Scanning negatives to preserve your old photos
You can’t keep your old 35mm negatives in pristine condition forever. Unless you store them singularly in acid free sleeves, your negatives will deteriorate as time passes. Your negatives will start to fade and lose their color as well as contrast. In time, they will gather dust and have scratches. When you want to develop photographic prints of your negatives, your photos will not be as excellent as when you first saw them.
Scanning negatives is an ideal way to preserve your old photos. The history and memories captured in these negatives will become more valuable to you with the passage of time. Old negatives are a record of your family history and legacies that you can bequeath to your descendants. Instead of storing your negatives in old boxes in the attic or basement, scan your negatives so that they become accessible to a whole new generation of family members.
To scan your negatives, you’ll need a quality negatives scanner that is equipped to handle your negatives and provide optimal quality scanning. It will have back lighting capability which is essential for scanning negatives. Many of the scanners on the market today are already installed with a carrier for negatives so you will not have to purchase a custom negatives scanner. When scanning large negatives, you’ll have an adapter to maximize scan quality. The image on the negative is lit from behind so that the image is projected for the scanner to read.
A software comes with the scanner and this will convert your negatives to a photo which you can view onscreen. A photo-editing program will enable you to edit, print and store your images. You can choose a suitable resolution for your picture as well. The higher the resolution, the better the quality of the image. However, high resolution pictures use up a lot of your computer memory. For sharing your photos on the web, stick to 72dpi and save memory space. Use 300dpi for high quality images only.
You can store the image that you’ve scanned into your computer hard drive, a CD ROM or even on your DVD. You could upload these photos from scanning negatives onto your digital photo albums and share them with your relatives and friends on Facebook. If you’ve stored your photos on your CD or hard drive, make back-up copies for security reasons. In case you lose or misplace your data, you have another copy available.
You could opt for scanning services if you don’t have your own scanner. These are quite cost effective and professionally done. You could give them a CD to save your photos in. Your negatives will be handled with care so you’ll have them back in good condition.
You should opt for scanning your negatives if you want to preserve your old photos and precious memories from the past. You’ll be able to hand down your legacy to your heirs in digital format that is free from corruption and deterioration. Your past will be etched in printable form for years to come!