<p>Hello,<br> <br />I hope this is OK to post here. I have looked around various sites and this seemed to be the better one.<br> I have a big project ahead of me; to scan all of my parents' slides and negatives. My father is paralyzed and we found out he has a tumor, I want to scan all of his old slides which he hasn't seen in many years. I have bought a scanner, Epson Perfection V800 Photo. The store told me that was what I needed for this project, I hope that is true. Here are my questions, please if you can help me I would greatly appreciate it. ~Sandy<br> 1. <em><strong>CLEANING</strong></em>: Before I scan the slides, I want to clean them. How would I go about doing this? I have looked on the internet and there appears to be very split opinions regarding this. Some claim best is to dip them in water and letter this self dry. Some say use a cleaning solution. Etc Etc... I did order some cleaning solution that someone linked to on Amazon, but obviously I ended up with the wrong thing, it's called<strong> iKlear Cleaner/Polish for Apple LED and LCD Displays</strong>. I don't know why they said to buy that. I also have this <strong>IpaClean pure Isopropanol - </strong>can I use that? I also have a <strong>Kinetronics StaticWisk anti-static brush</strong>. Best would be if I dry them by hand, but it would be perfect if I could apply something to repel dust, as my apartment is VERY dusty (I do have three furry cats!).<br> 2. <em><strong>SCANNING:</strong> </em>What software should I use? The included Epson software seems very crippled at first glance. I've heard of VueScan but don't know wether or not that is any better. For example, at what DPI should I scan? Obviously I only want to have to do this scan project ONCE. Should I scan at a high resolution and save as TIFF images, and keep these high resolution non-lossy images backed up, and then resize them to somewhat smaller JPGs that is easier for my parents to view?<br> 3. <em><strong>SLIDES QUESTION</strong></em>: When my father was active in photography, he would place his negatives in special plastic sleeves, but he would also cut out the ones he liked best and out them in slides. The slides are quite unorganized now, and what I would like to do is try to figure out which series of negatives each slide belongs to, and put them in order. Problem is, some of the slides are made out of paper, like the ones in this picture: http://johnboucha.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/magnet.jpg<br> Is it possible to open these up and get the negative out, so I can see the number of the slide and that way figure out which series of negative roll each negative belongs to, or would I mess up the negative by trying to open that paper up? I realize I would ruin the slide (paper part) but I don't need the negative back in it, I just want to know if there is any point of trying to open it up. How would I do that best way without destroying the negative?<br> 4. <em><strong>PHOTO VIEWING SOFTWARE QUESTION</strong></em>: After I have scanned all the images, I would like to somehow put keywords on each picture, and I want to give my parents a good photo viewing software that they can easily put a keyword into, and it will pull up all pictures marked with that keyword. Which do you think would be the best software for this purpose? Also, if I scan the images to TIFF images, does that format support keywords, and if I was to batch-downsize them to JPGs with smaller resolution (for easier viewing), would that carry the keywords over to the JPGs or would I have to re-do the keyword process again manually?<br> I'm so sorry if these questions are not appropriate for this forum, but I hope someone can help me or otherwise direct me to a forum better suited for my questions.<br> Thank you for reading! ~~Sandy</p>
