How to Convert Slides to Digital Images

Do you have a bunch of slide carousels containing images of old family get-togethers, holidays, or special occasions? If you need help with How to Convert Slides to Digital Images – Digitize Media is here to help.

Slide images can contain a high level of detail – including vibrant colors, contrast, sharpness, and fine grain. However, over time they also are prone to damage (scratches, creases, etc) and dust.

There was a time when a slideshow was a popular social activity that people looked forward to. Families and groups of friends would gather around to view slides that were projected onto a screen. Sadly there are now millions of slides sitting in attics, unseen for a long time and forgotten, as very few households have working projectors.

So, unfortunately, the pictures on those slides are probably deteriorating and over the years and through the subsequent generations, their importance is diminishing – as this is a format of yesteryear. That is why it is important to digitize these images so that these moments are captured forever for future generations. Preserve your family history.

How to Convert Slides to Digital Images –Tips for Scanning Slides

There are two options for digitizing 35mm slides. Do it yourself or employ a professional slide scanning company

DIY Slide Scanning Options

Here are some guidelines for DIY slide scanning:

• Start with clean slides when you are trying to get good digital scans by dusting off both sides of each slide with compressed air, careful not to touch the emulsion.
• Make sure that you use a computer with a fast processor plenty of memory, and a large hard drive to store all of the digital images.  Having a plug-in external hard drive is a good idea to save your digital images safely while not taking up too much space on your PC
• Scan directly into a good photo program such as Photoshop Elements, which will really cut down on the time spent scanning as you can save naming the files, cropping, rotating, etc for later once, the images are all on your computer.

If you choose to scan the slides yourself, then choose your slide scanner carefully. You can buy online some budget scanners but these are (not tend to be) slow, cumbersome and offer a poor quality solution. A budget solution includes scanners that are hundreds of pounds. To obtain good scanning results, to ensure your slides are not damaged, to make the process quick and not tedious then you will need to invest in a high-quality scanner with a price tag of at least £600+. Digitize Media only uses commercial slide scanners that cost thousands.  With slide scanning equipment you really do get what you pay for!

Professional Slide Scanning Service – How to Convert Slides to Digital Images

If you are not comfortable with the thought of purchasing and setting up the hardware and software to scan your slides into digital format, then it is probably best to choose a professional slide scanning company such as Digitize Media.

Even if you are ok with the significant investment in purchasing a slide scanner, you must not underestimate the amount of time that it will take to scan a large volume of slides.

You must budget approx two minutes per slide to scan and save it to a secure location. Touch-ups and other image corrections will add to this time. Two minutes may not sound like too much time, but if you have a thousand slides to scan, then you can see that the slide scanning process will take many hours of work.

Digitize Media has the equipment and expertise to efficiently convert your slides to a digital format. We normally take between 5 to 10 days to convert slides into digital format. We will advise at the time of your order being placed. If you require an urgent turnaround then please contact us  – we are always available for an honest, realistic, and friendly chat. Customer service is important to us and we never overpromise.

Not only will you save a lot of time, but you will get optimally scanned photos that can then be printed and enlarged.

We also offer a post-scanning software imperfection improvement service (charge applies). Please request this at the time of ordering. This service helps to reduce obvious marks but will not eradicate all major blemishes.

We recommend that you back up your digitally scanned slides onto a secure device or the cloud.