Scanning Tips
A Few Tips Before You Start Scanning
After you have a scanner, there are a few things you'll want to do before you start scanning.
1.) Make sure the inside of your scanner is clean. If you have a flatbed, make sure the glass you are scanning on is as clean as you can get it. Wipe it off with a lint free cloth. If it's just glass you can probably use water or a glass cleaner, but make sure you dry it completely before you start scanning. Be careful not to let any liquid get under the glass or on your negatives or photos.
2.) Dust off your slides, negatives or prints! Get some canned air if you don't have any!
Most cans of air will probably work just fine. Before you spray your slides, negatives or prints, test your can away from your photos. Sometimes these cans of air will spray liquid when they are first used or have been sitting on a shelf for a while. You don't want to get liquid on your slides, negatives or prints. Hold you slide, negative or print in one hand and the canned air in another and spray, in short puffs, to get rid of all the dust you can. Immediately put he photo in the scanner. Make sure to keep your scanner shut and covered when you are not using it. The less dust you have on your picture and scanner when you scan your picture, the less work you'll have later when you're touching it up.
3.) What should you name your picture? I name my photos by the date they were taken (Year_Month_Day if you only have the year, that's fine or even an approximate year) and then a brief description. This way all of my photos are in chronological order. I highly recommend this naming system. I've tried several others and none have worked as well as this.
4.) You'll want to come up with an organization system for your photos. I'll talk about what I do in another article.
5.) Make sure you make some kind of record of which photos you have scanned and which you have yet to scan (see article “Write it Down”). Sometimes after I scan for a few days something else will come up and I won't be able to come back for a few weeks or months. I think I'll remember what pictures I left of on, but it's easy to forget.
Slides, Negatives or Prints?
If you have negatives and prints of those negatives, which should you scan? I usually go with the negatives. The prints came from the negatives. Not all photo finishers print with the same quality, and, as my dad says in his article, "a properly-preserved slide or negative will outlast the print made from it and will produce a much better copy print than will a print". If your negatives are damaged you will probably want to scan your printed photo instead. Test it out. Try scanning a few prints and negatives and compare the different qualities and decide for yourself which you like better.
Which is better to scan, slides or negatives? These are usually about the same. If you have a photo that is both in slide and negative format, scan both and compare. Sometimes it's easy to tell which to scan by how each was stored. If the slides were stored in airtight archival quality boxes but the negatives were stuffed in an envelop somewhere, you might find the slides are better quality after you scan both and compare.
Overall, which format to scan depends on the quality. I prefer scanning negatives and slides. If I had to choose between the two, I would probably pick slides, but it just depends. If prints are all I have then I will obviously want to scan those.
