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How to Transfer 35mm Slides to Digital

Slide film used to offer photographers an easy way to store a number of images. They are small, can be sorted individually into archival holders or slide projector trays based on subject and for many professional photographers they offered a higher quality of color representation than print film. With the advent of digital technology--with the ability to scan 35mm negatives--many photographers are now “digitizing” their archive for storage or display on the Internet. There a few ways you can do this, but using a dedicated negative/slide scanner will give you the best results for image quality and clarity.

Things You'll Need

Slides to scan
Anti-static cloth
Negative/slide scanner with included software
Home computer with scanning software installed

Instructions

Scanning 35mm Slides
- 1
  Organize you slides by subject or date shot, or however you want to store them in your computer.
- 2
  Turn your computer and slide scanner on. Set the scanner for slides and install the included scanning software onto your computer if you haven’t already done so. Create and name folders where your slides will be saved.
- 3
  Prepare the slides you are about to scan by cleaning them with an anti-static cloth. This specially treated cloth will help prevent dust from collecting onto your slides.
- 4
  Place you slides into the carrier tray included with your scanner. Insert the tray into the scanner as per its instructions, and start the scan.
- 5
  Save the scanned images to the appropriate folder. Save the slides as a TIFF (.tif) file with zero compression. Saving the files this way will retain as much data as possible, and will give you greater control of the files' dynamic range when editing. Dynamic range is the color spectrum of the picture, and when you save the slides as a JPEG (.jpg) you lose a little of that range. Keeping the original as a TIFF file will always ensure you have a version with the same color profile as the slide.

Photography