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How to Scan Film (Negatives and Slides) - Epson

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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!

 

| Categories: How To | Tags: scan film, epson, negatives, slides, Epson v370, Epson v550, Epson v600 | View Count: (9115) | Return

Comments

  • Hi, I'm using the Epson V370 and per your instructions on scanning negatives I want to point out something. The setting for "positive film" did not work. It has to be negative film. I also have a question about the location of the "tif" files. I saved both, jpg and tif to my desktop but only see the jpg files. They are also smaller than what I get when I use the original Epson scan application. Where are the tifs? And why are the file sizes smaller? Another observation, the scan time is not shorter then the original Epson software.
    2/12/2021 10:28:50 AM Reply
    • @M Brown: Hello and thank you for your feedback on our article. Correct, for negatives select negative film and for slides select positive film. TIF files are kept separate from the JPG files in a subfolder called "FullSize". The JPG files may be smaller in file size (not resolution) because compression may be set higher under Tools > Options. The TIF file size may be smaller because we use a lossless compression algorithm for TIF to make those large files a little bit smaller without losing any information from the scan. Scan time is just one part of the overall process of digitizing your negatives and slides. ScanSpeeder Pro let's you integrate film scanning directly into its simple and semi-automated process. Once you factor in the full set of things that can be done to make your photos organized and look better as you go along, you'll notice time savings and convenience as customers we've talked to who have been through the entire film scanning process from end to end for 100's and 1000's of photos can attest to; features like date taken and caption tagging (so you can find these photos later and which can be defaulted), text imprinting for slideshows and digital picture frames, bulk 1-click enhancement (which can do wonders on yellowish tint for example), full 48-bit image processing pipeline (which many software titles do not have) allowing full color image information capture that is especially present in film, bulk re-orientation and fine rotation, auto naming, re-ordering, save multiple formats at once, etc.. I hope this helps clarify and enhance your film scanning journey!
      2/16/2021 9:57:03 AM Reply

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