Scanning 35mm slides. Any input would be appreciated.

[eric_v1]

<p> <br>

I have volunteered to scan close to 900 slides of my dads family. The slides were created during the 50's to 70's. It seems like 85-90% of them are Kodachrome, the others are mostly PAKON. </p>

<p>My uncle lent me his Epson Perfection V200 scanner for this job. It has a max optical DPI of 4800, but there seems to be little to no detail added choosing that over 2400 DPI. </p>

<p>I've been playing around with the settings.. trying to come up with a system that I am satisfied with before I commit to scanning every slide.</p>

<p>Here is an example slide of what different techniques/settings look like:</p>

<p>1)This image is straight from the scanner. No filters used:<br>

<img src="http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/1861/straightscannochanges.jpg" alt="" width="881" height="1280" /></p>

<p>2)This is straight from the scanner, but then having "auto tone" "auto contrast" & "auto color" applied via Photoshop:<br>

<img src="http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4860/straightscanwithphotosh.jpg" alt="" width="881" height="1280" /></p>

<p>3)This has Color Correction & Dust Removal turned on through the Epson scan utility:<br>

<img src="http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/6624/colorcorrectdustremoval.jpg" alt="" width="885" height="1280" /></p>

<p>4)This is using the Epson scan utilities FULL AUTO mode "dust removal, sharpening, color correction + whatever else is applied":<br>

<img src="http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3941/automaticscanmodeallopt.jpg" alt="" width="881" height="1280" /></p>

<p>I was thinking about scanning @ 2400 DPI, 48 bit color, Tiff, 100% scale, NO image adjustments/filters turned on through Epson scan software.<br>

Leaving a copy of this Tiff for archive purposes. <br>

Then I can go into photoshop and do the auto-tone/contrast/color + maybe a little unsharp mask. Save this as a separate Tiff file.<br>

After that, create a high-quality JPEG of this edited Tiff file - resized to smaller dimensions for general viewing on the computer monitor.</p>

<p>What do you guys think? Do you think the full-auto version looks the best? Should I just select that for the time-savings?</p>

<p>You can clearly see some dust/hairs on this slide. I just placed it straight on the scanner bed without cleaning it. I plan on blowing both sides of the slides off with compressed air.</p>

 

[SCL]

<p>First, my hat's off to you for taking on this challenge...I'm in my 3rd year of doing something similar with old family slides and photos...and it never seems to end. I'm no expert in scanning techniques, but it seems that the fewer number of variables introduced should give you greatest flexibility in the final outcome. OTOH, you have to weigh that against what you can do automatically or thru macros, and actually finish the job before your enthusiasm runs out. Therefore I would vote for #2, especially because I'm guessing all the slides won't have similar characteristics, and you may have much more after-processing to do on some of them...as long as you're using PS and it is giving you good results, I don't see the need to potentially introduce other software which could "lose" some of the detail. Good luck in your project, I'm sure your family will love the final product.</p>

[bgussin]

<p>What a coincidence. I just finished scanning 770 slides for my folks using my Epson Perfection 2440. Here are my thoughts.<br>

My folks wanted a DVD slide show. My strategy was expediency with acceptable 4x6 print quality. So I scanned the slides at 900dpi which yields 1149x735 pixels which is just about the same as the 1280 x768 screen resolution of Windows XP. (Standard Non HD DVD screen resolution is 740x480). I am offering to rescan any favorites later at high er quality with touch up for large prints. I chose 80 percent quality JPG and got files averaging 130k.<br>

I used the Epson scanning software in professional mode, with auto levels and sharpening. No dust or scratch removal. The few slides with dust will not diminish the joy of seeing them, and re-scanning later is an option.<br>

I made manual adjustments only in severe situations as with dark subject againt sky or window or under exposure indoors, or subject in shadows. This accounted for about a tenth of the slides.<br>

I usually scan from within Photoshop, but for expediency, I used the Epson Scan and Save where I could keep scanning scores of slides until I stopped, when the software asks you to save<br>

I was able to scan four slides at a time and from placing them down to lifting them up was just under 5 minutes for four slides.<br>

So 770 x 125 percent is 962 minutes or 16 hours. And 83 MB total.<br>

A second computer allowed me to scan during my daily web surfing , and to surf during my scanning. A couple of hours a day with a couple of 4 hour sessions on the weekend let me finish in under a week.<br>

Now I'm gonna burn the slide shows to DVD, burn the raw files to CD-Rom and post a web-album!<br>

I'll attach a couple so you can see for yourself.<br>

-Bob</p>

<div></div>

[bgussin]

One more.<div></div>

[aaron_dohrn]

<p><strong>Some advice shot gun approach</strong><br /> <strong>Hardware</strong><br /> Scanning color slides I would definitely invest in a scanner with ICE. No matter how you clean them there will still be lots of specs and scratches that ICE will eliminate. Save yourself the months of Photoshop work. Epson 4490 or V500 can be had for under $200.</p>

<p>Vuescan is a great program and can be had for 44-90 dollars. Expect a learning curve.</p>

<p>Film scanners are better and faster and some of the older Nikons can be bought and resold for most of what you put into them. Just depends on your budget and what you want.</p>

<p>Read up on this forum to find out what the actual max resolution of your scanner actually is. Don't go by what Epson tells you as they basically lie.<br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <strong>Different approaches to scanning</strong><br /> There are 2 competing philosophies on scanning</p>

<p>1 scan once and resample down</p>

<p>2 scan low resolution and then rescan the best.</p>

<p>Neither is right or wrong it just depends on your needs. I use a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and spend most of my time in prep so I scan at max around 120 megs and resample. Large external hard drives are amazingly cheap so I don't worry about space. Using a flatbed you will spend a lot more time scanning so you might want to go with something less or not. <br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <strong>Sorting and Cleaning</strong><br /> You don't need to scan everything. Backs of heads ect don't need to be saved. Set up your slide projector and eliminate the unwanted. I used an 80 slide carousel (with a 160 its really hard to finds the right slides in a dark room) and a red marker to mark the edges ones I didn't want to scan. I also used pieces of note cards cut down the put into the carosel to create catagories.</p>

<p>Unapproved and dangerous, but I used a leaf blower to clean the slides. Put them in a carousel make sure lock ring is on put the carousel flat on the ground and blow down. Don't get the blower to close to the tray as you don't want to damage them. Also don't ever hit a slide head on with a leaf blower as you will most likely bow it out of the mount. If you try this experiment with some unwanted slides first.</p>

<p>Clean in this order leaf blower maybe, Canned compressed air (don't use a compressor without the device to eliminate the oil the spray), Brush lightly and gently with Very very fine paint brush bought at art supply store or specially made antistatic brush, Compressed air again, Film cleaner with those wipes. Do as few of these steps as possible to get them clean, and only use film cleaner when nothing else will work.<br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <strong>Scanning</strong><br /> Learn about color spaces before you scan. You can spend days on this alone. If you are going to scan for max don't scan everything sRGB, but scan at least Adobe RGB 1998. Save the original file and then convert a copy down to sRGB the conversion won't do you any real harm.</p>

<p>You will find a lot of your slides will have deteriorated in some form or another. Some can have a green, yellow, red or blue (if you don't know what your looking at the blue ones look underexposed) cast. Make sure to scan these highest resolution your scanner can really achieve and do them in at least Adobe RGB. Scanned in something less than max and Adobe RGB will often make these look relatively cartoonish when you try to fix them in photoshop.</p>

<p> </p>

[aaron_dohrn]

<p>If you keep with the scan at best quality don't do any post processing (Filters, unsharp mask, curves ect) using the scanning software. Instead do it in Photoshop to a copy were you have more control.<br>

Best of luck</p>

[eric_v1]

<p>Thanks for all the responses!</p>

<p>I would love to purchase something like the Nikon Coolscan 5000, but am worried that I will lose too much money trying to sell it after the project is complete. <br>

What's the resale value like on these film scanners? If I bought a new Coolscan 5000 and ran a few thousand slides through it.. think I could sell it on the used market for a couple hundred dollars loss?<br>

<br /><br>

ICE sounded like a "must have" feature, until I read that it doesn't work very well with Kodachrome slides :(.</p>

[john_simon5]

<p>The resale market for 5000 is crazy right now. They have been discontinued so used ones are currently going for more than they were when new (sometime lots more). In the days, they held their resale value very well and you would only loose a few hundred max.</p>

<p>Anyway, I am doing a similar project with a 5000. I have processed about 500 slides from the 70s and have about 1500 more from the 50s through 80s to do. I am from the scan them once and scan them at max school. This may be because the coolscan is fast - particularly with Kodachromes because there is no overhead for ICE. Unfortunately I don't have the slide feeder so it is a bit labour intensive. I scan at 4000dpi, 16 bit, Adobe RGB, TIFF. In Photoshop I crop the frame and 'auto colour' if required. If there are particularly egregious spots or scratches I give them a quick touch up. This is then my archived copy. I use the image processor in Photoshop to convert them to sRGB JPEGs which I stick into iPhoto for everyday use and 4x6 printing. I don't bother resizing the JPEG image from the full scan size. My JPEGs end up around 7MB which is about the same size as a current digicam shot so I don't see that there is much imperative for reducing the file size more. If I want to do an enlargement, I'll pull out the TIFF and give it personalised attention including sharpening and touchup as appropriate.<br>

N.B. I also have quite a lot of negative film from this time period. If you have any colour negatives from this period scan them NOW - they are not stable and the images go to hell. If you don't scan them now, you probably won't ever be able to scan them. As it is with some of mine, I can barely recover a tolerable imageas the colour shifts and dye fading are so bad.</p>

[aaron_dohrn]

<p>Crazy. Glad I bought my 5000 last year. You might look into a Coolscan V ED. A few of those went for 450-500 a few days ago on ebay. With some shopping you might get lucky. It would be possible to get most if not all of your money out of them if bought low.</p>

<p>Don't know which digital ice they use though 3 or 4. The current version of Nikonscan has a Kodachrome setting for use with digital ice. I haven't run across any kodachrome yet so for how it scans with ice I can't say.</p>