Photo scanning

pothole50

I have bought a photo scanner the plustek 8100 and would like some advice on the best way to scan my negs and slides. Should I use the highest setting it will allow although this produces a file over 200mb, or is there an optimum best setting and going higher would not be noticeable.
A few I have scanned look very grainy and out of focus, but when I think back I probably took those with an Olympus Trip and cheap film and in the day a 6x4 was good enough, there's not a lot I can do with these in Photoshop. So any help would be appreciated

EssexExile

I have an old Plustek 7200 I bought to copy loads of slides & negatives years ago. I suspect I just used the simplest method, there were too many to muck about with. I've just had a look, the average file size is about 1Mb, I don't think there's any point in going bigger if the original quality isn't there.

pothole50

Thanks for your reply, I have just scanned a slide as a tiff and the size was 35mb, put through Photoshop and then saved as a JPEG which shrank it to 5mb, which is the size my DSLR takes photos at. For some strange reason the slides seem to scan better than the negs.

enkoda

Don't forget, JPEGs use lossy compression; if you open/edit/save a JPEG a few times you will lose detail. If you ever intend to edit or clean up the scans in the future then save as TIFF, you can always create a JPEG when finished.

You need an extra light source behind negatives when you scan them, like the one supplied with my (very old) Epson 1240U.

BargainGalore

When I scanned old photos I save in a uncompressed format as said above. I then backup that, any manipulation later I used a copy so I can always go back to the masters if need be. Also copy on several formats or discs just in case

EssexExile

enkoda wrote: »

You need an extra light source behind negatives when you scan them, like the one supplied with my (very old) Epson 1240U.

The Plustek is designed for slides & negatives, it has a light source.