Hey everyone,
I'm looking to digitize a large collection of old family photos and want to make sure I get the best quality possible without breaking the bank.
I’ve seen everything from smartphone apps to flatbed scanners and even professional services, but I'm not sure which route to take.
I’m particularly concerned about preserving detail and color accuracy. Does anyone have experience with home scanning setups that produce archival-quality results?
What scanner or app do you recommend, and any tips on resolution or file formats?
Appreciate any advice or personal experiences you can share!
It depends on what you are scanning.
The best thing, to give the highest quality scan with the most detail, is to use the negative. You'll need to take them to someone who knows what they are doing, which may break the bank.
There is this set up if you have a decent camera, with a macro lens, tripod and light box -
film scanner link You'll also need a plug-in for colour images, and Adobe Lightroom - links from the scanner website. And if you don't know what you are doing then plenty of hours on Youtube should be factored in.
If you're scanning the prints then the quality will be no better than the quality of the print. Yes, you may get a big file size, but a high resolution scan of an out of focus print is just a large file size scan of an out of focus photo!
You won't get any detail that isn't in the print, and you're likely to see lots of film grain too.
The quality of a 6x4" print is likely to be poor, especially if they were printed in a high street store. They'll also likely have loads of fingerprints, marks and scratches on the surface that will be amplified with the scan. There will also be lots of hairs and dust that need to be cleaned up (some scanners do this automatically, but at the cost of blurring the image slightly).
There's no such thing as an archival quality scan-it all depends on the media it is stored on. Try accessing JPEGs that are stored on a floppy disc. A high quality scan on a floppy disc is less archival than a low quality scan on your computer SSD.
Save as the highest quality JPEGs, as they are supported by just about every app. TIFFs are less widely supported and the most likely file type to become obsolete. You'll save on space too. You only need to save as a lossless format (JPEG isn't) if you are going to repeatedly make changes and open and save the file each time.
My advice for prints would be to get a couple of angle poise lamps with daylight balanced bulbs, and use a decent smartphone (clean the lens first ) or a decent camera if you have one (put it on a tripod). Place the lamps by each of the short sides of the print, so that they are aimed at the furthest side away, at the same height, distance and angle (about 45 degrees to the print). This should give you even lighting and probably the most accurate colour, although it will be no better than the print, which probably has a colour cast anyway.
And as has been said elsewhere, keep the originals, and catalogue the digital files so that you can find them.
Good luck!
DK
