Transferring old photos and slides to a digital format brings numerous benefits, not to mention the space savings. Say goodbye to all the old photo shoeboxes and slide carousels in your basement or garage! New digital services allow your precious images to be converted to DVDs, online sharing, and other fun digital media. This untraps your photos and allows them to be shared and enjoyed with your family and friends, whether they’re in Boston or Boise.
Overview
If you’re like most families, you have dozens of boxes and albums of old photos, as well as carousel trays of old 35mm slides. All of these pre-digital formats unfortunately can be considered trapped in time, as they sit wasting away in homes around the world. The photos in the boxes get torn or crushed, while the plastic cellophane pages in the photo albums react with the chemical makeup of the photos and often discolors them, turning them yellow over time. Storage in extreme environmental conditions, such as the heat of an attic or the cold and humidity of a basement, also affects the quality of the photographic paper.
Slides fare somewhat better, since they are usually protected in circular trays that house anywhere from 20-140 slides. It is difficult, however, to find a specific slide without having to load up the projector and go through each slide. And the once popular individual slide view finders that were manufactured in the 20th century are fast disappearing.
Digital Transferral
With the advent of digital cameras that are now extremely popular and affordable, families for the first time find that they have significant photo and slide collections in multiple formats: those images that typically pre-date the 1990s, and those taken during or after the 90s, when more families turned to digital media. It’s time to open the door to enjoying and sharing your older photos and slides by ensuring all of the older formats are transferred to digital.
This process uses equipment to scan each image and produce a digital version without ever actually touching the photo or slide, so the original is never harmed. Specialized software enables the now-digitized image to be restored and enhanced, fixing such problems as red-eye, scratches on the original, or distorted colors.
Benefits
Once in digital form, there are four clear benefits to the new format:
1. Organize, combine and label – It’s easy to arrange and identify your transferred images once they are in digital format. Moving them around is as simple as moving them around on your PC screen. And you can combine all of your memories, both pre-1990s and post-1990s, into one digital collection of DVDs or storing online. Say goodbye to boxes and carousels that take up space in the garage.
2. Make them look better – It’s a fact that the old photos and slides we grew up with do not improve with time, but rather, lose their quality. With digital technology, you can have them restored to their original color and vibrancy.
3. Preservation – Natural disasters aside, we’ve seen what happens just with the simple passing of time – photos are unorganized and unlabeled, remaining a mystery to future generations. Storing the images in a digital format preserves them for generations.
4. Enjoy and share – What good are memories if no one can ever enjoy them? If you never view the photos in the boxes, look through the albums, or fire up the slide projector, those images are lying dormant. You can do fun things with digital photos:
a. Build photo books online
b. Produce photo calendars and other family momentos as gifts
c. Use them as revolving “wallpaper” (background screens) on your computer
d. Send them to an iPod or mobile phone for your kids or grandkids
e. Create DVD slideshows for special occasions, like a birthday, anniversary or graduation
It’s not only fun but easy today to convert old photos and slides to a digital format. You can join the digital revolution!
About iMemories
iMemories is a leader in the dynamic Web 2.0-generation of Internet services. The company transforms old-media memories into crystal-clear digital files that consumers can enjoy and share—whenever and wherever they like.
In iMemories’ 8,500-square foot fiber-optic studio, production professionals use state-of-the-art technology and techniques to convert old home-movie films, videotapes, photographs and slides into organized archives and full-length digital productions. Memories that were deteriorating in the dark are preserved forever on optical disc—and easy to edit, organize, store and share worldwide through iMemories’ private, secure online user experience.
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Disclaimer:
This article is provided as an educational guide for iMemories customers. Use of or reliance upon the information set forth in this article shall be at the reader’s own risk, and shall not establish any contractual or other legal relationship between the author and the users of this information.
Although digital cameras have been around for a few years and are becoming more and more popular many of us still have a large number of older film camera paper prints, slides and negatives. Most people keep their paper prints and negatives at their homes and only use digital formats for new photos they shoot with their new digital cameras. In this article we will discuss converting your old paper prints into digital format.
Photos are usually kept at home in one of three formats:
Paper prints: the most common format, usually at sizes like 4X6 and 5X7. Over time paper prints tend to lose their quality. Depending on how well they are kept the paper might turn yellow and bend and the colors might fade.
Negatives: also known simply as film. This is the processed film usually 35mm from which the prints where made. Although negatives can get damaged over time they are more likely to maintain their high quality. Negatives are hardly used unless new paper prints are needed.
Slides: very similar to negatives used for projecting photos on a large screen.
There are many advantages to digital photography. Having your photo album in digital format allows you to easily print paper copies either at home or using a printing service, to view your photos on your computer, to share photos with friends and family and maybe most importantly to practically archive your photos for eternity. So if digital format is that good why not convert all those old photos from traditional paper and negatives to digital? Here is how:
There are different considerations when converting from paper to digital. Professional photographers spend a lot of time and money on this process. For most amateurs and consumers very simple methods can be used which are both cheap and easy. Scanning paper prints and negatives requires different equipment and considerations. For most home users scanning the negatives is not necessary.
If you are going to scan at home consider the following:
Resolution: the resolution of a scan is measured by the number of dots per inch that the scanner can produce. Most scanners can scan at 1200 DPI or more. Usually the scanner can be set to scan at different resolutions. The higher the resolution the slower the scan and the bigger the photo file size will be. For most paper prints scanning at 300 to 600 DPI is enough but you can experiment scanning at higher resolutions if you feel it provides better results.
Speed: If you have a small number of photos speed is not an issue. If you have hundreds or more of photos scanning speed becomes important. To get fast scans you would have to scan at the lowest resolution possible that results in good enough scans – for most paper prints 300 to 600 DPI is enough.. Also if you’re going to buy a scanner check the scanning speed (usually measured in the number of scans per minute make sure that you check the speed at the DPI you’re going to use).
Photo feeding: if you only have a small number of photos this is not an issue. If you have many photos make sure that the scanner you buy allows fast and easy loading of photos. Some higher-end scanners will let you load a stack of photos and will automatically feed and scan them for you. These scanners are the right choice if you are planning on scanning hundreds or more photos.
Scanning negatives and slides
If you want to scan at home your standard flat scanner will not be good enough. In most cases you will need to spend money on purchasing a film/slides scanner. Those scanners are more expensive than the flat paper scanners. Negatives and slides are small high resolution sources and thus require scanning at higher DPI than paper prints. In most cases 2400DPI or higher should be used.
The considerations for scanning negatives and slides are similar to scanning paper prints. If you need to scan just a few negatives or slides speed and ease are not important but if you’re going to scan hundreds or more you should spend more money on scanners that can feed the negatives or slides automatically or can just load a roll of film and scan it.
The good news is that in most cases scanning negatives is not needed at all. For most amateurs and consumers scanning home photo paper prints is more than enough and scanning the source negatives is a not needed. It is recommended of course to keep the negatives in a safe place. You can use the digital scans for future prints or just for viewing on your computer screen and sharing with your friends and family.
In conclusion scanning your photo paper prints is easy. You can do it yourself at home or you can use a professional scanning service. You can convert all your memories into digital format with a small investment and make sure that you can enjoy those photos and also keep them in their original quality for eternity.