Photo negatives still have better equivalent resolution than digital images taken with a digital camera, so all those old boxes or albums full for negatives still are valuable. All you need to do is to convert them to digital images of high resolution to get the best of both worlds. There basically are three ways to convert them: with a flatbed scanner, with a negative scanner or with a digital camera. The first two will produce better images.
Instructions
1. Clean the negatives. If they are black and white, you can clean them with a soft, lint-free cloth and water. For color negatives, you will need film cleaner, since water can smear or remove the images. Don't use too much pressure when cleaning, because it can damage the emulsion of the film.
2. Get a slide scanner. If you have a lot of negatives to convert to digital, invest in a slide scanner, because it will produce better images at higher resolutions. You can use a flatbed scanner, but you should use one with negative holders to keep the film flat while scanning. Flatbeds are faster, but you may lose some of the sharpness of the images.
3. Mount your negatives in slide mounts. These are little plastic containers for slides. You can buy them empty, then cut the negatives and mount them. These will give you more control over scanning and avoid getting fingerprints on the negatives.
4. Use scanning software designed for film. Software will accompany the scanner, or you can buy a separate program such as SilverFast. This software includes dust- and scratch-removal options, or you can scan directly and fix problems in Adobe Photoshop or other photo editing software.
5. Catalog the digital images. You probably will want to keep digital image files together to work on later. Create a folder for each photo shoot or roll of film scanned. Not only will this make it easier to find images of the same type later, it also will allow you to fix images with the same problems without forgetting what you did. If, for example, a particular photo shoot of a birthday party has the same orange color cast, you can use the same settings on all of them.
6. Open a scanned file in Photoshop (click "File," then "Open") and convert it to a positive (click "Image," then "Adjustments," then "Invert"). Then adjust it for proper size and tone for prints on the Web. You can make images taken 40 or 50 years ago look like they were shot yesterday by correcting the color. Save the fixed images as copies so you don't have to rescan the negatives if you make a mistake.
Tags: digital images, better images, convert them, digital camera, flatbed scanner, images taken