scanning family photos ... Aaaauugh!

[meierlde]

Some prints, especially from around 1970, have a textured finish that scanners pick up. I have yet to find a software tool that removes that texture pattern without also blurring the image. Has anyone found one that does a good job removing textures?

If you have the negatives with photoshop elements it is possible to scan the negatives in and have the software change a negative to a positive. (i would suspect that photoshop itself could also do this)

 

[walkinwood]

A friend used this guy's setup to scan his slides. He bought inexpensive extension tubes for his camera so he didn't need to buy a macro lens.

https://youtu.be/iMO50AlGyrw

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I have about 40lbs of photos in a 90 quart plastic box, and this is after I removed all of the non-cardboard frames except one. Several are larger than a standard scanner bed. I'd love to put a good camera on a tripod and photograph a bunch at a time and have software automatically adjust the perspective separately for each photo and save one photo per file. But I have a feeling there's no such software.

This doesn’t work exactly as you describe, but it lets you scan multiple pictures at a time on your scanner and then splits them into individual files. I downloaded and tested it and it worked fine in test mode. But I have not yet purchased it.

https://autosplitter.com

 

[Leo1277]

A friend used this guy's setup to scan his slides. He bought inexpensive extension tubes for his camera so he didn't need to buy a macro lens.

https://youtu.be/iMO50AlGyrw

A few years back I scanned about 10,000 (high quality) slides I have, and about 5,000 negatives and perhaps 1,000 prints. After a lot of trial and error, it turns out the most high quality and at the same time nerve friendly way is to use professional scanning services, and I used ScanCafe. If you want good quality results, there are so many things to consider and so many things that can go wrong or not quite work out that I gladly invested the roughly 20 cents it costs per negative or slide in one of their frequent sales to have the pros do it.

Even if you succeed to get the image sharp, which is already hard with one of these YouTube gizmos or even a very good macro lens, the difficulty only starts there. Slides need very carefully calibrated color corrections to look great; taking a digital image of a slide usually ends up looking "pushed" and unnatural in skin tones and sky color, and these things are very hard to undo in Photoshop. It's even worse when trying to go negative to positive, there is much more to it than just reverting the colors, as each negative was made to work in the color print system which emphasizes certain colors strongly and de-emphasizes others, and this effect has to be carefully considered. Finally there is the fact that slides and to a lesser extent negatives have a much larger contrast range than regular photos and even the best monitors, and poor scanning overblows the brights and muddles the darks.

There are other aspects like digital dust and scratch removal, which basically all slides and negatives need even if they were well kept in storage, which good professional systems do in hardware by in essence taking a separate image of the dust only, you can look it up under "Digital ICE". All this has the potential to drive you nuts if you want good results. And finally there is just the speed; before I let the pros handle it, I even bought an automated slide scanner for around $1000 that does a whole tray at once, but it gingerly nibbles along and takes two hours for 50 slides before the tray has to be changed, only to yield results that still leave a lot to be desired. Fortunately at the time the slide scanner had a high resale value and I didn't lose much.

The professional slide scanning equipment does all that, in my case they used the "Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED" (sorry about the funky name, greetings from Japan) which comes with its own software and costs five figures to buy. It has great dedicated Nikon optics, great sensors, and the low level processing software is calibrated to the specific optics and sensor. It scans at 4000dpi (resulting in around 20 Megapixels for a typical slide or negative) and 16 bits color depth (regular monitors are 8, high dynamic range TVs are 10 or 12). That Nikon system is generally considered the best until you get beyond medium format and invest yet 10 times more and have to live with continuous routine maintenance needs. Many professional photographers used that in the time when they would still shoot film and then scan that for the best possible results.

 

[PlaySomeBlues]

I agree, Leo. I sent hundreds of slides to ScanCafe. It's easy, and the people there did a great job of producing dust-free digital images. The turnaround time was short, and I received texts at every step — "we have your slides," "your slides are being scanned," "each image is being color corrected," "here is where you can download your images." All slides were returned, too.

The best result comes from sharing old photos with family members. It sparks so many memories, and I've heard great stories for the first time.

I am in the process of scanning prints from the 1930s-50s from my grandparents, and those get the same reaction. I'm hearing details about my great-grandparents' lives, personalities and more. Good stuff.

 

[Leo1277]

I have used ScanCafe.com for years and have been very happy with their service and always recommend them. The only caveat is that, unless you choose the US service option, your photos and negs are shipped to India (very securely) and you'll have about a 2 to 3 month wait. Subscribe to their newsletter and wait for 30- 40% off coupons. Still, HIGHLY recommended.And this is from a person who has a Nikon Coolscan 8000. I use the Coolscan very sparingly and I let ScanCafe do the heavy lifting!

I see this post only now after having just written a long post about ScanCafe and the Nikon CoolScan 9000 ED they used for my slides and negatives. Hats off that you actually own one, I wish I did, as they aren't made anymore and are creeping up in price because they are so good.

My precious photos were actually sent to ScanCafe India, in about four or five batches if I recall correctly. The biggest box was about 4 by 4 by 4 feet, and they even sent me a video of them opening the box in India and cataloging the content before scanning. The main reason why I chose India is because there they used the Nikon CoolScan, while in their US scanners they had switched to some flatbeds that weren't quite as good but faster for US labor rates.

That brings up one comment: I thought I was smart to leave all the slides in their plastic storage trays used for my projector, where two trays go in a plastic box of 100 slides, so that the order of the slides would stay intact. The problem was, many of these outer plastic boxes broke during the shipment, and I ended up with around 800 slides completely mixed up that took much time to sort back where they go. After I got it all back, I threw away all plastic boxes and trays, and my 10,000 slides (in thin frames) all fit in around 6 or 7 shoe boxes now, stored in one large air and water tight plastic storage box, together with a healthy dose of those silica dehumidifying pouches, which you can buy in bulk on Amazon.

 

[walkinwood]

My precious photos were actually sent to ScanCafe India, in about four or five batches if I recall correctly.

In a previous post, someone said that you can decide for yourself if they process the slides in the US or send them to India.


I went through most of the ordering steps - stopped at the shipping address page - but cannot see where that option is. I can only see one price per slide scan - $.37.

 

[sengsational]

I'm somewhat irrational about saving pictures; even though I knew I'd never look at them, I scanned every one. I'm also somewhat irrational about "not loosing quality", but I overcame that; in my experimentation I determined that when presented on my monitor, I could see more detail than while looking at the original, even in optimal lighting conditions (which probably would not happen...it would be just flipping through on the couch). The document feed scanner I used was plenty good enough quality, and a stack of 36 is done in just a few seconds...both sides if you want. Felt great when I could barely handle the weight of the trash can on the way to the street.

 

[Leo1277]

In a previous post, someone said that you can decide for yourself if they process the slides in the US or send them to India.

I went through most of the ordering steps - stopped at the shipping address page - but cannot see where that option is. I can only see one price per slide scan - $.37.

If I remember correctly, when I did this it was on the page with the various scanning options, like whether you want tiff also or only jpg, what resolution you want etc, and the India way may have been cheaper. For sure India had the better scanning equipment at that time, and more time per picture to do the best possible job. But you may just want to email them and ask for clarification, when I contacted them earlier they were very quick and friendly with replies.

Also note that when you specify "India", it does not mean that you ship your individual package there or they send it back to your from there. Rather, mailing is still done to and from the US, and they collect all such shipments and put them in a bulk crate that goes via air freight once per week or something like that; so it's almost like courier shipping which eased my safety concerns about my "precious" photos.

As somebody else pointed out, you may want to subscribe to their mailing list, since they quite regularly have various sales with something like 40% off, or a big box of any 500 items for a fixed price, or something similar.

 

[Leo1277]

I'm somewhat irrational about saving pictures; even though I knew I'd never look at them, I scanned every one. I'm also somewhat irrational about "not loosing quality", but I overcame that; in my experimentation I determined that when presented on my monitor, I could see more detail than while looking at the original, even in optimal lighting conditions (which probably would not happen...it would be just flipping through on the couch). The document feed scanner I used was plenty good enough quality, and a stack of 36 is done in just a few seconds...both sides if you want. Felt great when I could barely handle the weight of the trash can on the way to the street.

I think what you describe as "irrational" is really just "human nature" I have had just about the same thoughts at the time.

If you are actually scanning prints instead of negatives or slides, then the story becomes "simpler" in the sense that the quality is naturally lower, and a document feed scanner is my preferred method too. I have this one (which as I just found out, is now discontinued but doubled in price compared to when I bought it 3 years ago) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AYUI490 The software has various scanning options, and the color picture mode produced superb results even compared to professional scanning of prints, and the whole process is so fast.

I love my Fujitsu feed scanner so much, I even used it for old books or brochures that I can't quite get myself to throw out without the "irrational" urge to keep a copy. For books I have a heavy duty bookbinder-grade paper cutter to remove the spine, and I feed the entire book in loose leaf form through in 2-3 batches of around 1 min each. Super easy and very high quality, and still only a couple tens of megabytes per book, and if you want even with decent text recognition for searching. I have done several hundreds of books that way.

 

[ERObjd]

When my mom passed I was closest and ended up dealing with closing out her estate. She had probably 30 of those picture album books dating back to the 50's.

I took on the job of trying to scan them, my scanner is slow and some of the pics were old and yellowed. I There were probably 100 pictures per book .I scanned maybe 2-3 books and got fed up. There is a video place in town who did scanning and could do it faster and at better resolution and any pics that were yellowed they could fix. I took the rest to him and it came to about $250 and he put all the pics on 1 CD and copied 4 additional CDs which I gave to each of my brother and sisters. Best $250 I ever spent.

 

[misanman]

I love my Fujitsu feed scanner so much

I have the same model and feel the same way - an amazing device.

 

[Leo1277]

Just in case anybody is interested, ScanCafe just sent me another discount coupon: "Time to break out those old memories! Now through 2/22, save 30% off slide and negative transfers— just use code SCSLIDES30." You can also sign up for their mailings and wait for the occasional 40% off.