Turning slides into .jpg files.....
 

I think there may have been something on this once before, but I couldn't find it searching...

What's the best device for converting a large number of old slides into .jpg files? The scanner route seems to be very slow. Are there places that will do this for a reasonable fee?

Any input/experience much appreciated.

Really scanning slides well is a challenge. Remember that you are going from something quite small, so to have good resolution with enlargement you need a lot of pixels.

I've found the best solution is a dedicated slide scanner- Nikon makes a really good one, and they come up on EBAY quite a bit. Also, old slide images can be really brought to life in photoshop, so I scan right into photoshop and use the "auto" functions.

Yes they are slow, but if the image is worth it, it's the price you'll have to pay.

Charles

I have had some success scanning slides & negatives with my scanner. As Charles said, scan at an extremely high resolution & then diddle them with PhotoShop. Dust & scratches on the slide/negative are the big enemies here.

Ian

I had a bunch done at London Drugs. Can't remember the cost, but I remember thinking it was quite reasonable, and less than I thought it would be.

And they did a GREAT job.

That sounds like the biz.

Did they burn them to a disc?

They had a bunch of options as to how they would be delivered... you could get a proper "photo DVD" that would work in the DVD player, or just a raw data CD/DVD.

I opted for the data DVD with the largest possible resolution for each slide.

The image files came back at just under 20MB each, which I could then downsample as I needed.

Thanks Jeff.

I'm on it.

I use this service: www.scancafe.com

It's hi-res, painless and inexpensive.

Sherwood

I need to do that with my Dad's slides

with slides, you are far better off taking them to a photo store and having them transfer the images to a CD. get some prints of your favorites while your there!

i have a film/slide scanner with true 3600 DPI optical resolution.

I went to a Wolf Camera to get my done. They absolutely said I had too many to be economically practical and recommended I buy a scanner. So I did a little research and there are several models by different makers that have hardware attachments and special software to make this doable.

I bought a HP G4050 from NewEgg.Com. Decent price, very nice product. It will do up to 16 slides at a time. It took me the better part of 3 days working an hour here and an hour there to knock out 1,000 slides.

One tip I wish I had done. Get a can of compressed air and keep the glass platter clean. There was a lot of dust on my slides that got picked up in the scans. Wish I had cleaned them first and done a better job with the the glass too.

Right after graduating from High School in 1965 I went to Europe via a cruise ship.. Gone for 3 months and I took 350 slides. After 44 years the slides were beginning to detereoate. I bought a Canon 100 scanner that came complete with a slide adapter. I converted all 350 slides to Jpg photo's and enhanced every photo via the Canon software. I now have 350 digial photo's that probably look as good as they did in 1965.

If I remember correctly the scanner was only around 100 bucks.

another option, assuming you like the images on the slides:

you can take the slides to the photo place and have them do a 4x6 or 5x7 of each. then you can scan each photo print on your regular scanner. You will then have 1) a slide 2) a print and 3) a jpg

I scan prints all the time. dust is a major issue and even more so when scanning slides. it takes me a very long time, even after cleaning the scanner and print with an air-gun, to remove dust specks with photo shop

if a store can promise you the scans of slides will be dust-free images, let them do it