Preserving 35mm slides or really any traditional slides which were produced years ago is one of the most difficult jobs. In order that they don't get exposed and damaged, you probably have stacked them all in a store room. However, this is really unnecessary today what with modern slide scanning services using advanced techniques to scan them into digital formats which are of high quality.
What todays' scanning services do is scan them into digital formats so that they can be stored electronically. That means they can be copied on to your computer or SD cards or anywhere you normally store all your digital files. This way, they would never be lost and maintain their present quality practically forever. Even compared to maybe a decade ago, digital scanning has come a long way.
Most of the modern slide scanning services will scan your slides and convert them into one of the popular image file formats like PNG, BMP or JPEG. Others services may prefer different formats. All these formats have their own pros and cons. The JPEG images for example occupy very little digital storage space. You can copy tons of JPEG images on to your smartphones and still have storage space left. This format however isn't of the highest quality possible.
The PNG is an uncompressed image file format which preserves the quality of your slide and reproduces exactly the same image. If you want to archive photos on to a large hard disk, this is the better choice. That is because the PNG files occupy a large amount of space as compared to the other formats. This shouldn't be a problem since Terabyte storage disks are much cheaper these days.
Once you have decided to scan your slides, you need to do some preparatory work before you go ahead. If you have tons of slides to be converted, better organize them into separate groups before handing them over to professionals. Also, if your slides are very old, they might be stained with dirt, some of it tough to remove. Nonetheless, clean the slides as much as possible without damaging them.
Now, if you cannot clean the slides completely, you don't need to despair. You can find many images editing software that will help you remove the dirt specs from the pictures once you have stored them on your computer. Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro are the most popular image manipulating software around. If you are looking for some free software alternatives, try GIMP.
Finally, you might be thinking whether to slide all those slides at home using your home scanner or to get the job done from slide scanning services. The right answer would depend on how many slides you want to convert and whether the scanner you have is good enough to scan those slides into high quality image files.
If you want to be sure that your slides are scanned into the best possible photos, handing the job over to a professional scanning service is better. Firstly, they are more likely to have high end professional equipment which is much better than the average scanner. Secondly, it will turn out to be much cheaper to have them scan for you.
What todays' scanning services do is scan them into digital formats so that they can be stored electronically. That means they can be copied on to your computer or SD cards or anywhere you normally store all your digital files. This way, they would never be lost and maintain their present quality practically forever. Even compared to maybe a decade ago, digital scanning has come a long way.
Most of the modern slide scanning services will scan your slides and convert them into one of the popular image file formats like PNG, BMP or JPEG. Others services may prefer different formats. All these formats have their own pros and cons. The JPEG images for example occupy very little digital storage space. You can copy tons of JPEG images on to your smartphones and still have storage space left. This format however isn't of the highest quality possible.
The PNG is an uncompressed image file format which preserves the quality of your slide and reproduces exactly the same image. If you want to archive photos on to a large hard disk, this is the better choice. That is because the PNG files occupy a large amount of space as compared to the other formats. This shouldn't be a problem since Terabyte storage disks are much cheaper these days.
Once you have decided to scan your slides, you need to do some preparatory work before you go ahead. If you have tons of slides to be converted, better organize them into separate groups before handing them over to professionals. Also, if your slides are very old, they might be stained with dirt, some of it tough to remove. Nonetheless, clean the slides as much as possible without damaging them.
Now, if you cannot clean the slides completely, you don't need to despair. You can find many images editing software that will help you remove the dirt specs from the pictures once you have stored them on your computer. Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro are the most popular image manipulating software around. If you are looking for some free software alternatives, try GIMP.
Finally, you might be thinking whether to slide all those slides at home using your home scanner or to get the job done from slide scanning services. The right answer would depend on how many slides you want to convert and whether the scanner you have is good enough to scan those slides into high quality image files.
If you want to be sure that your slides are scanned into the best possible photos, handing the job over to a professional scanning service is better. Firstly, they are more likely to have high end professional equipment which is much better than the average scanner. Secondly, it will turn out to be much cheaper to have them scan for you.
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There are many quality online 35mm slide scanning service available, that can save you the time and heartache of doing it at home yourself. These professional companies can convert your slides to digital images.
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