Traditionally, negatives have served as an imaging safety net in case anything was to happen to the actual printed photograph. However, negatives run the identical risks as printed photos and deteriorate at the same rate. The only way to guarantee the safety of your memories is to preserve them digitally. That’s why I’m happy to share our process for scanning negatives.
First, check out this video for a quick demonstration:
How To Scan Negatives from Pamela Weiss on Vimeo.
There are many steps in our negative scanning process. First, I have to take negatives and clean them with compressed air and when necessary, carefully clean them with non-abrasive, lint free wipes to remove any dust or dirt off of them. I then take one negative strip and feed it into the Nikon scanner and preview each image. Previewing is done to make sure the negatives are cropped correctly and not placed into the machine backwards. Then I select the the resolution and press the scan button. After the scan is complete, I go into the image folder and carefully examine each image to make sure I have captured a clean and balanced scan.
To begin our editing process for negatives, we use a special setting within the scanner that is called Digital Ice. Digital Ice uses infrared cleaning to detect scratches and dust during the transparent film scan. This removes a lot of those minor scratches that deter from your image. After all the images are scanned and had Digital Ice used to clean them up digitally, they are passed along to our editors who then further enhance each individual image by hand.
When a photo and negative are both available, we usually suggest scanning the negative because it is the purest form of the image. A photo is essentially a copy of a negative so when scanning a photo it’s like making a copy of a copy. Our top of the line editing equipment and our focused editors can enhance and repair a photo either way but it is recommended to start with the raw image.
Converting your negatives to digital format is one of the best ways to ensure the safekeeping of your images for a lifetime because let’s face it- sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances, like a fire or flooding. And who wants to take a chance of losing irreplaceable memories?
If you have any questions about scanning negatives, you can reach me at 888.333.2808 or on Twitter at @AshelyMillerSD Hope to hear from you soon!
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