Posts Tagged ‘processing slides with Lightroom’

Scanning My Slides to Digital

Back in 2005 I published a book  using all slide images, but 7 years on I find myself using my slide images less and less.  That changed recently when I had a request for some images that only exist in my collection as slides.  Once I started working with them my opinion of my digitized slide images has gone from one of weak and time consuming to being excited at the potential of some of the best of them.

My slide to digital adventure started in 2007. I was already well into digital and my last film trip was in 2005 (remember those x-ray proof bags?).  Most of the slides were not in trays and I didn’t have many trays due to the fact that I sold the trays on Ebay while the market was still high.  Add to that the fact that the bulbs in my projector were so expensive and kept braking, and I was ready to commit to get all of these slides digitized. My main goal was to get them into digital form just to see what I had, but I still scanned them at the highest specs and quality  that my scanner could do.  The physical slides would then be organized and stored so any really nice image could be pulled and treated to a drum scan or better.

In summary it went like this:

Triaged   maybe 8,000 – 9,000  slides

Cued up 6000 slides to scan

Scanned most of those

Today still have  4850   slide based files in the database

Each file is  124.6 MB  and 5568 x 3724  pixels

The first step was to triage on the lightbox and number each of the ones that passed beyond the “junking” step.  This number would then become the file number for the digital file. My naming scheme was similar to my usual naming scheme but had an indicator for slide.

This was the comparatively fun part:  Each scan took around 15 minutes to perform and I set a minimum goal of 20 slides per day, everyday.   It was a drain on my system and nearly caused my computer to catch fire in the hot summer months but I stuck to it.   I scanned with no extras such as adjustments or cropping; just a straight scan with the eye toward fixing them with the expert tools in PS or Lightroom. After they were scanned and saved I added them to the Lightroom catalogue then added keywords and the metadata including the location, dates, and other things if I could remember.

Close to a year later I was finished – this was the worst project I had ever done, but now I could really assess what I had.  Some of the slides have been removed due to my improving skills or technical issues I just could not over come.  Occasionally I rescan a slide to try to improve the original, but many taken at locations I frequent have been surpassed by digital images and thus languish with a rating of 1 star or have been removed.  The unique images in my collection, however, still hold promise.  At this time I am waiting on word as to whether a collection mostly slide images will be selected for publication in a dive tourism manual.

Edited: January 3rd, 2012