How to Scan Film (Negatives and Slides) with an Epson Scanner

1. Download and install the latest version of ScanSpeeder Pro if you haven’t already. Pro edition or the trial is required.
2. Make sure you have the latest scanner driver installed from the Epson website.
3. Set up your scanner for film per Epson instructions.  You probably have to remove the white backing from the lid to expose the light from above, place film holder and film on bed.
4. In ScanSpeeder Pro, select the "Scan Negatives & Slides (Pro)" task at top center.
   
5. Click the Scanner button, check "Negatives/Slides/Film", select your scanner driver if not already selected, ok.
6. Click Scan and you’ll see the Epson driver interface come up.
7. If you can, we recommend scanning at 48-bit color instead of 24-bit color. This will preserve more color information from film, and the ScanSpeeder Pro processing pipeline fully supports 48-bit color imaging (not all scanning and photo editing software can handle 48-bit color images without internally down-converting them to 24-bit color).
8. You should see an option for positive film similar to below for slides and negative film for negatives.  2400 DPI is a pretty good dpi for film in terms of balance of speed/quality. If your scanner has the digital ICE feature (removes scratches/dust from film with an extra infrared pass), disable it in the adjustments section of the Epson driver interface (scroll down if needed), as it can make the scans take much longer and should only be used for badly damaged film.
   
9. Click Preview. Your scanner should start preview scanning and you should see some images in the preview window like this (I’ve got negatives here but slides will look the same except color positive selected:
   
   
10. Click Scan in the Epson driver interface. Your film photos will be scanned one after another and will appear already separated, directly in the Step 2 section once scanning is done.
11. Make adjustments as needed such as orientation, 1-click enhance, add caption and date taken as text permanently and visibly to the bottom of the photos in the font type and size of your choice, add caption and date taken as invisible and searchable meta data, re-order photos by dragging with mouse.
12. Click "Save Files". Be sure TIF is one of the output formats, especially if you selected 48-bit color above since it is the only format that supports 48-bit color (JPG does not). We also recommend you save JPG at the same time for slideshows, digital photo frames and sharing with others.
     

Pro Tip #1: If you have a cloud service such as Google Drive, OneDrive, or DropBox, install the sync app for it on your Windows PC. Then point the ScanSpeeder "Save to Folder" to the local folder where this cloud drive syncs its files. For example: C:\Users\[your windows user]\OneDrive\Pictures.  This way your photos will be automatically uploaded to the cloud (be sure to login into your cloud account to confirm files are getting uploaded okay). This provides both a nice offsite backup solution as well as an easy way to share entire cloud folders or cloud albums with family and friends!

Pro Tip #2: If you are seeing duplicate images on your cloud drive, it's okay. This is expected since you likely saved both TIF and JPG formats. Do a search on the cloud drive website for *.jpg to see just the JPG files for example, which you can then drag into an album for sharing.

I hope this article helps you scan film with your Epson scanner!