Scanning slides 101

Resolute resolution

At Leave A Legacy the slide scanner never stops. You would be amazed at the number of people with a number of slides that come to our door. When scanning anything, the most important variable is the resolution. The units of measuring resolution are dots per inch or dpi. The more dots per inch you have the larger you can print the photo without it looking blocky. For good quality printing in the size that you want, photos should have at least 300 dpi. For good quality web site or TV images you need at least 72 dpi. For more info. on dpi check out our article entitled “Pixel Pointers”.
Scanning Services Most slide images are about 1 inch square. We know that you don’t want to print the image at that size so we scan them at a higher resolution. Typically we scan so that you can print at least a 4 inch by 6 inch photo.

Photo fade

The majority of slides that we receive are faded or discolored. The software that we use corrects the color for each slide. The image at right shows a slide before and after color correction.

What to do with the images once we scan them?

1. The first step is to have us create a disk of all of the individual images (jpg files). This can be put into your computer to look at each photo separately and use and print as you want.
2. To take it a step further we can create a DVD slide show that plays on your TV. You can keep it simple and cost effective for just $40 for up to 900 images. We can personalize it with titles, music and even video clips for an hourly rate.
3. We can create custom designed DVD labels and covers as well.
4. Scanned photos can be used in our variety of photo gifts. At Leave A Legacy we have a clock made from a scanned image of our owner, Marsha (she claims that it was just taken a few short years ago, but we wonder).
5. We can print the images individually or we can design and print an entire digital scrapbook from them. Don’t hesitate to bring in your slides. We look forward to making them into digital creations for you.