Scanning in photos?

[Ian]

I have several photos I'd like to scan into the computer, all on a fairly new print from an APS camera. Are there any useful techniques for getting these photos in digital form?

I know I could scan them in, but I'm not too happy with the results. They don't look half as good. If I sent the negatives off somewhere, can they be scanned in with a higher quality machine? I'd like something that isn't too expensive, but I really love the photos, so I'd pay a little more than usual to get them good quality.

 

[muckshifter]

What scanner is it?

Quad would have a better idea ... me, I usually just make sure they are small enough (MB wise) to get on the site I'm posting too. But I suppose it does help to have a decent scanner and I use Corel PhotoPaint for any adjustments that need to be made.

 

[floppybootstomp]

I think it all depends on the quality of the scanner. I do all photo and negative/slide scans at 1200dpi then save them as either Photoshop PDS or bitmap files to preserve full resolution. I then take jpeg formats from them as wanted.

If you're stuck there Ian, you could always post the negs to me and I'll scan them for you. I could host the images so you could download them and post the negs back to you. For gratis, free, zero, zilch, of course

 

[Ian]

The scanner is reasonable, I've got an HP Scanjet 5P and a Umax AstraSlim (would go for the Optical 5P in this case though).

I may well take you up on that offer floppy depending on how cheaply it is for a company to blow the image up without me having to scan it first Cheers

Do the negative scanners work well?

 

[floppybootstomp]

Do the negative scanners work well?

The one I have seems OK to me. It's a Canon D1250U2F, a normal flatbed scanner with a negative/slide holder that you mount the neg in, remove a white plastic 'sheet' from the scanner lid, place the holder on the bed, adjust software from 'platen' to 'film', then scan.

I borrowed one of those dedicated neg scanners for a few months, HP I think it was, very expensive, and my humble £130.00 scanner gave me a better result.

To scan, I open Photoshop >> Import >> select scanner >> preview >> select area >> scan.

 

[Quadophile]

Sorry I could not respond earlier was out the whole day.

Ian, I use a fairly basic HP scanner for scanning pics for posting on the web, as long as you do not push it to its limits they tend to do a decent job. The basic scanners like HP 4 and 5 series can do a decent job as long as you scan from medium to low quality.

I use a Nikon slide copier which I got when buying the digital camera and I can convert the slides as well as negatives to digital format by copying them from the digital camera, it gives very good results for web publishing. The negatives as you know can be processed in Photoshop although it is a very time consuming process if you are finicky like me. I did it a few times but later gave up. I use prints to scan on the scanner. I too use an ordinary scanner HP 3400 which gives OK results as far as web duty is concerend. I cannot justify buying an expensive scanner as I use it occasionally.

I urge you to use the scanner and see what the results are. The glossy prints will give a better result than the matte ones. Somehow the matte paper loses out in contrast, have you been trying to scan from prints which have been printed on matte paper?

The other thing which I have the experience of is that if you use a scanner from HP you whould go for the printer also from HP as the same companys products tend to match in a better way rather than a scanner from Epson and a printer from HP. This combination is important if you do printing and scanning at home. Just thought I'd mention this for reference.