The Scanning Process

The technician will remove your order from the box and look over any special instructions, the method of organization and then spread the order out amongst 1-4 scanners based on quantity of slides sent.

Each scanner is equipped with a slide template that we use to scan 12 slides at a time. These are only for slides that measure 2×2 in mounted (overall) size.  If you have slides that are outside the 2×2 dimension of a standard slide, please visit our FAQ here to learn more.  Each slide is cleaned using a dust free cloth and an airbrush when needed to remove surface particles before mounting in the slide template.

 

Each scanning cycle is about 40-50 minutes and slides are previewed prior to the final scanning to insure coloration, lighting and cropping are all the best quality they can be.  We will use Digital ICE if you’ve selected this upgrade as well as additional resolution upgrades (3200dpi or 4800dpi). Keep in mind though, if a slide is extremely under or over-exposed, there is little we can do to correct it.  If there is no image visible once we preview before scanning, we will not scan that image and it will not go against your overall slide count.

Scanning In Order & Formatting

Based on how you have them organized in groups, you will either have several electronic folders that are named based on the labels you’ve provided or we will scan them sequentially into one single folder if you’ve numbered them.  If there’s no logical order or grouping to them, we reserve the right to scan them at our discretion.

Unlike our photo scanning services, it is a little more difficult to keep slides in a perfect order due to the different slide formats.  There are several types of slides as shown below:

However, our scanners are only calibrated to the standard (and most common) 35mm slide.  If you have any other format, we have to manually crop the images out by hand and the sequential order of your slides can no longer be guaranteed at this point.  We, of course, will make every attempt to keep them in order but quality does take precedence over sequence.

Once they have all been scanned, they will then go through a final editing process by the technician to ensure they are cropped cleanly, images were scanned in the correct orientation (not backwards), and renamed consecutively.

**If you have elected to forego Digital ICE, the technician will NOT make any attempts to remove the dust remaining on the slide image.  Be prepared to receive images back that will need post-processing removal of dust/scratches if Digital ICE is not selected on your order.