Scanning Negatives: How to Digitize Slides and Negatives

   • Scanning Negatives: How to Digitize Slides...   www.Facebook.com/ReynoldsRetouching www.ReynoldsRetouching.com Scanning Negatives: How to Digitize Slides and Negatives Scanning is scanning, right? That’s what I thought when happily checking the “yes, provide CD” box at the nearest film developing location. I won’t name names, but it wasn’t Walmart or CVS, and I thought this location would live up to my admittedly high standards. That was a long time ago, but I noticed several things when viewing the digital files. While they probably used canned air to clean the negatives and scanner bed, there was still dust in places. Also, the contrast was either flat or overly “punchy”, depending on the image. Shadows were clipped, meaning there was shadow detail on the negative that was lost during the scanning process, and the same was true for highlights. And finally, the colors were off. This all occurred before my college digital photography classes; and learning to scan transparencies taught me two things. First, that properly scanning images takes time. And second, that the above-mentioned print lab would have gone out of business, had they applied my standards to their scanning process without significantly raising their prices.