Hi Peter;

    My parents had over 700 slides from the Sixties and Seventies. About a 
year ago I bought a CanoScan 8400F and was quite pleased with the results. 
It handles 4 slides at at time, was quite fast and produced seemingly very 
good images. I used Photoshop 7 and it's autocorrect feature to improve the 
images, although I also had to manually adjust about 40% of the them after 
the autocorrect to get the best results. The FARE feature of the scanner was 
helpful at times, but I found that it too greatly reduced the image quality 
to be used continuously. Still, there were several slides that were damaged 
and the software was able to improve the images sufficiently to make them 
viewable.

    The only problems I ran into with the CanoScan driver was my inability 
to scan the entire area of some store-bought slides that were significantly 
larger than the standard-sized slides. Also, there were several slides that 
were just slightly larger than the rest which presented some difficulty 
which I solved by turning them in the slide frame provided with the scanner. 
I did this with the store bought ones as well; choosing which angle produced 
the best picture. There may have been a better solution, but I couldn't find 
it and nothing important was lost.

    These slides were family photos, so the most important issue was to get 
them scanned before they deteriorated further. The finished images were 
better than the original slides in everyone's opinion. I would imagine a 
professional service or more expensive scanner might have done a better job, 
and perhaps those with a more discerning eye might not have been satisfied, 
but I don't know how much better quality could have been milked from these 
old slides.

    On a personal note, I had thought it would take much longer than it did 
to scan the slides but it took longer to improve the images (adjusting 
colour, rotating, cropping, etc.) with Photoshop than I had originally 
planned. What is even taking longer is to get my mother to name and attach 
information to the images as she is the only left who can.

    Good Luck.

Bill

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Shkabara" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 2:32 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] slide scanner


>I have a fair number (1000+) color slides that I want to scan. I know there
> are services to do so, and I could also scan them with a slide scanner 
> such
> as a Canon Coolscan. What I seek is some advice from those who may have
> already done so. Is it worth the cost to have it done professionally? If a
> scanner is a good way to go, any recommendations on a brand and model? 
> Other
> caveats such as software to use?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Peter
> ----------------------------------
> [log in to unmask]
>
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