How To Scan Your Photos On A Mac (updated)
Welcome to the site. Our most popular posts are a series of video tutorials on How To Use Your Mac As A Server. We also answer your Mac questions. Just Ask FMB Feel free subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I think that I am finally ready to start the daunting task of digitizing my photo collection. I’m not a professional photographer, so I don’t have a huge amount of photos. But, there are a good number of photos from my younger years to get in. I’d say about 500 or so.
Has anyone out there attempted this before? Will you be willing to share what you have learned?
What features/brand are good for the scanner?
Were you able to find a resolution that worked best for you on standard 4×6 prints?
What was your method?
Did you scan to a folder or use a special application?
Any other tips?
I hope to get some tips before I get started. I think that there will be a lot of people searching for these tips in the next couple years so I hope that we can pull together a nice collection.
And of course, as I make my way thru, I’ll be sure to report back.
Update: I ended up purchasing the Canon 8400F scanner. The product does great work and I was pleased with the scanner. However, Canon scanner software (like most scanner software) left a lot to be desired. The latest release didn’t work well on my Powerbook G4 or my iMac Intel Core Duo 2.0. I ended up purchasing VueScan and was VERY impressed with all it had to offer. It’s funny to see a single developer outperform a big company like Canon.
The process of scanning took a whil to get set up the way I liked it. But, once I started the scanning, it went rather quickly. It was fun to see photos that I hadn’t looked at for a while and I enjoyed tagging and organizing them all in iPhoto.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Like you I am starting to do this, but for slides rather than prints, and I am very much a beginner too.
I chose an Epson 4180 because it has a transparency adaptor and had good test results. For 6×4 prints you may get away with something cheaper as you won’t need such high resolution.
The main point I guess is that it is going to take time, lots of it. Once I get into the swing of things I can do a box of 36 slides in about 2-3 hours, assuming I don’t spend too much time cleaning up each scan afterwards.
I scan the slides 4 at a time into a folder using Epson’s scan software, then crop and tidy up the scans using Photoshop Elements. (I think you could do the scans via PE as well, but I found it quicker to adjust one set of 4 in PE while the next set of 4 was being scanned by the Epson software). I save them in TIF format so that there is no loss in quality each time the picture is saved.
The TIFs will be big files, around 20mb per scan, so you need lots of free disk space. I usually resize and convert them to JPG copies for casual viewing and portability.
There’s a very good UK site at http://www.photo-i.co.uk that covers many of the issues concerning scanners and scanning - most of the contributors seem to be professional or very keen amateur photographers.
May 14th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
try
digmypics.com
They are great & cheap..
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Hi -
I own a business that does slide and negative scanning called Pixmonix (http://www.pixmonix.com).
A relatively inexpensive flatbed will do a decent job scanning prints. some will also scan slides and negatives using a transparancy adapter, as CC points out above. Some get decent results, some less so.
The best (reasonably priced) scanners for slides and negatives are dedicated film scanners like the Nikon V or Nikon 5000. You get much better quality than scanning film on a flatbed (generally speaking). The Nikon 5000 has a slide feeder avaialble which makes it far more reasonable for scanning large numbers of slides.
The biggest thing to consider is time. You can buy a scanner for a few hundred dollars. Scanning even a few hundred images will take a lot of time. How much is this worth? if you have an interest in scanning (or a continuing use for the scanner) then this might be a good path to pursue. if this is a one shot effort, however, I suspect that you will be better served by paying a service like mine to do the scanning for you. We charge about $1 per slide or negative image. Scanning prints can be a good deal cheaper than this.
After the scanning is done, the “real” work begins - organizing and annotating the images and producing slide shows, DVD movies, etc using tools like iPhoto. This is the part that it is less reasonable to contract out — and is a better place to put your time and effort.
Another good web resource for scanning is http://www.scantips.com.
Best of luck! Digitizing family photo collections can be tremendously rewarding.
–Steve
Pixmonix Slide and Negative Scanning Services
http://www.pixmonix.com