Tips for scanning old slides?

[Graeme M]

I have started scanning in my old slides and wondering if anyone has some tips.

I am scanning in at 1200dpi and using Picasa's auto correct features on the scanned images. I've fiddled with a few of the correction tools in that and also Paintshop Pro but usually just mess things up more. Picasa's auto-correct seems to come close enough for me but just wondering what others think. Also am I better to save to TIFF and do my changes there and output as say JPEG? In my first pass yesterday I saved out as JPEG, but maybe that's just too lossy as a storage format?

Some of the more underexposed shots scan really grainy, any thoughts on how to reduce that?

[Slakewell]

I use photoshop after scanning but yeah I like better quality from my scans

[IT400C]

what hardware do you have?

Depending on what it is, it may be supported by Vuescan..

http://www.hamrick.com/

Supported scanners at http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#supported

There's a free trial version, as well as a US$40 Standard version, and a US$80 Professional version.  The standard version includes free upgrades for a year, the Pro version has free upgrades for life.  It's upgraded every few weeks.

I use it on my slide scanner (Epson Perfection V700), and I love it.  It has the option of multiple scan passes for highlights-lowlights and mid-tones whih are then merged into a much richer scan.

Best $80 I've spent in ages.

[Mike52]

Best $80 I've spent in ages.

Prove it Tony.

[IT400C]

It also has auto correct tools, including scratches, fading etc.  It even corrects for the type of slide film used (as long as you tell it waht it is)..  Different slide films worked better with different colours..

i.e. the same photo taken with Kodak Kodachrome and Kodak Ektachrome would have slightly different colour biases..

[IT400C]

and I use Photoshop CS5 for editing (cropping etc.)

I've used Paintshop Pro, and the old Photoshop 7 etc., but the correction and editing tools in CS5 work MUCH better.

[Graeme M]

Thanks for that, I'll look into it. So far, at least for my purposes, what I am doing is OK-ish. But if I can find something better I'd be keen. I'm unlikely to buy Photoshop tho, more money than I have spare for such things, and anyway I'd never be able to learn it.

[IT400C]

I'm unlikely to buy Photoshop tho, more money than I have spare for such things, and anyway I'd never be able to learn it.

I'm lucky, my brother is a teacher, the educational version is $200...   

[IT400C]

Depending on what it is, it may be supported by Vuescan..

http://www.hamrick.com/

Supported scanners at http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#supported

I use it on my slide scanner (Epson Perfection V700), and I love it.  It has the option of multiple scan passes for highlights-lowlights and mid-tones whih are then merged into a much richer scan.

Best $80 I've spent in ages.

I should have mentioned - Vuescan is a 3rd party scanning software - you use it instead of whichever software came with your scanner..

From what I saw while researching it, most of the photographic magazines consider it the 2nd best scanning software available..  Not bad for $40 or $80 dollars..

The best scanning software is over $1000 a licence..   

[IT400C]

Scanned off a 35mm slide, then resized to 1280 x *** in photoshop.

[Graeme M]

I'm a bit of a thickie with software. Downloaded a trial version and it looks like a good program, but unfortunately it scanned something other than the slide. My scanner has a strip area for slides to be scanned in which works fine with the default software, but not at all with VueScan. And I won't be trying to figure it out either, after years of struggling with software I don't bother now - if it works out of the box, great, if not, too bad. But thanks for the recommendation - it does look like a good tool and the reviews etc are very glowing. Your example is an excellent scan compared to what I am getting...

Maybe I should just give the lot to a professional scanning service and pay for it.

[cheapracer]

Graeme, I use PSP extensively and do these steps mostly (but not everytime);

1/ "One Step Photo Fix"

2/ "Automatic Color Balance" at 7500 (cooler)

3/ "Clarify" at 2 (strength of effect)

 ... and sometimes play with "Sharpen"

These are all on the same dropdown.

I only ever save anything as .jpeg's.

[Graeme M]

Yes, there's a few small tuning steps necessary I have found. I have been scanning in with the default software and saving in TIFF. Then I use Picasa to do some simple fixes, and save as JPEG. From there it's off to an old version of Paint Shop Pro to do some resizing and sharpening etc for web use. But my end results are often very average. Part of it of course is not knowing enough about what I am doing. I use an old version of PSP because newer versions just confuse the heck out of me.

Any decent software for anything requires such an extensive learning curve and I just don't know how you find the huge amount of time needed to keep learning such things. I downloaded a highly recommended program to try to convert my digital video to clips for use on YouTube etc, and do you think I could figure it out? Nope. I have several programs for that, all of which work quite differently from each other, all of which are confusing, and none of which I know how to use.

I once tried to use Joomla to make a website. Oh that's so easy everyone told me. No... it isn't. I gave up when I couldn't even figure out the most basic starting point.

Sadly a lot of this stuff will just have to wait until retirement when I can spend months figuring it all out!