Digital Focus: The ABCs of Scanning Old Photos
Flatbed scanners, film scanners, and specs you need to know.Dave Johnson
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Feature: The ABCs of Scanning Old Photos
I'm a careful guy--but I'm not without my inconsistencies. On one hand, I have carefully organized my thousands of digital photos with keywords for easy reference in photo-organizer software on my PC. And I also keep a regular backup so they won't get lost in a hard disk disaster. On the other, I still have hundreds of important photos trapped in the real world: My sole copies of slides, prints, and negatives share shoe boxes in a back closet, where it would take me a week to find a specific photo if the need arose. And they're slowly, steadily degrading.
Of course, I don't plan to live this way forever. I have the technology in place to scan my old pictures; and I've already made digital copies of about a quarter of my collection. If you want to do the same, you should get your hands on a scanner that's up for the task. This week, let's take a look at what you need in a photo scanner.
Choosing the Right Equipment
When I bought my first scanner, I paid $600 to get a 300-dots-per-inch flatbed model that drove the sensor past the document three separate times to make a full-color scan. Scanning a snapshot was a 5-minute ordeal. My unit didn't come with any way to scan slides or negatives, and it required a SCSI adapter.
Times have changed: You can now pay less than $200 for a fast, high-quality flatbed scanner that connects to your PC's USB port. There are some great deals out there. Personally, I recommend the Epson Perfection 2400, an all-around excellent 2400-dpi scanner that I found for about $150 at PC World's Product Finder.
The trick, of course, is finding a flatbed that handles all the scanning jobs you might need. You can buy flatbeds with standard and oversized scanning beds, for instance. If you need to scan larger documents--such as 8.5 by 14 inches--you'll usually end up paying a lot more than for cheaper units with letter-size maximums. For example, Hewlett-Packard's Scanjet 8200 (a PC World Best Buy) has a legal-sized scanning bed, and costs more than $400.
For more top-rated scanners, see PC World's "Top Flatbed Scanners."
The Case For Film Scanners
So far, I've focused on flatbed scanners, with good reason: Flatbeds are convenient. They let you scan ordinary photos, and--with the help of a transparency adapter--can also handle slides and negatives. But flatbeds usually lack both the dynamic range and the resolution to give you truly professional results with slides and negatives. That's fine if you usually scan prints. Prints are large enough that 600 or 1200 dpi is usually more than enough resolution for any scanning job. And flatbeds have plenty of dynamic range for the limited color palette found in most commercially printed photos.
Flatbeds fall short, though, when scanning tiny slides and negatives that need more dpi to accurately reproduce. And there are colors locked in slides that a flatbed scanner simply can't reproduce. So if you have lots of prized transparencies, you may want to grab a film scanner instead.
On the downside, film scanners ratchet up the price tag. They start around $300 and can reach into the thousands. But what you get in exchange is professional quality scans. Nikon's Coolscan V, for instance, clocks in just under $600 and has a 4000-dpi scanning engine optimized for slides and negatives.
Of course, you needn't spend quite that much. For example, the Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV costs a more modest $275, making it one of the least expensive good-quality film scanners I've ever seen. (You can go to our Product Finder to check the latest prices.).
It's All in the Dynamic Range
As I mentioned earlier, film scanners deliver a wider dynamic range than flatbeds, which means they can discern more levels of brightness throughout the image. Scanners with a low dynamic range turn subtle shadows into blotchy clumps of mud.
The payoff is in far greater detail in the darker regions of your photos. With a flatbed at 2400 dpi, you'll get indistinct darkness with randomly colored digital noise. With a good-quality film scanner, though, you'll see nothing but finely detailed levels of black. Of course, the downside is that film scanners can't scan prints, so some people end up buying both a flatbed and a film scanner to get their old photos into the PC.
For more on scanners for photographers, see my previous article on this topic.
Dave's Favorites: Make Huge Pictures With Digital Camera Poster Creator
What good is having an 8-megapixel camera when the biggest print you can make is an 8 by 10--because that's as big as your printer allows? And don't forget about your many-megapixel panoramas stitched together from individual images. No doubt you have some that would look great, if only you could print them at their full size.
Well, rather than buying an industrial poster press, you might try SRS1 Software's ($29) Digital Camera Poster Creator. This inexpensive shareware app lets you turn any digital image into a series of prints that you can assemble, like tiles, into an oversized print.
I tried Poster Creator with a few of my photos and was impressed with the results. Just open a picture and specify two important ingredients: the print size of each tile and how large those tiles should be with respect to the print. Together, these control the quality of your poster. The program keeps you informed about the output resolution each step of the way. Not only does it advise you of the dots per inch, but it also makes a general assessment like "good quality" or "fair from a distance."
This program is a blast to use and just might breathe new life into your pictures, since you finally have a way to print oversized posters for your living-room wall. This much is true: It sure beats buying a new printer!
Q&A: Add Descriptions to Digital Photos
Everyone knows the expression, "a picture is worth a thousand words." But if that's the case, then where are the programs that allow you to add a description to a picture's file? What I need is a way to attach more than a name to my pictures. Do you know of any program that will actually let me enter an essay--perhaps a thousand words? I have pictures dating back to the early 1900s. Just changing the name of the picture itself is not enough to duplicate the writing on the back of these pictures.
--Michael Turner, Hamilton, Montana
It sounds like you're looking for a photo organizer, Michael. Most organizers have note or caption fields that let you add as much free-form text as you could possibly need.
I experimented with Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0, for instance, and found that I could enter as much text as I wanted in the program's Notes field. I started with 1000 words, and when the program handled that without a hitch, I tried 2000 and even 3000. That's several pages of magazine text, by the way--if you need more text than that, you're probably writing a novel.
Keep in mind that not all of these long-form notes will be stored in the picture itself. Usually, long notes like the ones you want to make are visible only within whatever program you're using to organize your pictures. If you ever change applications, keep the old one around long enough to copy your text between applications.
You can find Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 at our Product Finder for about $45.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: "Right Turn Clyde," by Scott Greninger, Phoenix
About this week's Hot Pic, Scott says: "I took this image with my Cannon EOS Digital Rebel. I was shooting with an image stabilized 75-300 mm zoom lens, which helped freeze the action. This is a shot of a desert MX race in Rocky Point, Mexico."