Hello everyone, sometimes I was faced with the need to either quickly scan a document or install a free program for scanning documents in the office, and now I will show you what programs I have in stock. These programs are suitable for scanners: Canon, Epson, HP, Xerox and many others.

1.ScanLite

The most famous document scanning program, it is very easy to use and easy to understand.

What's in the program:

• The first is the name of the document that will be scanned.
• The second is the path where the file will be scanned.
• The third is the scan button itself.

Attention! The disadvantage of this program is that you have to rename the file each time (in step one), otherwise the program will overwrite the previous one.

Here you can select the program skin, pdf (document) or jpg (picture) format, color or black and white image and quality. I think everything is clear here.

2.WinScan2PDF

This program is very simple. And as I understand it, it is the most popular. But its downside is that it can only scan to pdf, and the author gave it the appropriate name.

We choose which device to scan from, you can check the box to scan multiple pages.

Well, the scan button and exit the program.

3. ScanCorrector

And the latest free program for scanning documents already has more settings.

When starting, if a warning appears, do not be alarmed.

Everything is described here step by step.

1. Select which device to scan from and what color to scan (there is a button next) to scan the next image.

2. Here you can edit the image a little, add brightness or contrast.

3. In the end, you can print the image, save it in jpg or bmp, or open it to see the result.

Please also pay attention to the checkbox, if you check it, the image will be on the entire A4 sheet.

Well, that's all, I use these tools in everyday life. Of course, there may be better programs, but they are paid and weigh more. These free scanning programs They cope with their task quite well.

Bonus:

And a little technology)

In general, the idea of ​​scanning and organizing old photographs, of course, has been incubated for a long time; it is not easy to decide on such a volume of work on scanning old photographic films (more than a hundred) and photographs (thousands). In general, since childhood I wanted to have digitized old photographs of my great-great-grandparents, and finally, 20 years later, I decided to take the plunge.

Scanner

The first question was, of course, the scanner. At one time, about 7 years ago, I was trying to digitize negatives and decided to stock up on a film scanner. I didn’t have much money, so I chose something cheaper, which turned out to be Miktotek Filmscan 35.


Compared to scanning monsters, it cost a penny, but the results were terrifying. I used Silverfast for it as the most advanced software at that time (maybe now). I don’t know why, but sometimes, with different passes, this miracle gave me either a blue or a green photo, then everything froze, it was unpredictable and very sad, I had to pore over each frame for 10-15 minutes, straightening the histograms and performing other dances with tambourine In general, this process discouraged me from scanning films for several years; the scanner is lying around somewhere.

Now, having considered all the pros and cons, the following was decided.
There were several points that needed to be taken into account:

• Most of the scanning will be done not by me, but by my parents, fortunately they have time now
• You need to scan not only films, but also photos
• you need to scan a lot
• no fabulous budget

In addition to all of the above, I understood that now film is no longer a relevant medium, and therefore most likely it will be necessary to scan only once, although this may take a lot of time.

So, film scanners are no longer needed for two reasons:
firstly, previous experience has shown that you can’t buy a normal unit like this for cheap, and the fact that it’s cheap - oh, I can’t stand such hell a second time.
Secondly, buying a separate scanner for photos and a separate one for film is also somewhat expensive and impractical.
Moreover, I told myself, if I come across something good, I’ll take it to a professional laboratory; I could go broke on a dozen frames.

Having looked at what was on sale that could scan film in addition to paper, it turned out that the choice was small: either sky-high prices, or just a couple of options. Taking a break from all stores working immediately after the holiday, it turned out that there are the following acceptable options:

• Epson Perfection V330 Photo (A4, 4800 x 9600 dpi, USB 2.0, CCD, Film Adapter)
• Epson Perfection V370, Photo (A4, 4800x9600 dpi, CCD, USB 2.0)
• Canon CanoScan LiDE 700F (A4 9600x9600dpi 48bit CIS USB2.0 slide adapter)
• Canon CanoScan 5600F (A4 4800x9600dpi 48bit USB2.0 slide adapter)

The rest was either too expensive, from 10,000, or, conversely, did nothing. Unfortunately, the CanoScan 5600F is no longer available due to its lack of availability at the moment, although according to the description it is very good. The rest turned out, according to reviews, to be about the same, but the decisive role was played by the fact that the Epsons had drivers for Linux, and since I would like to work not only under Windows, in the end the Epson Perfection V330 Photo won. I couldn’t find out anywhere , how does the 330 model differ from the 370, but since Linux drivers were mentioned only for the 330, I settled on it, so to speak, “to avoid.”

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to try it under Linux yet, but I liked the defect removal function in the Windows software - it works like a charm on black and white old photographs. But you also need to be careful with it - sometimes something worthwhile can be considered a defect.

Reviews about the scanner sometimes mention a problem with the appearance of stripes when scanning films - but I have not observed this yet. Nevertheless, in my opinion, here is something useful about this, found in one of the reviews on the Yandex market: “After two years, I can report on the result of the investigation: in the scanner frame there is a calibration window where the white balance is set. If dust particles get there, you get “broken pixels,” which give streaks when the carriage runs. This is most likely a design defect of the new LED backlight (but who will admit it...). So gentlemen, if you have such a scanner,
remove dust."

What resolution to scan with - this was not the last question. The scanner produces a maximum of 4800x9600, but when trying to set this when scanning a 9x13cm photo, the system began to swear at the scale, I had to reduce it.

The criterion for choosing a resolution is simple: if we assume that you can print with a standard resolution of 300dpi, then to get the same image you need to have at least 300dpi. Considering that the photos are old, there is no point in overestimating this figure - anyway, the physical resolution will not allow you to get quality out of nothing. Again, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever want to print a poster with an image of their great-grandfather on A1 or even A4 format. If someone writes a book, it is unlikely that the picture will be larger than a sheet of paper. In general, I decided that for very old people, a twofold increase would do, for higher quality and later ones - a threefold increase, i.e. 600dpi and 900dpi respectively. Next, I chose what was closest to what the software that came with the scanner produced.

For negatives, I decided to use the maximum - it was not in vain that I bought it with such a resolution... Most likely this is too much 4800x4800dpi, but you can always cut it down later, but the main thing is that later you won’t have to rescan with other parameters and you can sleep peacefully.

Scans are saved, of course, in no case in jpeg, in order to avoid compression losses. Everything is just tiff. It seems, of course, that the place eats more, but once you scan it, you won’t have any problems: I do what I want. I also didn’t come to this right away, but practice shows that if I save now, I will regret it later and return to this issue, but if everything is done to the maximum, then there is nothing to regret later.

Cataloging

Naturally, after digitization, the whole thing needs to be sorted out somehow. The main task was to sign the great-great relatives, because I wanted to preserve the family history for the future, and without competent comments no one will ever figure it out.

The option to immediately process the photos and upload them to the website was not suitable for two reasons: firstly, everything needs to be processed at once, which takes time, and parents don’t understand anything about it; secondly, technologies are changing, and who would know what a website will look like in a couple of decades, if it will even exist at all.

The use of a smart cataloging program was not suitable for the same significant reason - there is no guarantee that in several decades this software will be alive and, accordingly, no one will understand what, where and how is stored in its smart unique format.

The solution that came to mind was to store the description in a regular text file with the same name as the photo - text is text in Africa, and anyone will probably be able to read it decades later, even if they come up with some kind of super-Unicode, it’s still much more reliable than special software. But as a programmer, I looked at this option with horror - well, it’s ugly and that’s it. Yes, and it’s inconvenient during work.

The parents said that in general they wanted it like in Word - here is a photo, here is a signature - and everything is clear. Such a proposal made my hair stand on end, because again, today the Word is there, tomorrow it is gone.

Another option is to store signatures in EXIF. What was confusing here was that when processing images, many EXIF ​​software are simply ignored; as a result, losing precious signatures may be irreparable.

In general, after analyzing the whole situation, I made a decision: we scan the photo, sign it in EXIF ​​form, and then make all these pictures with captions read-only, so that there is no temptation to change anything, and thus we guarantee the safety of the information. If you want to change it, make a copy and go ahead. Well, backups of course. And in general, in the end, that’s why we are programmers, to sketch out a small script so that the entire EXIF ​​can be exported to a text file, just in case, “to avoid” :)

There are a lot of command line tools for working with EXIF ​​in Linux, but this is unacceptable for convenient work with a large number of images. However, here's what it is: exif , exiftool , exiv2 , a quick google search will give you more information. Next I used exiftool for batch processing, but more on that later.

Let's see what's available from the GUI. After studying what the OpenSource community offers us, I somehow settled on DigiKam - “digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX,” as it is written on their website.
I decided to edit in GIMP, GNU Image Manipulation Program, an analogue of Photoshop, but open source. Therefore, the ability to edit photos for the cataloging software was not required separately, but several things were added to the cataloging itself.

Firstly, DigiKam edits EXIF, which is what I need.

Secondly, all the photos are on the screen at once, we sign them in the window next to them and immediately move on to the next one - quickly, simply and conveniently.

Thirdly, it was noticed that in EXIF ​​itself there are several similar tags for commenting: Comment, UserComment, ImageComment, so, DigiKam writes to everything at once, so the likelihood that this information will be read by other software is quite high.

In addition, reading the reviews, I was pleased with the idea that in addition to just EXIF, the software can maintain a catalog, without copying anything anywhere, unlike many others, but simply processing everything on the spot. This was a huge plus - I was not looking for this opportunity initially, but it turned out to be very useful. And what I liked is that in addition to entering information into EXIF, it writes it into its database and then it’s convenient to sort the photos and search by labels, tags, descriptions, etc. And even if at some point the software disappears and the database too, a copy of the data will remain in EXIF, which, in fact, is what I need.

Some interesting thoughts on cataloging are described in the already mentioned article “Experience in creating a catalog and indexing a family photo archive. Indexing and digitization of photographic films". So, all or almost all of this data can also be kept in EXIF ​​and, if necessary, exported to any format as it is convenient for us.
An additional advantage of DigiKam is that you can choose any photo as the album cover, and I liked the idea of ​​having a photo of the paper album itself as the cover, for which I thank the author.

Another non-obvious point that I encountered when working with DigiKam: if there are no rights to write to a photo file, then the software silently writes only to its database, without making it clear that there are problems. I spent a long time trying to figure out why there is a signature in the program, but not in the file, especially since the “save in file” option is set in the settings. So, keep this in mind - check your access rights, otherwise you may swear for a long time later.

We post it on the website

So, the main tasks have been solved - scanning and cataloging. Now is the time to brag to your relatives and show your friends the photo. Naturally by posting photos on the site. Not long ago I already made a software for this task: I put the necessary photos in
catalog, launched it - and that’s it, an album was made. I wrote about this on Habré last time, “Simple automation: photo album”. Now, using DigiKam, I decided that I could mark the photo directly in EXIF ​​tags whether it should be placed in a photo album or not, since during scanning there were all sorts of pictures that should not be posted on the site. And comments can now be taken from EXIF.

Everything seems to be fine, but not very good.

On the site, everything is processed in PHP, and there is, as it seemed to me, a wonderful function for working with EXIF, read_exif_data() , but as practice has shown, this incomplete function shows only part of the data, completely silent about the rest. I rummaged through everything I could - and the dream of an easy life sank into oblivion, I had to pull EXIF ​​out of the files at the album generation stage, fortunately command line tools have their place.

As a result, I rewrote the script, remembering the caustic comment to my previous article “PHP file generator in Perl... Monsieur knows a lot...”, laughed to himself that he was still right, that he did not completely rely on PHP - so she would have set me up Now the leg, and just a couple of minutes - and the problem is solved.

So, when processing photos in DigiKam, we mark the photo with a flag (it’s called PickLabel). The flag is written to a file in EXIF. When we process all the files from the directory, pull out the flag using exiftool:

$flagPickLabel = `exiftool -b -PickLabel "$fname_in"`;

Well, then, depending on the checkbox - if it is checked, then we process it, if not, we skip it. Everything is set on the command line to make it convenient. In fact, you can process a lot of things here; it depends on the taste and color of what you need.

Link to the source code, if suddenly someone needs to take a closer look or even apply it: photo_album-r143.tar.gz. How to use was mentioned in the previous article, I will not repeat it.

With that, thank you for your attention, and if it was useful to anyone, I’m immensely glad.
Criticism is welcome.

UPD: I accidentally found it on Habré about scanning negatives - I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before. Let it be here in abundance.

Tags:

Ordinary scanners are not designed for scanning slides and negatives due to insufficient backlighting. However, there is a trick that will allow you to do this using a small amount of cardboard. By constructing a clever design, you can redirect the light flux and achieve the desired result.

If you have old negatives lying around in your archive that you would like to convert into digital format, you have the opportunity to scan them. But simple scanning will not work for these purposes. In order for everything to work out, you need a powerful light source, which should be located behind the negative or a multi-functional scanner.

Of course, you can buy a special scanner for films, but if you already have a regular flatbed scanning device, you can get by with it. You can use a regular cardboard reflector to scan film or slide. It will capture the light emitted by the scanner and reflect it off the back of the slide. Such a reflector will make it possible to scan films and slides like regular documents.

To make a reflector we will need the following materials:
Sheet of thick A4 cardboard with silver side
Pencil
Scissors
Scotch
Ruler

Instructions

Having achieved a satisfactory result, you need to crop the image along the contour of the slide, since the scanner scans the entire glass, and we only need a small frame. Cropping can be done in any graphics editor. To obtain the clearest image possible, scan at high resolution. It is recommended to use 1200 DPI.

If dust gets on the negative during scanning, it can be removed with a soft lens brush or cosmetic brush. To remove stains or scratches, you can use the healing brush tool. To do this, you can use free programs such as GIMP or Paint.net. They are available for free download and are easy to find on the Internet.

In general, the idea of ​​scanning and organizing old photographs, of course, has been incubated for a long time; it is not easy to decide on such a volume of work on scanning old photographic films (more than a hundred) and photographs (thousands). In general, since childhood I wanted to have digitized old photographs of my great-great-grandparents, and finally, 20 years later, I decided to take the plunge.

Scanner

The first question was, of course, the scanner. At one time, about 7 years ago, I was trying to digitize negatives and decided to stock up on a film scanner. I didn’t have much money, so I chose something cheaper, which turned out to be Miktotek Filmscan 35.


Compared to scanning monsters, it cost a penny, but the results were terrifying. I used Silverfast for it as the most advanced software at that time (maybe now). I don’t know why, but sometimes, with different passes, this miracle gave me either a blue or a green photo, then everything froze, it was unpredictable and very sad, I had to pore over each frame for 10-15 minutes, straightening the histograms and performing other dances with tambourine In general, this process discouraged me from scanning films for several years; the scanner is lying around somewhere.

Now, having considered all the pros and cons, the following was decided.
There were several points that needed to be taken into account:

• Most of the scanning will be done not by me, but by my parents, fortunately they have time now
• You need to scan not only films, but also photos
• you need to scan a lot
• no fabulous budget

In addition to all of the above, I understood that now film is no longer a relevant medium, and therefore most likely it will be necessary to scan only once, although this may take a lot of time.

So, film scanners are no longer needed for two reasons:
firstly, previous experience has shown that you can’t buy a normal unit like this for cheap, and the fact that it’s cheap - oh, I can’t stand such hell a second time.
Secondly, buying a separate scanner for photos and a separate one for film is also somewhat expensive and impractical.
Moreover, I told myself, if I come across something good, I’ll take it to a professional laboratory; I could go broke on a dozen frames.

Having looked at what was on sale that could scan film in addition to paper, it turned out that the choice was small: either sky-high prices, or just a couple of options. Taking a break from all stores working immediately after the holiday, it turned out that there are the following acceptable options:

• Epson Perfection V330 Photo (A4, 4800 x 9600 dpi, USB 2.0, CCD, Film Adapter)
• Epson Perfection V370, Photo (A4, 4800x9600 dpi, CCD, USB 2.0)
• Canon CanoScan LiDE 700F (A4 9600x9600dpi 48bit CIS USB2.0 slide adapter)
• Canon CanoScan 5600F (A4 4800x9600dpi 48bit USB2.0 slide adapter)

The rest was either too expensive, from 10,000, or, conversely, did nothing. Unfortunately, the CanoScan 5600F is no longer available due to its lack of availability at the moment, although according to the description it is very good. The rest turned out, according to reviews, to be about the same, but the decisive role was played by the fact that the Epsons had drivers for Linux, and since I would like to work not only under Windows, in the end the Epson Perfection V330 Photo won. I couldn’t find out anywhere , how does the 330 model differ from the 370, but since Linux drivers were mentioned only for the 330, I settled on it, so to speak, “to avoid.”

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to try it under Linux yet, but I liked the defect removal function in the Windows software - it works like a charm on black and white old photographs. But you also need to be careful with it - sometimes something worthwhile can be considered a defect.

Reviews about the scanner sometimes mention a problem with the appearance of stripes when scanning films - but I have not observed this yet. Nevertheless, in my opinion, here is something useful about this, found in one of the reviews on the Yandex market: “After two years, I can report on the result of the investigation: in the scanner frame there is a calibration window where the white balance is set. If dust particles get there, you get “broken pixels,” which give streaks when the carriage runs. This is most likely a design defect of the new LED backlight (but who will admit it...). So gentlemen, if you have such a scanner,
remove dust."

What resolution to scan with - this was not the last question. The scanner produces a maximum of 4800x9600, but when trying to set this when scanning a 9x13cm photo, the system began to swear at the scale, I had to reduce it.

The criterion for choosing a resolution is simple: if we assume that you can print with a standard resolution of 300dpi, then to get the same image you need to have at least 300dpi. Considering that the photos are old, there is no point in overestimating this figure - anyway, the physical resolution will not allow you to get quality out of nothing. Again, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever want to print a poster with an image of their great-grandfather on A1 or even A4 format. If someone writes a book, it is unlikely that the picture will be larger than a sheet of paper. In general, I decided that for very old people, a twofold increase would do, for higher quality and later ones - a threefold increase, i.e. 600dpi and 900dpi respectively. Next, I chose what was closest to what the software that came with the scanner produced.

For negatives, I decided to use the maximum - it was not in vain that I bought it with such a resolution... Most likely this is too much 4800x4800dpi, but you can always cut it down later, but the main thing is that later you won’t have to rescan with other parameters and you can sleep peacefully.

Scans are saved, of course, in no case in jpeg, in order to avoid compression losses. Everything is just tiff. It seems, of course, that the place eats more, but once you scan it, you won’t have any problems: I do what I want. I also didn’t come to this right away, but practice shows that if I save now, I will regret it later and return to this issue, but if everything is done to the maximum, then there is nothing to regret later.

Cataloging

Naturally, after digitization, the whole thing needs to be sorted out somehow. The main task was to sign the great-great relatives, because I wanted to preserve the family history for the future, and without competent comments no one will ever figure it out.

The option to immediately process the photos and upload them to the website was not suitable for two reasons: firstly, everything needs to be processed at once, which takes time, and parents don’t understand anything about it; secondly, technologies are changing, and who would know what a website will look like in a couple of decades, if it will even exist at all.

The use of a smart cataloging program was not suitable for the same significant reason - there is no guarantee that in several decades this software will be alive and, accordingly, no one will understand what, where and how is stored in its smart unique format.

The solution that came to mind was to store the description in a regular text file with the same name as the photo - text is text in Africa, and anyone will probably be able to read it decades later, even if they come up with some kind of super-Unicode, it’s still much more reliable than special software. But as a programmer, I looked at this option with horror - well, it’s ugly and that’s it. Yes, and it’s inconvenient during work.

The parents said that in general they wanted it like in Word - here is a photo, here is a signature - and everything is clear. Such a proposal made my hair stand on end, because again, today the Word is there, tomorrow it is gone.

Another option is to store signatures in EXIF. What was confusing here was that when processing images, many EXIF ​​software are simply ignored; as a result, losing precious signatures may be irreparable.

In general, after analyzing the whole situation, I made a decision: we scan the photo, sign it in EXIF ​​form, and then make all these pictures with captions read-only, so that there is no temptation to change anything, and thus we guarantee the safety of the information. If you want to change it, make a copy and go ahead. Well, backups of course. And in general, in the end, that’s why we are programmers, to sketch out a small script so that the entire EXIF ​​can be exported to a text file, just in case, “to avoid” :)

There are a lot of command line tools for working with EXIF ​​in Linux, but this is unacceptable for convenient work with a large number of images. However, here's what it is: exif , exiftool , exiv2 , a quick google search will give you more information. Next I used exiftool for batch processing, but more on that later.

Let's see what's available from the GUI. After studying what the OpenSource community offers us, I somehow settled on DigiKam - “digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX,” as it is written on their website.
I decided to edit in GIMP, GNU Image Manipulation Program, an analogue of Photoshop, but open source. Therefore, the ability to edit photos for the cataloging software was not required separately, but several things were added to the cataloging itself.

Firstly, DigiKam edits EXIF, which is what I need.

Secondly, all the photos are on the screen at once, we sign them in the window next to them and immediately move on to the next one - quickly, simply and conveniently.

Thirdly, it was noticed that in EXIF ​​itself there are several similar tags for commenting: Comment, UserComment, ImageComment, so, DigiKam writes to everything at once, so the likelihood that this information will be read by other software is quite high.

In addition, reading the reviews, I was pleased with the idea that in addition to just EXIF, the software can maintain a catalog, without copying anything anywhere, unlike many others, but simply processing everything on the spot. This was a huge plus - I was not looking for this opportunity initially, but it turned out to be very useful. And what I liked is that in addition to entering information into EXIF, it writes it into its database and then it’s convenient to sort the photos and search by labels, tags, descriptions, etc. And even if at some point the software disappears and the database too, a copy of the data will remain in EXIF, which, in fact, is what I need.

Some interesting thoughts on cataloging are described in the already mentioned article. So, all or almost all of this data can also be kept in EXIF ​​and, if necessary, exported to any format as it is convenient for us.
An additional advantage of DigiKam is that you can choose any photo as the album cover, and I liked the idea of ​​having a photo of the paper album itself as the cover, for which I thank the author.

Another non-obvious point that I encountered when working with DigiKam: if there are no rights to write to a photo file, then the software silently writes only to its database, without making it clear that there are problems. I spent a long time trying to figure out why there is a signature in the program, but not in the file, especially since the “save in file” option is set in the settings. So, keep this in mind - check your access rights, otherwise you may swear for a long time later.

We post it on the website

So, the main tasks have been solved - scanning and cataloging. Now is the time to brag to your relatives and show your friends the photo. Naturally by posting photos on the site. Not long ago I already made a software for this task: I put the necessary photos in
catalog, launched it - and that’s it, an album was made. I wrote about this on Habré last time. Now, using DigiKam, I decided that I could mark the photo directly in EXIF ​​tags whether it should be placed in a photo album or not, since during scanning there were all sorts of pictures that should not be posted on the site. And comments can now be taken from EXIF.

Everything seems to be fine, but not very good.

On the site, everything is processed in PHP, and there is, as it seemed to me, a wonderful function for working with EXIF, read_exif_data() , but as practice has shown, this incomplete function shows only part of the data, completely silent about the rest. I rummaged through everything I could - and the dream of an easy life sank into oblivion, I had to pull EXIF ​​out of the files at the album generation stage, fortunately command line tools have their place.

As a result, I rewrote the script, remembering the caustic comment to my previous article “PHP file generator in Perl... Monsieur knows a lot...”, laughed to himself that he was still right, that he did not completely rely on PHP - so she would have set me up Now the leg, and just a couple of minutes - and the problem is solved.

So, when processing photos in DigiKam, we mark the photo with a flag (it’s called PickLabel). The flag is written to a file in EXIF. When we process all the files from the directory, pull out the flag using exiftool:

$flagPickLabel = `exiftool -b -PickLabel "$fname_in"`;

Well, then, depending on the checkbox - if it is checked, then we process it, if not, we skip it. Everything is set on the command line to make it convenient. In fact, you can process a lot of things here; it depends on the taste and color of what you need.

Link to the source code, if suddenly someone needs to take a closer look or even apply it: photo_album-r143.tar.gz. How to use was mentioned in the previous article, I will not repeat it.

With that, thank you for your attention, and if it was useful to anyone, I’m immensely glad.
Criticism is welcome.

UPD: I found it by chance on Habré - I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before. Let it be here in abundance.

Tags:

• photo archive
• photo cataloging
• scanning
• DigiKam
• EXIF
• exiftool

All about digital photography

Ordinary scanners are not designed for scanning slides and negatives due to insufficient backlighting. However, there is a trick that will allow you to do this using a small amount of cardboard. By constructing a clever design, you can redirect the light flux and achieve the desired result.

If you have old negatives lying around in your archive that you would like to convert into digital format, you have the opportunity to scan them. But simple scanning will not work for these purposes.

In order for everything to work out, you need a powerful light source, which should be located behind the negative or a multi-functional scanner.

Of course, you can buy a special scanner for films, but if you already have a regular flatbed scanning device, you can get by with it.

You can use a regular cardboard reflector to scan film or slide. It will capture the light emitted by the scanner and reflect it off the back of the slide. Such a reflector will make it possible to scan films and slides like regular documents.

To make a reflector we will need the following materials:

Sheet of thick A4 cardboard with silver side
Pencil
Scissors
Scotch
Ruler

Instructions

Step 1: On the non-silver side of the cardstock, print or draw the following pattern.

Step 2: Cut out the template and fold it so that the silver side is facing inward.

Step 3: Connect the template into a triangle. It should resemble a wedge. This will leave one side open. The shiny part must be inside.

Let's start using our reflector. Place film or slide on the scanner glass. Place a reflector on top. To achieve a good result, align one side of the slide with the center of the reflector. There is no need to close the scanner cover. You can start scanning. If you end up with uneven lighting in your photo, you can try placing a thin sheet of tissue paper between the negative and the reflector.

Best Film Scanners rating: photos, characteristics, prices, reviews

The paper will diffuse the light flux and prevent the scanner from capturing the space behind the film.

Having achieved a satisfactory result, you need to crop the image along the contour of the slide, since the scanner scans the entire glass, and we only need a small frame. Cropping can be done in any graphics editor. To obtain the clearest image possible, scan at high resolution. It is recommended to use 1200 DPI.

After scanning, you will need to do some photo manipulation with the image. If you scanned a negative, you will have to invert the colors. This can be done even in Microsoft Paint, so there shouldn't be any difficulties. You can also do a little processing of the image in any graphic editor. It is recommended to increase the brightness or contrast.

If dust gets on the negative during scanning, it can be removed with a soft lens brush or cosmetic brush. To remove stains or scratches, you can use the healing brush tool.

To do this, you can use free programs such as GIMP or Paint.net. They are available for free download and are easy to find on the Internet.

This image shows (from left to right): the forward scan, the inverted scan, and the final image after removing scratches and dust. The whole job took no more than 10 minutes.

Source: n-foto.ru

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1 step

Scanner with slide module

Let me make a reservation right away that you can scan the film normally only on a scanner with a slide module.

The slide module is a device inside the scanner cover, consisting of a special plate and some other elements. If you just put film on the scanner glass, the result will be terrible, everything will be overexposed and ruined. In addition, the scanner must have a real (not to be confused with interpolated resolution) optical resolution of at least 2400dPi, and preferably 4800dPi.

Step 2

We need to prepare the film. Cut it into pieces of 6 frames each. Before doing this, it is advisable to rinse the film with plain water. Wipe the scanner glass with glass cleaning liquid, otherwise every speck of dust will be visible in the photo. Detach the slide module plate and attach the film to it.

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To press tightly, use small plates along the edges. Attach the slide module to the scanner lid and lower the lid.

Step 3

Software You can use the software included with the scanner as a program for scanning film. The VueScan program also copes well with this task. You can download it from the resource. This utility supports most scanners and has many settings. The scanning process itself is not much different from scanning photographs. You need to select the media type Slide\Film, scan resolution and location to save the file. Select the format of the created file: BMP or TIFF; if you select JPEG, you will lose the quality of the picture. Batch mode allows you to scan multiple slides at once. It is better to process the resulting image in graphic editors, such as Photoshop. Source akak.ru

• On a weak PC, high-resolution scanning can take quite a long time.
• Do not use multifunction devices (MFPs) to digitize film.
• You can scan both negatives and positives.

Back

How to make a slide module for a scanner

When I wrote about a homemade shoe dryer, I understandably wanted to post a photo of this miracle. But when I ordered “all the resulting” photos to be printed on film, the stupid operators did not understand the genius of this device and left it unprinted. I didn’t want to go to them a second time. Then I thought about making a slide module for my Umax Astra 4700 scanner. Well, don’t buy it for fifty dollars, really!
The most obvious way: put the film on the glass and shine a lamp from above through white paper for uniformity - but it didn’t work. Couldn't find the right brightness, etc.

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Although, theoretically, this is probably possible.
An attempt to force the scanner driver into film scanning mode resulted in it turning off the lamp (this is good) and shouting that it could not be positioned (this is bad). Probably, there is some kind of calibration scale on the native slide module... Well, to hell with it.
A search on the internet gave a description of a design consisting of two mirrors. That's what I decided to do. But everything turned out to be somewhat different from what was described. In general, just for fun, I’m posting how it happened.
You will need:
— two mirrors approximately 60*60 mm (deviations in any direction are possible, affecting the result);
— a box from a 5-inch CD;
- glue for plastics and glass (preferably cyanoacrylic - second);
- a hacksaw, or a jigsaw, or a knife, in general, something that can be used to cut a box of CDs.

Ideally, you will also need a piece of glass, but if the box is not scratched, this will do. Although the quality will, of course, be worse.

We take the lid from the CD and cut off two corners (right triangles with sides about 3 cm). This will be a 90 degree measure at which the mirrors need to be glued together. Glue mirrors to them with the reflective surface inward to make a house. When it dries, we place this house on what is left of the lid (so that the mirrors look down) and glue it to the lower ribs.
You will get something like this design. I tried to photograph her with a webcam from different angles, but it still didn’t work out very well. (click to enlarge)

How to use what you got

The main thing is patience. Wait until the glue dries so as not to crap the scanner glass :)))

Place the emulsion film on the scanner. We place the house on top so that the mirrors look down, and the film is shifted to its edge and lies parallel to the junction of the mirrors (see pictures).

Moreover, we place the house ALONG the movement of the carriage - this is the main know-how. We cover it all with an opaque box on top - it can increase the contrast of the image. Again, see the picture.

It is useful to paint the inside of the box with black paint - all for contrast.
And... full speed ahead! Resolution - 1200-2400.

The result will be something like the horror in the picture on the right.

There is no need to despair - this is what we wanted. Load it into Microsoft Photo Editor (it's in the MS Office installer, in the Office Tools branch) or into something smarter. Make a negative out of this image. I got an average picture, in which the colors are already visible, but there is a lot of blue. Photo Editor has a Balance function, which allows you to change the brightness of both the entire image and each color component separately. With its help you need to remove the blue, you can add red. And the result is what we see in the left picture. And all the scratches on it come from the cover of the CD (use glass, comrades!).
It is, of course, not a fountain, but for some purposes it is very suitable.

Good luck!

For letters

Scanning negatives

Comrades (or whatever is fashionable today), gentlemen of the forum.

I decided to convert my family photo archive to digital format.
There are just a lot of negatives! Since the 80s of the last century. Taking into account the fact that my father was engaged in photography (though still in black and white). I have been photographing and printing photos since I was 6 years old.

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In short, a lot has accumulated.

My old scanner does not support this feature. I took a Mustek scanner for testing - BearPaw 2448TA Plus.
When scanning with a resolution of 1200 dpi, everything is fine, but the speed is not satisfactory; it takes 10 minutes to process 4 negatives, not counting the framing time. Moreover, I am not satisfied with the quality and resolution.
When scanning with high resolution, various quirks appear, sometimes black photos, sometimes white, sometimes one of the RGB components. Moreover, there are no patterns (rebooting programs and drivers, memory occupancy, etc.)!

Has anyone encountered this problem?

I’m ready to buy a new scanner for scanning negatives (you can only use negatives - a specialized one).
Maybe someone works on this profile in photo laboratories.

Due to your financial situation, please do not offer photo scanners over $300.