How to Transfer 35 mm Slides to a DVD

Turn on your computer and film/slide scanner and open the scanning program on your computer. Set the scanner to scan slides.

Create a folder on your computer into which the slides will be scanned. Naming the folder is an important consideration. You might name the folder with the date you scanned the images or by subject – landscapes or family vacations, for example. If you have a large number of slides in your archive, consider creating a catalog listing what slides are on which DVD. Whatever you decide, make it straightforward and easy to reference.

Prepare your slides for scanning by gently wiping them with an anti-static cloth. This cloth will help prevent dust from settling onto the slide and limit the amount of editing you have to do later.

Place the slides into the carrier tray of the scanner and start the scan.

Save the scanned images as either TIFF or RAW files with zero compression. While this type of file takes up more space, it also gives you the most data from scan. The more data contained in the file, the greater amount of control you can have in editing.

Finish scanning the rest of the slides up to the capacity of a single DVD.

Place a blank DVD into your computer’s DVD burner drive. Copy or move the folder from your computer’s hard drive to the DVD. If you choose to move the folder without keeping a copy on your hard drive, you will need to insert the DVD into the computer whenever you want to access the pictures on it.

Label the DVD case with information about the slides now contained on the DVD, remove DVD from your computer, and place in the case for storage.