File formats/quality for arching old 35mm and slides
Discussion
With the inevitable passage of time, both of my parents have passed away and my sister and I have lots of old photographs, negatives and slides to process. My plan is to digitise the lot to a good quality to archive them and share them with my sister over the cloud.
I have an old Canoscan 2700F film scanner from the early 1990s, but the fact that it is SCSI and no PC I own now has that, plus inevitable issues with drivers has put me off trying to resurrect it. Instead, I have procured a Plustek 8100 film scanner, with SilverFast 8 software. Something to make a start on over lockdown and Christmas.
Just started with the scanner tonight. It gives me options to scan to different resolutions, the top one being 'Archive' at 7200 dpi, and file formats as PSD, DNG, TIFF and JP2 (which I did not know what that one was).
A test scan at 'Archive' took ages, and I could not open the JP2 in Windows anyway.
I would therefore appreciate some expertise here as to what is probably going to be the best file type to format to, and what kind of resolution to use? I want the photos to be easily accessible using WIndows/Mac, and scan at no higher resolution than the original image can deliver. I am a bit lost at the moment, plus the file sizes could be huge and the exercise take forever if it is 5 minutes per image!
ETA - I am working on the basis that I may never want to go through this again in my lifetime, and may even discard the slides/negatives once everything is archived, so want to do it well. Thanks.
with sincere thanks
I have an old Canoscan 2700F film scanner from the early 1990s, but the fact that it is SCSI and no PC I own now has that, plus inevitable issues with drivers has put me off trying to resurrect it. Instead, I have procured a Plustek 8100 film scanner, with SilverFast 8 software. Something to make a start on over lockdown and Christmas.
Just started with the scanner tonight. It gives me options to scan to different resolutions, the top one being 'Archive' at 7200 dpi, and file formats as PSD, DNG, TIFF and JP2 (which I did not know what that one was).
A test scan at 'Archive' took ages, and I could not open the JP2 in Windows anyway.
I would therefore appreciate some expertise here as to what is probably going to be the best file type to format to, and what kind of resolution to use? I want the photos to be easily accessible using WIndows/Mac, and scan at no higher resolution than the original image can deliver. I am a bit lost at the moment, plus the file sizes could be huge and the exercise take forever if it is 5 minutes per image!
ETA - I am working on the basis that I may never want to go through this again in my lifetime, and may even discard the slides/negatives once everything is archived, so want to do it well. Thanks.
with sincere thanks
Edited by TUS373 on Monday 9th November 20:13
Edited by TUS373 on Monday 9th November 20:15
Firstly, sorry about your loss.
I primarily take photos with film, I develop them myself and I scan them in to the computer with an Epson V550. I think I scan them at 3200 dpi which gives me a good enough image as far as I'm concerned. I think, in terms of resolution, 35mm film is about 5600px by 3600px, and scanning at 3200dpi gives that resolution. I'd need to check properly on my Mac what the settings are. When I am I'll update this with the DPI I use.
In terms of file formats, I scan them to TIF, and only introduce JPG to the image when it's one I'm going to share online or print at Boots or something. TIF seems to be the way forward and is still a supported file format.
It's difficult to see decades in to the future in terms of file formats and what will be supported etc. But I think that TIF, JPG are so popular and ubiquitous now that they are the most likely to be supported 20/30/40 years in to the future.
What I would think about is how you store them. I wouldn't opt for an optical discs as they can degrade over time. I would store these images on 2 portable hard drives. Again, connections come and go, but there are ways and means to access older hard drives from the 80's on machines today, and this will likely be true of USB drives in 20 years time.
Good luck, it's not a quick process!
I primarily take photos with film, I develop them myself and I scan them in to the computer with an Epson V550. I think I scan them at 3200 dpi which gives me a good enough image as far as I'm concerned. I think, in terms of resolution, 35mm film is about 5600px by 3600px, and scanning at 3200dpi gives that resolution. I'd need to check properly on my Mac what the settings are. When I am I'll update this with the DPI I use.
In terms of file formats, I scan them to TIF, and only introduce JPG to the image when it's one I'm going to share online or print at Boots or something. TIF seems to be the way forward and is still a supported file format.
It's difficult to see decades in to the future in terms of file formats and what will be supported etc. But I think that TIF, JPG are so popular and ubiquitous now that they are the most likely to be supported 20/30/40 years in to the future.
What I would think about is how you store them. I wouldn't opt for an optical discs as they can degrade over time. I would store these images on 2 portable hard drives. Again, connections come and go, but there are ways and means to access older hard drives from the 80's on machines today, and this will likely be true of USB drives in 20 years time.
Good luck, it's not a quick process!
Ah....thank you for this and the kind words.
So, 3600 dpi may be enough, above that it may be using more data for detail that is not inherently there? TIFF sounds good to me. Good point you raise about the longevity of digital. It may be that I have to store the slides and negatives anyway. Some of the slides are more than 50 years old already in fact, and the colours do look a bit off here and there. I will have to experiment as the scanner software can do some level of automatic optimisation.
I realise now that the one negative I scanned took an age because the scanner does multiple exposures then layers them together. Again, I will have to experiment. It could take a very long time anyway, so if I am scanning a slide and it takes four times longer than another setting for no discernible benefit, I could save weeks or months!
With thanks.
So, 3600 dpi may be enough, above that it may be using more data for detail that is not inherently there? TIFF sounds good to me. Good point you raise about the longevity of digital. It may be that I have to store the slides and negatives anyway. Some of the slides are more than 50 years old already in fact, and the colours do look a bit off here and there. I will have to experiment as the scanner software can do some level of automatic optimisation.
I realise now that the one negative I scanned took an age because the scanner does multiple exposures then layers them together. Again, I will have to experiment. It could take a very long time anyway, so if I am scanning a slide and it takes four times longer than another setting for no discernible benefit, I could save weeks or months!
With thanks.
I agree with the resolution, but JPG is the accepted everyday format for photos and everybody can open them. Purists will say it's lossy. Yes it is, but you will see no difference if you save at the highest quality. Ask the average Joe what a TIFF is and he'll have no idea.
I have two big Victorian photo albums. Every photo in them is well over 100 years old, yet as viewable as when they were put there. Will anything we store digitally now be viewable in 2120? Do not, ever, discard the originals!
I have two big Victorian photo albums. Every photo in them is well over 100 years old, yet as viewable as when they were put there. Will anything we store digitally now be viewable in 2120? Do not, ever, discard the originals!
Simpo Two said:
I agree with the resolution, but JPG is the accepted everyday format for photos and everybody can open them. Purists will say it's lossy. Yes it is, but you will see no difference if you save at the highest quality. Ask the average Joe what a TIFF is and he'll have no idea.
I have two big Victorian photo albums. Every photo in them is well over 100 years old, yet as viewable as when they were put there. Will anything we store digitally now be viewable in 2120? Do not, ever, discard the originals!
Only reason I say to use TIF is that you want as lossless a copy of the original as you can get. When I do it now, I take a scan of the 12 shots on the flat bed so I have one massive TIF file, which I then cut the shots independently to then edit them, which I then save as a JPG. I have two big Victorian photo albums. Every photo in them is well over 100 years old, yet as viewable as when they were put there. Will anything we store digitally now be viewable in 2120? Do not, ever, discard the originals!
If it was a straight scan of a developed printed photo then yeah I would say use JPG. But if it's for archival purposes then it'd make sense to get a lossless copy of the original, especially if they get dumped, lost or burnt.
Thanks both. The file format the software has is JP2. Never heard of this, but sounds like a JPEG close relation. A new one to me, and my PC did not like it when I tried.
One quick question. I take it that 'resolution' is exactly that - the detail level captured in the scanning process, but the 'loss''/'lossless' refers to the processing of the resultant file ii terms of its compression?
Thanks
Bryan
One quick question. I take it that 'resolution' is exactly that - the detail level captured in the scanning process, but the 'loss''/'lossless' refers to the processing of the resultant file ii terms of its compression?
Thanks
Bryan
A .jp2 file is a JPEG 2000 compressed file:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
There are a number of programmes that will open .jp2 files - the Wiki page has a list. The Silverfast documentation isn't the best but the reason you're not being offered .jpg as a file format might be if you have 48 bit selected as the output format so try changing it to 24 bit & see if .jpg becomes an option. The Silverfast documentation is here:
https://www.silverfast.com/documentation/en.html
Not everyone gets on with Silverfast so an alternative is Vuescan (you can try it for free):
https://www.hamrick.com/
There's a lot of information here but it's in German so open it up in Chrome & it will translate for you:
https://www.filmscanner.info/KnowHow.html
I haven't looked but Youtube is usually a good source of information so I'd spend a bit of time searching there. Top tip: triage your material; not every picture is worth saving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
There are a number of programmes that will open .jp2 files - the Wiki page has a list. The Silverfast documentation isn't the best but the reason you're not being offered .jpg as a file format might be if you have 48 bit selected as the output format so try changing it to 24 bit & see if .jpg becomes an option. The Silverfast documentation is here:
https://www.silverfast.com/documentation/en.html
Not everyone gets on with Silverfast so an alternative is Vuescan (you can try it for free):
https://www.hamrick.com/
There's a lot of information here but it's in German so open it up in Chrome & it will translate for you:
https://www.filmscanner.info/KnowHow.html
I haven't looked but Youtube is usually a good source of information so I'd spend a bit of time searching there. Top tip: triage your material; not every picture is worth saving.
Thanks for that. The Silverfast was a nightmare to install, as I do not have a CD drive on this PC. Awful going around in circles to register it, then get a 'reseller' number, then do not get a new registration number. Drove me mad for 40 minutes.
I did see the 48, so good call in changing that to 24. Might do the trick.
Thank you so much for the pointers. Will take a look at VueScan too.
I did see the 48, so good call in changing that to 24. Might do the trick.
Thank you so much for the pointers. Will take a look at VueScan too.
Gassing Station | Photography & Video | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff