Sharing Slides brought families together
Brilliance of 35mm slides and vivid details shared on a 10 ft screen brought families together with life-like experiences
Slide images formed family bonds as Grandfather’s slides from decades ago became a shared experience with the next generations. For years these brilliant images have been fading, stowed away and forgotten. Foto2digital, delivers these bright images to your screen to be savored and shared again.
Slides Are Brilliant Due To High-Resolution
Photos that are scanned at 600dpi (dots per inch) stay the same size for viewing. Unlike photos, slides are scanned at 4,500 ppi (pixels per inch) because the 1.38” (35mm) wide slide is stretched over 100-inch screens to view. This stretching would leave the screen pixilated, unless we have enough pixels to fill the full screen.
Foto2Digital gives you those 6,000 pixels (1.38-inch x4,500 pixel/inch=6,000 pixels) so you can see the image with the same clarity as your parents did when the slide was captured.
Face-Recognition To Name Names
Facial-recognition software helps identify and group faces that you can name. The name is applied to all slide images where that face appears. Once named, you can view any image of a person just by typing their name.
Preserving Memories With Keywords
We preserve family memories by adding searchable keywords that identify the slides by event, dates and location. We capture this information with folder structure we create while scanning using notes from the slide boxes. Using these as searchable keywords, we can find any image. Future generations would be able to trace family stories and know who the people were and what they valued.
How Do We Do It?
Slides are special and pose unique challenges to digitize because the images must be: (1) enlarged and optimized for viewing (2) stored with a folder structure to retain location information and (3) color-corrected for possible fading.
Foto2Digital have adopted a variation of scanning process to deliver brilliant images as they were captured.
Optimization:
Slides were special because of high resolution details that can be enlarged and projected on wall size screens. Details that light can project on screens are difficult to capture by digital sensors, but we can come close. We digitize slides at 4,500 ppi, producing an image that is 6,000 pixels wide and 4,000 pixels tall, uncompressed raw image (24MP).
Over the past decade Foto2digital has modified our digitizing process for slides to deliver bright and sharp images for viewing. This includes:
- Correct image orientation: We scan all slides horizontally irrespective of orientation to capture the whole image, 35mm wide and 24mm high. But not all slides are oriented that way.
- Color correct: Slides that are exposed to air and humidity (even those inside projector carousels) and light has faded, causing them to turn red. Since we capture the images in raw, White-Balance, and hue correction gives us some extra latitude to bring back the brilliance with 16-bit color.
- Red-eye removal: normal part of all our optimization.
It is difficult to fix dirt marks if the slides are exposed to dust. Our pre-scan process includes cleaning and brushing (special equipment). We do not use chemicals or compressed air (both can damage the slides irreparably).
Quality Control
Quality control (QC) initiates the preparation of slides at Foto2Digial. We group them in identifiable units and create corresponding folders to keep the scanned images. With this system we can find the slides easily just by looking at the folder they are located in. If necessary, QC can compare the scanned image to the slide instantly.
We use folders to group slides for keywording. If the slide boxes and carousels have information, we can identify the folder number to events, location and dates that can be used to add searchable keywords. If you have such grouping, we would encourage you to use it to help with keywording. Embedding searchable keywords in the scanned images is easier with folder structure. This is part of our initial consult.
Archiving
Unique folder structure serves a dual purpose at Foto2Digital:
- QC uses it to verify slide content with the corresponding image
- Keywording team uses folders (with notes) to embed searchable information without having to resort to physical slides.
It helps you to find physical slides from the images. You can archive these physical slides securely without any additional cost.
Fast Turnaround
Our job-intake scheduling is designed for our team to work exclusively on your project once we start. It is a privilege to save family memories and we save one family story at a time.
We scan over 10,000 images a day in our facility in Wisconsin Dells. We do not outsource.
Once scanned, we upload the images. We have a follow-up appointment with you. The fun begins after you share our screen to name faces, grouped by face-recognition software. In a short time, you can identify all family members and the names are applied to all their images.
There is NO waiting for weeks or months to find images of people and search them by name. Of course, your participation helps expedite the process.
Although there are many types of film formats in 2” slide jackets, the majority are 35mm slides.