scanner. That effect is also evident at the edge of the small patch of sky in the lower left corner. Basically everywhere. Something's being done, and it's degrading the image. Also kind of funny they give you .bmp file. Tiff format is more the norm, though I'm not really sure of the difference.