Other Projects - Photo Restoration

In addition to scanning the negatives and pictures that Ellen sent, I have been working on some other projects unrelated to family history. One of the more interesting ones is a photo of President and Mrs. Johnson that I restored for a friend at work.


In these before and after pictures, you can see (click for a larger image) that the original was very faded and retained very little color information. After scanning, and using only Photoshop Elements 5 (I still have not invested in a newer program!), I was able to tease some color and detail out of the picture. The steps I took were:

1. Straighten and crop the picture;
2. Fix and saturate color;
3. Improve the contrast and highlight/shadow detail;
4. Sharpen image;
5. Remove dust, scratches, and other blemishes; and
6. Reduce grain and other noise in the image.

The results are not perfect -- certainly not as as nice as a new picture -- but they are not too bad, especially considering the original image. It took a lot of trial and error, but short of painting on color (which I did not do) the picture is quite usable. I even received a box of cookies and brownies out of it!

I am not trained in photo restoration, and undoubtedly a professional could do more. But, if you poke around at a hobby long enough -- and I've been poking around a digital archiving for a little while -- you can get pretty good results.

UPDATE

Ellen writes in the comments, "Way to go, Rob. That's pretty cool how you can do that." Thanks, Ellen. I enjoy doing it!

Craig then adds, "Now see if you can photoshop grandma next to LBJ."


I'm not great at photo manipulation but, what the heck, here by request is Ladybird Stutz. Now, if you can identify which image Grandma's face is from -- it is from one of Grandpa's slides -- I will be really impressed.

Creative Shots - Blurred Motion

Sam was jumping on my bed this morning and wanted me to take a picture of him flying like Superman. The result?


The boys love these types of pictures where it looks like they are moving quickly. I do, too, so we have tried different techniques to see what works.

In the picture of SuperSam, I set the camera on a slow shutter speed (1/20 of a second) with the flash on. The flash provided the light to illuminate Sam, and the slow shutter speed provided the light for the background, which blurred as I moved the camera. This is called motion blur. The slow shutter is also the reason the window can be seen through Sam's arm -- after he "flew" out of the way, the light from the window came through where his arm used to be.

Using the flash to "freeze" the subject while moving the camera to provide the blur also works well on moving people outside. In the following pictures of Sam and Boyd from last year, I used the flash plus slow shutter technique in the evening.



If you cannot manually set the shutter speed on your camera, or if you do not know how to do that, do not worry. Most (all?) point-and-shoot cameras with a built in flash have a flash mode called "slow-synch" (or "nightshot" or "monument" or something similar) that will automatically fire the flash with a slow shutter. (This flash mode also works well for taking pictures in front of monuments at night or at other places where you need both the flash to light up the people in front and enough time to record the dimmer lights in the background.)

When creating motion blur, it is very helpful to track the moving people with the camera to minimize the amount of ghosting caused by the long exposure. If you are good at tracking people with your camera as they move -- or, really, whatever subject you are shooting -- and have a little more light available than twilight, you can even get decent motion blur without using a flash. I am not very good at tracking, so I have to take a lot of these shots to get some that are not a blurry mess! The following are Sam and Boyd an overcast fall day a few weeks back.



They are not great, but they do demonstrate motion blur without a flash. One of Blanche's relatives -- someone who is much better at tracking than I am -- took the following picture of a girl pushing her uncle on a skateboard. I wish I could take pictures this good!


This picture is also great because the photographer got low and close to their subject, which was the topic of a previous creative shots post.

Play around with your flash modes, practice your tracking, take lots of pictures (hey, it's digital, so it's not like you have to keep the bad ones!), and if you get anything good that you would like to share, send them to GAP!

TIP: Find out what the different modes on your camera can do. They are there for a reason!

UPDATE

We were remiss to not point out yesterday that Susan posted on her blog a different flash technique for capturing the motion of falling snow. However, we are concerned for the environment that she may burn through a lot of batter recharges trying to capture, as she points out in the comments,"an individual snowflake and a blurred background." Good luck, Susan, and send that picture our when you get it!

Scanning Slides - The Scanning Process

It has been a while since I discussed archiving techniques, but John recently sent in his slides, which I have been working through, and it got me thinking about documenting the process. Should anyone contemplate scanning slides, a checklist of steps might be useful. If for no other reason, this may help gauge the amount of time necessary for the task.

Here are the steps I take with slides, which I am scanning using my Nikon Coolscan V, a dedicated 35 mm film/slide scanner that scans only one slide or filmstrip at a time.

1. Remove all slides from their storage sheets.
   
2. Sort slides by decade and then year.
3. Sort the earliest year of slides by the date the slide was developed, grouping the different rolls of film (using the information printed on the slide frame) in chronological order.
4. Clean the first slide (I use a feather duster).
5. Scan the slide. This simplicity of this step is a bit deceptive, because with all the image enhancement I use (to eliminate some dust and scratches, restore color, and minimize film grain) scanning time takes 4-5 minutes per slide. This results in an image just under 23 megapixels per slide, with a file size (in TIFF format) that is just over 65 megabytes.
6. Repeat scanning for all slides.
7. Rename all files to reflect the fancy pants file naming system that incorporates the information from the slide frame.
8. Return all slides to their storage sheets.

And that's it for the scanning! For John's 138 slides, scanning will take about 10.5 hours and result in files occupying about 9 gigabytes of hard drive space; additional time is needed for the other non-scanning tasks. Some of these tasks can be accomplished will the previous slide is being scanned. You have been warned.

But, that's not the end of the image preparation! These files are too unwieldy, so I batch convert them in Photoshop Elements 5 from TIFF format to PNG format. This cuts many file sizes in about half without losing any information or degrading the quality. JPEG format can degrade an image but has a much smaller file size, so I typically use it only for distributing final versions of images.

I generally batch convert to several different sizes and formats for each image -- 100% size PNG image (for archiving as the "original"), 50% size PNG image (for further editing), 50% size JPEG (for distribution), and 10% size JPEG (as the "thumbnail" for quick viewing). I use the 50% size PNG image as the original for the JPEG images if I have edited the PNG image. These four versions of each image together often take up 40-50 megabytes, which, while substantial, is notably less than the original TIFF image. My terabyte hard drive has plenty of room (for now!) for all these images.

I have discussed image editing a bit in other posts, and likely will discuss it more in the future, but for now the above is the process I use for scanning slides. Whew!

Cleaning Up Old Pictures

Today's school portraits of Tom included one very cute shot of him in second grade from 1952.


The picture has some obvious bending and cracking in it, but these are consistent with the age of the photo and -- at least IMHO -- do not distract from the portrait. The original picture, however, needed lots of work to look this good. Here is the original:

I picked this picture for more aggressive image editing than I typically use because it provides some good examples of how to clean up an old picture. All of these steps were done in Photoshop Elements 5, an older version of the program that I have and use for almost all of my editing. Note that I always copy the image to a new file before editing so that I do not mess up the original image.

Here are the steps I took to prepare this picture of Tom.

1. I cropped the picture very tight around Tom to 1) maximize the amount of space showing Tom and minimize the amount showing the background, 2) eliminate as much writing as possible from the top, and 3) eliminate the vertical line on the left side.
2. I cropped the picture to a 3x4 ratio, a standard ratio I use for almost all of the portraits, to provide a consistent look.
3. I resized the image to 450x600 pixels because I typically limit the largest size of the image to 600. I know this is small, but I do it this way because 1) the images take up less space on the blog and load faster, 2) this is the standard size I use, and 3) I have maintained the original in its full size for when I need the larger image.
4. I used Easy.Filter to improve the image contrast, using the automatic setting for the shadows (dark portions) and manually setting the highlights (light portions) to not blow out too many details.
5. I used automatic sharpening in Photoshop.
6. I used the spot healing brush tool in Photoshop to eliminate the most glaring cracks, marks, and writing on the image. This tool tries to match the area I select on an image with the surrounding parts of the image, making the cracks, marks, and writing less obvious. At this stage I was more aggressive than usual because there were no cracks across the face, which are more difficult to remove.
   
7. I saved the edited image as a highest quality JPG file to ensure that it looked good when loaded. The highest quality setting produces larger files than a lower quality setting, but with the images being small the file size is also pretty small.

And that's it! I posted the pictures here so that you can see the technique I use. Perhaps you will learn something about cleaning up old pictures or maybe even -- should I be so lucky -- you will share some of your techniques with me.

If you open both images in two separate browser tabs and click back and forth between them, you can see the differences between them more easily.

Creative Shots - Making Distant Objects Look Closer to Near Objects

Using your camera to zoom in on a distant object seems like a pretty straightforward way to make it look closer. Sure, you could walk to the object, but then it wouldn't be distant. Let's explore how we can use your camera's zoom creatively.

When you use your zoom, the camera takes a picture of a more narrow portion of what the camera normally sees without the zoom. For example, when I take a picture of the night sky without zooming, even a full moon looks very small. When I want to take a picture of the moon, I use my zoom to take a picture of the narrow portion of the sky around the moon. How narrow the portion of the sky depends on how much my camera can zoom. The more I zoom, the more narrow the view of the sky I see in the camera and the the larger the moon looks. The moon isn't getting any bigger, and I'm not getting any closer to it; I am just looking at a more narrow part of the sky.

"Angle of view" is the phrase for how wide or narrow the camera can see, and for most cameras this is adjusted with a zoom lens. A wide angle of view lets us see a lot of stuff, useful (for example) when shooting pictures at an indoor birthday party. A narrow angle of view lets us see a smaller amount of stuff, useful (for example) for shooting pictures at a baseball game.

What happens when we are taking pictures of different objects, some of which are close to the camera and some of which are further away? (Farther away? Help me grammar nerds!)

These pictures from last year both show Boyd and Sam sitting in the same place next to the Washington Monument, apparently after eating blue popsicles. The Lincoln Memorial is just under a mile away. In the first picture, I got close to the boys and took the picture with a wide angle of view, making the Lincoln Memorial look smaller than the boys' heads. In the second picture, I walked back a bit and zoomed in on the boys, using a narrow angle of view that made the Lincoln Memorial look larger than the boys. Because the Lincoln Memorial looms larger in the second picture and the distance to it looks compressed, it looks closer to the boys (QED, for the grammar nerds still reading).

This technique can also be used to make little boys look like they are giants crushing famous, distant landmarks. My boys will discover this someday and will be greatly amused by it. Until then, though, I will use this technique to compose creative shots of the boys.

By way of another example, last summer I took a perfectly innocent picture of Sam splashing a board in the Chesapeake Bay:

and made it look like he was playing in front of a nuclear power plant:

Don't worry, radiation is a source of superpowers (Hi Spiderman and the Hulk!).

I took the same picture this summer, but also included Boyd and a friend so they could be superheroes, too.

Let me know if you have any luck using this technique.

UPDATE

I found another image using this technique on a much larger scale at Creative Shots - MDOLCTNO Revisited.

Sharpening Pictures

I messed something up yesterday, so I am going to try and turn it into a teachable moment.

I posted a mystery picture that looks fine but could look better. Right click on the link and open it in a new tab. Here is the same picture looking a little better; right click on the picture and open it in a new tab, too.

Now, click back and forth between the two tabs with the different pictures and see if you can see the difference. Today's picture looks a little better, a little more crisp; let's call it a little more sharp. Can't see the difference? Check out the tree leaves as you jump back and forth between the tabs; see how they pop into focus and are less blurry? Or, the pattern on Annette's dress? Once you get used to seeing it, everything looks a little more sharp.

What I forgot to do to yesterday's picture, which I corrected on today's picture, is to use the "sharpen" tool in Photoshop after I shrank the picture down to viewing size. Some programs, including Photoshop, call it "unsharpen mask". Sharpening increases the contrast between closely located pixels in an image, making their edges look more distinct. Many programs allow sophisticated adjustments of the sharpening process, which will yield vastly different results. Or, you can do as I did here and use the software's automatic sharpening function.

Wikipedia has a good article on the process.

Oversharpening an image will make it look anywhere between weird and bad. It is always better to not sharpen or undersharpen an original image, since you can always apply the sharpening process to a copy (don't mess up the original!) later in Photoshop or whatever program you use.

What Would You Do? Slide Dates -- Again!

So, I usually don't tell you when my fancy pants file naming method for slides works -- and it almost always does. But, sometimes I encounter a problem or two, some of which are easier to resolve than others. Today I present a third, more intractable problem.

The file naming method uses the information printed and written on a slide's frame to name the digital file. What should I do when different slides from different rolls contain the same information? Here is an example:

As you can see, all the slides are developed as "AUG 61D". But, there are differences. The top left one has the date printed in black and the slide number also printed in black. The top right one has the date embossed but the slide number printed in black. The bottom left on has the date printed in red and the slide number also printed in red (very faint). The bottom left one has the date embossed but the slide number printed in red. This tells me there are four different rolls, separately developed, and (unfortunately, from an archiving perspective) with the same information.

What would you do?

I solved the problem by putting a number (1-4) after the date information in the file name so that the slides are at least grouped by roll. This is an imperfect solution for two reasons. First, future "AUG 61D" slides might not be easy to group with the correct roll, since I do not record an image of the slide frame; hopefully, this blog entry will help with this issue by recording what the frame of each roll looked like. Second, some slide frames actually have a number printed after the date information; while this potentially could be confusing, none of the "AUG 61D" rolls had a number, so I figured this was an acceptable solution.

So, the problem was basically solved, until I found this:

Not only does it have the same information in the same format as the bottom right slide above, it also has the same frame number! This means that there are at least two rolls that look exactly the same, and determining which slide goes with which roll (based on content) might be difficult or impossible.

What would you do?

I ended up just identifying the second slide at frame "4 -2" and left it at that. There were not enough slides to spend to much time sorting it out right now. But, it does raise the possibility that my file naming method does not create unique enough names for rolls of slides that are printed with the same information on the frame. Thus, other rolls potentially have mixed up slides. I figure this is rare simply because I have not seen it before. But, it is a problem without an elegant solution.

Creative Shots - Get Close and Use Macro

Over on her blog, Susan has some great images of thistles that demonstrate how getting close to the subject can add a lot of beauty and drama to a picture of what would otherwise be -- let's face it -- an annoying plant. Use the macro function on your camera (typically, it has a flower icon) for the best effect.

This works well with bugs:


And kids with bugs:


And just kids:



TIP: Get close to your subject, use the macro function, and practice by taking lots of pictures. One of them will turn out all right. (And, if not, keep practicing!)

Creative Shots - Fun House Mirror Cell Phone Effect

Dave posted a beautiful pair of pictures today of lightning over Mumbai, and it got me thinking. Family history is not just about archiving past events; it is also about documenting all the great things going on now. After all, without recording current events, there will no documentation of the family's history for future generations to reflect upon.

So everyone -- take pictures, shoot videos, keep a journal, record your family's oral history, and share it.

Sometimes, all I have handy to take pictures is my cell phone. I have found a way to take creative shots that -- due the inner-workings of my phone that I don't understand -- often makes pictures look like they were shot in a fun house mirror. The distortion takes a generic picture and makes it a little less boring.

Here are two pictures from a recent picnic in the park:

So how did I do it? No Photoshop here! I stood in front of my subject and threw my cell phone up in the air, spinning, while pushing the shutter button. Most pictures are lousy, and, really, they don't document much. But they are kind of interesting and the boys love them!

Do you have a favorite or useful technique to share? Let me know! Some are fairly low risk (throwing your cell phone up in the air) and others are higher risk (standing on a metal table on top of a building during a lightning storm). If it helps capture the moment, though, your techniques are welcome.

UPDATE

I found out that the effect is due to the rolling shutter processing used by CMOS image sensors that are common in cell phones and some still and video cameras.

Dirty Slides - What To Do About Dust

A common issue with the old slides I scan is dust. Lots of it. Although the Coolscan's Digital ICE can remove dust and, sometimes, scratches from a a scanned image, it often does not work, or does not work well, on Kodachrome slides. Besides, the scanner works better if it can "see" what is on the slide rather than "guess" what is missing. So, let's talk about dirty slides and how to clean them.

First, a dirty Kodachrome slide. Sorry about the trapezoid shape, but I shot it picture at a low angle to see the dust better.

When we look at a detail of the slide before cleaning, the amount of dust is even more apparent.

Fortunately, I have super secret method -- which I will share -- for cleaning the slides. But first, here is the slide after cleaning.

Here is a detail of the same part of the slide after cleaning.

Big improvement, I'd say, even though a very few specks of dust remained that I did not worry about. Life is too short.

So the super secret method? Well, it had to be gentle and non-destructive. And, it has to effectively clean dust. My choice, an all-natural feather duster. Here it is:

I know, I know; some people will say that any method that physically contacts the slide has too much potential for damaging the slide. Perhaps a puff of canned air would work better? Perhaps not, or perhaps the blast of compressed air would damage the slide.

Judgment is important, and I do not use the feather duster on anything that appears fragile. My technique is not to rub the slide with any pressure, but to quickly flick the slide with the tips of the feathers. Finally, the feather duster does not work on dirt or other debris solidly attached to the slide. Some problems cannot be solved outside of professional restoration and archiving.

TIP: Gently clean your slides and other source materials before digitizing.

What Would You Do? Mismatched Dates on Slides

So, I have a fancy pants file naming method that I use when saving images that I have archived. This method requires inclusion of both the source description that exists as an original part of the source material and any additional information existing on the source material in addition to the source description. What do you do when these conflict?


Here, the date description shows the slide was developed in February 1984. But, Grandpa wrote that the picture is from September 1984, after the slide was developed.

What would you do?

I know what I did -- I recorded all information from the slide into the file name and gave Grandpa the benefit of the doubt about which date to apply to this image. Thus, this file is named:

840900.FEB 84 P 3 (23).'Rosies surprise' - Lake Powell (Sept 84).jpg

This seemingly impossible file name (to my eyes) is just gibberish (to your eyes, probably) unless you understand the file naming method I use. But, it presents a very minor diversion about how either memories or film developing can be fallible. That's about the extent of the diversion -- humans are fallible.

TIP: You cannot undue past mistakes -- and you certainly should not try to rewrite history -- but you can ensure that our fallible moments are preserved as an important part of the human experience.

UPDATE

Dave writes in the comments

Oooh - I'd disagree with you on this one. I would expect the automated dating system from a photo developing place to be much more accurate than a penciled-in recollection. I would bet this was taken in September 1983 (not 4) and then developed in February 1984.

Maybe. Probably. Hopefully, we can find out.

What Would You Do? Digital ICE with Kodachrome

My Coolscan film/slide scanner has Digital ICE, which can reduce dust and scratches from scanned materials. ICE does not work well with most Kodachrome slides, though, and Grandpa loved to use Kodachrome.

Using ICE with Kodachrome involves tradeoffs and a requires a judgment call. Here is one example of the tradeoffs from a picture of Grandma's graduation.

Scanned as a Kodachrome with no Digital ICE:

Scanned as a Kodachrome with Digital ICE:

Scanned as a non-Kodachrome slide with Digital ICE:

In the first picture, there are obvious defects caused by dust, dirt, and scratches.

In the second picture, the ICE has removed some of the defects, but many are still obvious. However, a new defect has been introduced, a blurring of detail, especially where different colors meet. This blurring is most noticeable (to me, at least) at the bottom of Grandma's collar.

In the third picture, the ICE has removed most defects, but the blurring is even more pronounced and is visible along a number of edges in the image.

Which would you do? Which picture would you keep -- the one with the fewest blurred details, the one with the fewest defects, or somewhere in between?

I opted for the second picture. The way I see it, the defects are now part of the source material, and I would rather not introduce more defects during the archiving process. The second picture removes original defects without really introducing new ones, a tradeoff I am willing to make. If need be, I can use Photoshop Elements to remove additional defects in a copy of the image.

BTW, congratulations on your graduation, Grandma!

Mystery Picture 090917

I see Grandma in this picture (fourth from right, back row), and it appears to be a Christmas bazaar, probably at church. What else can you tell me about this picture and the people in it?

Although the color is not great -- it was scanned from a fade print -- it looks much better (with little effort) after running Easy.Filter

Naming Scanned Slides

When archiving, you need a consistent method of naming files so that you can organize and find the files. Over time, I have developed a file naming method that works for most files I am archiving, as follows:

YYMMDD.Source description.Source information.External information.File type

YYMMDD = The two digit year, month, and date information (e.g., 090916). This allows the file types to sort automatically by date when in their computer directory.

Source description = Any description that exists as an original part of the source material. On a slide, for example, this would include the information printed on the frame by the developer.

Source information = Any additional information existing on the source material in addition to the source description. Often with slides, for example, information will be written on the frame about the image. It is very important to maintain all the information about the slide, as this provides all the know context for the image at the time of archiving.

External information = Any additional information about the the source gained from outside sources. This information could come from related source material or from someone's identification of the content of the source. I rarely have external information, although I hope to gain some (from you!) about the Mystery Pictures I post.

File type = The file extension, such as jpg or pdf.

(Note that I use periods to separate each component of the file name.)

Let's see an example of how this works in real life. First, let's get a slide with an interesting picture.

Here's Grandma doing something, somewhere, sometime. The slide frame provides some important about the image.

Aha! There is a source description on one part of the frame and some source information on another part. Using my file naming method, here what I named the file:

710300.MAR 71 P 4 (17).Mom pitching a little wow - trip to Manila.jpg

Broken down by file name component, here I how I came up with each:

YYMMDD = I used the information about when the slide was developed, substituting 00 for the unknown date.

Source description = I used the information printed on the frame by the developer, beginning with the date, followed by the roll information, and concluding with the frame number in parentheses, each component separated by a space.

Source information = I used the information written on the frame.

External information = None! I would like to know why Grandma was doing traveling to Manila, with whom she traveled, etc., but need external sources to provide this context.

File type = I kept the jpg file extension that is necessary for identifying the type of file.

And that's it in a nutshell! In real life, things fall apart sometimes and I have difficulty with missing or obscured information. In those cases, I just do the best I can to maintain the file name method.

UPDATE

Susan adds in the comments some great memories that provide context for this picture and for her current profession.

"Your Uncle Tom taught school for awhile in Manilla Utah. It is out in what's called the basin (eastern utah) Tom tells some great stories about the couple of years he spent there. Both Carl and Boyd were both little toddlers. I remember the visits as being really fun. Once Tom took us to his classroom. I loved playing school in his room and that was probably why I decided to be a teacher too."

BTW, am I reading the slide correctly to say "Mom pitching a little wow"? I know "snow" would make more sense than "wow", but it sure looks like "wow" to me!

Scanning Resolutions

When scanning using the Coolscan (i.e., scanning 35 mm slides and negatives), I use the maximum resolution of 4000 dpi (dots per inch). This yields scans of 23.5 megapixels for film and slightly smaller for slides. All should be trimmed down before printing or posting, as the scanned area is slightly larger than the picture size.

The usable resolution from slides and negatives varies, depending on the quality and condition of the source material. I often scale a copy of the image (I leave the original intact) to 50% of the height and width, yielding an image one-fourth the size of the original. Batch processing -- having Photoshop perform the same function on a group of files -- works well for this. For most uses, this high-quality five megapixel image is plenty.

When scanning using the flatbed, I typically use a resolution of 600 dpi. The size varies, depending on the source material. These need to be trimmed down, too, as I scan an area slightly larger than the source to ensure I don't miss anything.

In the past, I scanned many images at 300 dpi, but have moved away from this. Storage is cheap, and the leap from 300 dpi to 600 dpi makes a difference on some pictures. I have not found any printed material that requires more than 600 dpi, although I guess it may be possible for some source material.

Slides Versus Prints

I recently came across a good example of why slides yield such better scans than prints. I found similar images of the same event, one that I had only from a Kodachrome slide and that I had only from a print. Both are from the mid-1960s.

First, the print (after running through Easy.Filter).

Next, the slide (with my default scanner settings).

The quality difference is evident, even in these small images. Closeups of similar features (Grandpa's nose) make the difference even more stark.

Alright, so Grandpa is closer to the camera in the slide image than the print one. But, I am comparing a 100% crop of the original print file against a 25% crop of the original slide file. The slide file actually contains four times more information than what is seen above.

The difference is clear -- slides (and film) trump prints for digitizing. The color is more accurate, the detail is finer, and the brightness and contrast are much better. When there is a choice, always go for original slide or negative.

Caveats for Scanning

Grandpa took many of his pictures on slide film. Scanning these slides yields awesome results. The Nikon Coolscan V that I use comes with Digital ICE software to automate the restoration process. When possible, I highly recommend using a dedicated film/slide scanner and Digital ICE to digitize your family history, with certain caveats.

The first caveat is time. The scanning process is slow, and using the Digital ICE tools makes it painfully slow. I am talking minutes per scan, so you need time and a larger perspective about archiving history. Really, though, if time is a huge concern, then personally digitizing your family history is probably not your thing.

The second caveat is money. You need equipment to digitize pictures, and the good stuff is not cheap. The Coolscan cost hundreds of dollars when it was available (and it no longer is) and the film scanners currently available are typically more expensive. I initially tried cheaper methods -- flatbed scanners with film capabilities and even digital photos of projected slides (!) -- and was dissatisfied with the results. Sure, they can work in a pinch, but if I only want to do this once (and some things can only be done once when access to source material is limited) then I want to do it right. Used scanners are available, and outside professional services might also be reasonably priced for smaller projects.

The third caveat is storage. The scanned files are (and, really, should be) huge. They come out of the Coolscan as 60+ mb tiff files! I batch process them to make them smaller, but there is no getting around the size issue for quality files. Again, if you are going to do it, do it right. Buy a 1 tb hard drive so that space is not an issue.

The fourth caveat is experience. It takes knowledge to understand what the equipment and software do and how to best use it. Much of this knowledge comes from the trial and error of just doing it, i.e. experience. Sometimes, though, the trial and error part can be shortened by learning from others who have done it.

I guess the experience part is where I might be able to help you. I do not have the time, money, or storage space to do everyone's digitizing. But, I do have some self-taught experience that I would love to share to make your task easier. My price (FREE!) is pretty good, too.