Internegatives:
You used to be able to get prints made from your slides by taking them to the "drug store" and they would ship them off to a film processor laboratory. The processor would make an "Internegative" from the original slide and then make the prints from the internegative. Prints From Scans The Internegative is a negative made on special color film designed for making print copies from color slides. Kodak, unfortunately, stopped making its internegative films, and processing labs are dropping the service due to lack of demand. Internegative printing is on the way out, unless you can find a laboratory. that still has the film. Prints From Digital Images: We make scans of your slides first and then we make prints form the digital images. We had some prints made from one of our scans, just for the sake of comparison. This was a slide of average quality and sharpness. We feel that an enlargement of one of our scans, such as this, would yield a print that would be satisfactory to all but those that are very hyper critical. The quality of the original is going to determine what your final print will look like. Here is the original image, reduced down in size so that you can load it in your web browser without having to wait an unbearable amount of time. You can click on the image to view a larger image but still not the full resolution size of the scan.
Digital Imaging & 35mm Slide Scanning FAQ
Q. I have an HD, big screen TV. How will your scans display on this type of TV? A. Your final image size will be 1735 x 2593 pixels. The highest resolution HDTV available today is 1080 x 1920 pixels. Naturally, the quality of your final image is going to be greatly dependent on the quality of your original slide. Sometimes people think that their slides are in better shape or sharper than they really are. For our own reputation, we are going to get the images as sharp as possible. The display on your widescreen TV will depend on how you have your TV setup. 35mm Slide Scanning FAQ Our slide show is set up to display in the 4:3 mode. You should be able to set your TV up to display in 4:3 or 16:9. Q. Why would people that care enough about their slide and photo collection to digitize it, send their whole collection to the other side of the world, to India, to save a few dollars? A. It is probably because they are sucked in by the unbelievably low prices and they never read the fine print in the "terms and conditions" when they have to sign up for an "account." We have been theatened with a lawsuit in a letter from a lawyer representing one of these companies, if we keep telling people their identity. They do NOT want anyone to know what they are doing because they know that most people would not knowingly agree to sending their photo collection 9,000 miles away to a third world country no matter how much money they save. We'd like to tell you their name but, at our low profit margin, we just can't afford to do it. The rule might be: if the price is unbelievably low, your heirloom photos are going to India.
Can You Do It Yourself? Do it yourself 35mm slide scanning?
Do It Yourself 35mm Slide Scanning? Yes, you can do it yourself but will doing it yourself save you money? I can see doing it yourself it you are going to save a lot of money, but you are not saving a lot of money in the long run. Either you have only a few slides or photos to scan and it won't be worth it for you to buy good equipment and you will end up with inferior images, or you have a lot of slides and photos and you will spend a lot of time doing it yourself and then you will be stuck with some expensive equipment that you will never use again. Is that saving money? I can do plumbing and electrical projects but I am better off paying an expert to do it for me. These people know what they are doing and I know it is going to be done right. I also look at things like this and I know that my time is worth something to me. How much is your time worth? Maybe you can scan your photos, but do you realize how much work this is? Very tedious and, if you don't use the best scanners and the right software, your slide show, when watched on your TV set will be blurry and you will have wasted a lot of your time and money. Our scanning service has researched multiple photo slide show creators and we have chosen the ONLY one that will give you the very sharpest and clearest images on your TV screen.
Slide Organizaton
How Can You Tell Which Side Of The 35mm Slide Is Which?
Most times, the side of the slide with the Manufacturer's ID or Logo on it, faces towards the screen. Get all your slides going this way and you will have a 99% chance of being right. This will get your slides all facing "toward the screen." Some slides will even say "this side towards screen." The top slide is going to be the first slide in each show and it will have the "side towards the screen" facing up. The bottom slide in your stack will be the last in each show.
The Easy Way To Organize Your Slides For Scanning
Organization of the slides is the big problem for most people. You might want to consider doing what many of our customers do: Send all your slides to us for scanning and then organize your images on your computer. This is much easier than organizing your slides, one by one. This is a very big job but it is just one more reason why you should to this job soon because your kids are probably not going to take the time to do it. If you want to preserve your slides, you are going to have to do it and not leave it for someone else to do it.
If you don't want to scan and organize on your computer, then there are basically three options for doing this:
Date or Subject Paper Photos: If you organize your paper photos by date or by subject, it helps to be in a room with a lot of floor space. Get your photos started into piles and start sorting. It helps if you have someone to do it with you. Trying to figure out ages for people is difficult sometimes without a second opinion.
35mm Slides: There are usually dates on the backs of the slides that will help you organize the slides. Collage Now the collage option is going to be the easiest. Don't spend all the time necessary to sort everything. Pack all those photos and 35mm slides up and send them along and you will get your DVD playable slide show and you will never know what photo is going to come up next. There will be no organization at all but you will get this job DONE! Once you have your slide show disk, you can copy the images to your PC and do your organizing there. You can write a CD with your newly organized files and send the disk to us and we can make you a new DVD playable disk with your images. 35mm Slides and Photos should be organized separately. Two different scanning machines mean that it would require a lot of extra work for us to combine the two scans into one particular show. It can be done later on after the scanning is done but it would involve extra work and we would have to charge more. There can be many "shows" on each Slide Show disk.
Kodak Carousels:
Here is how you can determine if you have Kodak compatible carousels (If you have any Sawyers, Anscomatic, Wards, Viceroy or Nikkormat carousels, they are, more than likely, NOT Kodak Compatible. Some Sears Carousels are compatible: Click Here) Kodak Carousel Identification Click here for the Carousel Shipping Page This is the way the top of a 140 slide carousel will look: This is the way the bottom of a 140 slide carousel will look: This is the way the top of a 80 slide carousel will look: This is the way the bottom of an 80 slide carousel will look: This is the way the top of an older 80 slide carousel will look: This is the way the bottom of an older 80 slide carousel will look: -We have found that the Sears Carousel that is for 35, 45, 55 Projectors is compatible with the Kodak Carousels that we can handle. This is the way the BOTTOM of a Sears Carousel that is for 35, 45, 55 will look: This is the way the TOP of a Sears Carousel that is for 35, 45, 55 will look: This applies to Kodak or Kodak compatible carousels only. For all other Carousels or slide trays, you must remove the slides and put them in stacks that can be held in one hand.
Can we add music to your slide and photo image scans and make a music slide show for you? Certainly! Here is how to do it: choose our DVD-R format disk and we will be glad to add our fully paid for, royalty free, music, to your slide shows, free of charge, if you want us to. This music has been created by musicians on genuine musical instruments. It is not the type the is computer genrated. We have spent hours listening to hundreds of different musical pieces and have picked out what we think is of the quality to go on an Old Photo DVD-R slide show disk. It was not long ago that we thougth it was impossible to find music that sounded good and we could purchase as Royalty free. After much searching we have found that music and we can put in on your DVD-R slide show disk and be proud of.
Thumbnail Catalogs printouts are available for all of the images on your slide show disk. If you ever want to track down an image on your disk so you can get it printed out or you want to send it to someone, this catalog is a handy resource. Thumbnail Catalog are $1 per sheet of 30 Photos. Note that your file name will be truncated if it is over 29 characters and spaces long. This can be fixed by printing less photos per page but the charge will still be $1 per page. It is up to you to decide if you want a printout that is different than the normal 30 photos.
Paper Photo Scanning
Our advice to you is to take the pictures out of the pages and save any extra charges from us. If you number the pictures on the back to keep track of where they go in the album, do the marking in pencil and not ink. We had numerous customers who have ruined a good part of their photo collection by marking with a permanent magic marker on the backs of the photos. On many of the photos, the ink offset onto the picture below. Please avoid this heartbreaking situation. Use pencil for marking you paper photos.
Web Sized Images | Email Sized Images | File Sizes
Naturally, you want your newly digitized images to be a high quality so that you can print them out but you may, very likely, want your images to be of a size that you could send in an email or even use to make your own website. Photos posted on the Internet or sent via email do not need nearly as many pixels as are needed when printing. The same can be said about images that will be viewed in a slide show or in a PowerPoint presentation. Web-sizing images file size is also important because many people still use a dial-up modem to connect to the Internet and it will take a lot longer for them to open up web pages or email messages that contains large image files. The higher the resolution of the image, in relationship to its dimensions will determine the file size of the image. Larger file sizes take longer to send, receive and load. Email-sizing Images One of our high resolution images may have a file size anywhere from 500kb to over 1000kb depending on the color content, brightness and various other factors. Say you have an image that is 538kb in size. If you put that one image into a web page and a person with a 28.8 dial-up modem wanted to load that image, it would take them 286 seconds or 4 minutes and 46 seconds. That is unreasonable by anyone's standards. It would even take 64 seconds if you have an ISDN connection. Since people do not need the high resolution just to view images on the computer, the file size can be reduced so that web pages and email will open much quicker.
Text Frames & Text Added To Images
Please Note: We need you to send your text for your text frames as text in an email or as a text document. We copy and paste your text. If we have to type it for you, we may make a mistake, and, if we do and you want it corrected, you will have to pay for recompiling the disk or disks. If you send the text to us, then you will get just what you want. If you just send us a sheet with your text written on it, that is not what we need and we don't want you to be disappointed. We can add text to your pictures to identify particular people, places or dates. This is a one dollar charge but may be more if you want an excessive amount of text added. It would be good if you would send us this text in an email or as an email attachment so that we have the exact spelling for your text. Sometimes names can be particularly difficult to get spelling correct. We can add the text somewhere where it doesn't take away from the picture but is readily viewable. Text Frames Text Frames are inserted at the beginning of a chapter. This frame will then show up on the DVD menu as a menu item. You must divide up your slides so that each text frame is the beginning of a chapter. If you have more text frames than chapters, you must divide up your slides so as to make more chapters. Send a Text file or email with your text to assure proper spelling. Text frames can be an important part of keeping the pictures in proper historical perspective by dating them. Text frames that will appear on the DVD menu should have a minimal amount of words since more words will necessitate the usage of smaller font size and make them less readable on the menu.
35mm Slide Cleaning
We see slides, every day, that would be greatly improved with a simple light brushing with a very soft cloth. We would recommend the Fellows "Perfect Clean" cloth simply because it works good and not because we have compared it to similar products. We do not sell it so please do not call to ask us. (You can purchase these cloths at OfficeMax or other office supply stores, among others. You will have to be the judge as to whether this is a good cleaning method for your slides. You have to be careful that there is nothing abrasive on the film or you will scratch it. Just imagine if there were sand on the film and it wouldn't matter how soft your cloth was. It is good for brushing off loose dirt but don't scrub with it. Do a test on one of your slides that may not be one that you will miss if it gets damaged.We allow 12 "chapters" or "shows" per order. If you want any more than that, the cost is $1 extra for each extra chapter. Each Chapter would normally be identified on the DVD menu with the first image in each Chapter. We can add a Text Frame that will display your choice of words at the beginning of the "show" and this will display on the DVD menu. DPI Dots Per Inch is a printing term. It is used when measuring the number of lithographic dots on film or on printing plates. Standard "dots per inch" for most normal printing would be 150 dots per inch. PPI Pixels Per Inch is digital computer terminology. Digital images consist of tiny, solid-color squares called pixels. If you have your image on your computer monitor screen, you can use a magnifying glass to enlarge the image so that you can see the individual pixels. The more "pixels per inch" the more definition and detail you will see. We save images at 300 PPI which is more than adequate for print usage, if needed. "Shows" would be another term for "chapters," defined above.
Preparing for shipping
How should you prepare and pack your 35mm slides? Rubber band the 35mm slides or leave them in your 35mm slide carousel and ship the whole carousel box? If you have the slides in Carousels, you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by just shipping us the whole carousel. Organize Your Slides Yes, you will pay more for shipping costs, but you will save yourself the time and trouble of taking the slides out and putting them into 2" stacks, labeling them, and rubber banding the stacks. How much is your time worth?