35mm Slide and Negative Scanning
Scan your slides or negatives to JPEG files on DVD or Hard Drive. Perfect for archiving your precious memories for years to come these scans allow you to organize your photos, email them to friends and family, upload them to share on facebook, and even have prints made.
How are my slides or negatives scanned?
First each slide or negative is checked by hand and given a light cleaning to remove any excess dust or dirt that may be stuck on your. Each slide is also checked that they are rotated to the correct orientation before scanning to ensure the highest quality of scan possible.
Once prepared for scanning slides are scanned into our system in batches of 25-50, negatives are usually run in strips of 6. Large jobs may be run on as many as 10 scanners simultaneously to expedite the process as much as possible. During the scanning process each slide is automatically run through the Digital ICE 4 software to detect any scratches or dirt that remains after the cleaning process and these defects are automatically repaired.
Now that your images are in the computer a technician reviews each one individually to ensure proper orientation and color corrects each one by hand if needed. If any scan does not meet our highest quality standards it is sent back to be rescanned to give you the best image possible.
Finally your images are transferred to an external hard drive or burned onto CD's or DVD's before being packaged up to be returned to you along with your original slides.
What is resolution and why do I need to know?
Resolution is a measure of how detailed a scan is. It is measured in Dots Per Inch or DPI. The more dots the more detailed the final image will be. Our standard 3000 DPI service produces an image roughly 3000x2000 pixels suitable for archiving or making prints up to 8x12. We also offer a smaller 1000 DPI scan which is good for viewing on the computer and sharing with friends and family over the internet. Our 1000 DPI scans will look fine in prints up to about 3x4 or 4x5 in some cases but are not a true archival quality scan. If you aren't sure what you need, we recommend the 3000 DPI scan, an image can always be made smaller but you can't make one bigger.
How many images will fit on a disc?
This is highly dependent on the resolution chosen, a 3000 DPI scan has 9 times as much information as a 1000 DPI scan, however due to the way images are stored on disc even the contents of the image can affect how much space is used to store it. The cost of disc is included in the scanning price so you don't need to worry about it. If you are having your images made up into a slideshow for your TV we can fit 1400 onto a 2 hour disc.
What is the difference between TIFF and JPEG?
Our standard JPEG scanning service is all that is needed for most people. Do to the nature of the file formats TIFF files are larger and fewer can fit per disc. They also take more processing time to work with so there is a small additional cost to producing them. This order form is for JPEG files, if you need TIFF files click here.