Best method to archive photos on a 'puter (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gillespie]

Thanks Scott. I'm some way off from that point yet. I now have the 53 prints scanned (at 1200dpi) and they're looking good (actually, thee of them are now up on the site, massively reduced in size!). However they need a lot of work to remove dust and marks (and scanning at that res reveals a LOT). I also need to colour-correct most of them as best I can. At the moment they're all sitting on the hard drive in .bmp format - which oddly seem to load and save quick in Paint Shop Pro than the applications' native file format.

 

[Max Leung]

Rob, how do you color-correct your scans? Do you use an instrument to do it?

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Nah, nothing so grand Max! Just altering skin tones, gamma and saturation levels in Pain Shop!

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Well, I've started scanning a few 35mm negatives. I'm very impressed with how much cleaner and more detailed the images are. One particularly nice image of her (the one I used when making the order of service booklets for her funeral), which always looked dark on the print, has detail I never even knew was there.

The neg scans also need a huge amount less 'cleaning' (i.e. clone-brush touch up). Very impressive. I would have preferred a dedicated neg scanner, perhaps a 4000dpi model, but cost is a big factor and I'd have to spend a LOT to get that kind of equipment. The Epson cost me £280. I probably would have spent three or four times that (or more) on a dedicated neg scanner and it wouldn't have the lovely flatbed ability of the Epson. A terrific buy, really. I'm very pleased with it. It's a lot of money for a scanner in todays market, but the results are showing where the money has gone.