Any tips on getting good scans of transparancy slides?

[capri0mni]

Okay, so, while I was on Thanksgiving break, Dad and I went through a bunch of slides my mother took, in the days of yore. I brought four home, and tried to scan them into my computer ... with disasterous results.

I was able to make these two just visible, but only after much fiddling. There are all sorts of wierd color streaks and spots that are not on the slides when I look at them straight on, and they were so dark (I had to brighten them 100% about three times in a row to make them visible).

So? you guys have any tips for me? Would it help if I put something shiny reflective (like, say, foil) behind the pics when I scan, so the light is reflected back through better? Or would that just make it worse?

Anyway, these are the two pictures that sort of came out, in case you want to see, behind cuts:


One of our long-past cats of yore, who decided it would be a Grand Idea to park himself on top of the bird feeder.


Me, at age 5 or 6, I think, with a bunch of goldenrod.

Comments

[abates.livejournal.com]

I think we did some with a wee handheld viewer and a digital camera, however you may not have one or the other...

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

The wee handheld viewer is back in New York, packed up with the slides and the old projector, and no, I do not have a digital camera...

BTW, how did you do that? Did you point the viewer at a light source, and aim the camara lens through the eyepiece, or something?

hmmm...

[abates.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think so. It's pretty hard to digitize slides without special equipment, unfortunately.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Poo! Because my mother was a great photographer, and most of her pics are preserved as slides. I suppose, maybe, I could have prints make, and then scan those...

bah!

[abates.livejournal.com]

A store which does photographs may have the equipment to turn them into digital pictures, maybe?

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, maybe it needs a light source behind it too... there are scanners that can scan slides but there's only one at the local polytechnic, they're very professional equipment:(.

Try copying the picture, pasting it on as a new layer and then blending options--->screen for the layer on top, that brightens things up a lot.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I have not PhotoShop, just the old PictureIt! Express that came with this machine. I'm not sure if it even does layers... :-(

Oh, well... I could always try the foil, I suppose...

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

Most photo developers can easily do a digital copy off a slide. You'd probably have much better luck with an actual photo place rather than a pharmacy or k-mart or something. A trip through photo listings in your local yellow pages couldn't hurt.