scanning film

Film scanners are used to convert film images into digital files. We have two Polaroid SprintScan film scanners, one for 35mm slides or negatives and the other for film up to 4" x 5". Our film scanners are both driven by the Sprint Scan software. If a "no scanners werre found" message appears when the Sprint Scan software is launched the SCSI bus will need to be refreshed by rebooting the computer.

The software is used by carrying out actions on each of the tabs, working from left to right. First the film type should be selected and a preview is done and the image cropped as needed using the white frame. On each subsequent tab the cropped image will then fill the window. Brightness and contrast correction should be done first, followed by colour correction if required. Unsharp masking should be set to about 100%.

Lightness and contrast correction should be made first if required using the sliders to make the image lighter or darker and more or less contrasty. The image can be split for a before and after view of effect of the correction by checking the split view box.

Next, colour correction should be made if required by dragging the white dot away from the colour bias of the scan towards the colour that is needed.

Next, unsharp masking should be set to about 100% with a radius of 1 and a threshold of 2.

The final step is to set the size and resolution of the final scan. Size is set as a percentage of the film area and resolution is in DPI in the scan file. When these are set the results can be see by clicking below in the Width or Height windows. Since resolution affects both height and width the file size will increase as the square of the change in resolution. Between that and scaling, a 35mm slide, scanned at the highest setting, can result in as much as a 28mb file. The scan will be a TIFF file that can then be converted to JPEG in Photoshop.

Your scanned files will need to be moved from the host computer and that is usually done by FTPing them to another computer for storage, burning to CD or printing or by putting them on a thumb drive.