The World’s Worst Advice for Scanning Slides

When you’re looking into scanning slides, be sure not to make these big mistakes! They’re a recipe for disaster.

• Don’t bother storing your slides any special way. Slides are tough and resilient! They’ll scan in as good as new, no matter how they have been stored.
  Real advice: Store your slides in a box or case designed for slide storage, or in a carousel (not, for instance, loose in a paper bag). That will protect them from dust and damage. Scanning slides simply copies the existing image into a digital format. If those slides are damaged or bent, the image that gets scanned will be affected.
• Expect pictures to come back better-looking than they were the first time around! Of course a slide scanning lab will fix any photography errors that may have been made at the time the picture was taken.
  Real advice: If a slide is badly discolored, we will do our best to fix it up. But photos that are blurry, dark, or taken with the wrong type of film (for instance, if indoor film was used outdoors on a sunny day) will still not look perfect when they are digitized, without some in-depth correction work. We can do that for you at an additional fee; please ask when you are dropping off your slides. But, of course, no one can do anything about any unfortunate haircuts or outfits you may have sported in the 1980s!
• Most importantly, slides last forever. There’s no rush to scan them – they’ll still be just as good in a few more years as they are today.
  Real advice: Slides, like all film, will deteriorate with time, no matter how well you store them. The color can fade or discolor, necessitating additional work to make them look good again. Save yourself the extra time and money on fixing up preventable image problems, and bring your slides in as soon as possible.

The best advice we can give you to counter any bad information you may have gotten is to treat your slides carefully, and don’t let them rot away in a closet or attic. If these pictures are important to you, preserve them! Ask us about our slide scanning services today.