Importing 35mm into Photoshop

jlg84

Remember 35mm negatives? Those orangey things that you were always trying to figure out how to archive so that you could find that great picture for enlarging one day? Well, now that I have essentially converted 100% to digital, I want to import some of my favorites from those old days using my Epson Photo Scanner and Photoshop CS2.

I have played around a bit with this so far, but think I must be doing something a bit wrong. For one thing, if I try to scan the images at a fine resolution (like 1600 dpi) it takes more than an hour to do so. What have been your experiences with this, and what suggestions can you offer me? What resolution is really necessary to enlarge 35mm to something like 8x10 or maybe 11x14? Any tricks you have learned? I am eager to learn!

(The attached is one of the photos I am trying to scan in; this one I scanned at around 300 dpi and seems ok to me at this scale when printed in 5x7, though maybe not ideal.)

pmdave

I use my Epson Perfection 2450 Photo scanner for such jobs. It will handle large negs up to 4 x 6, and small down to 35mm, using various holders. I'm also holding to Photoshop 4.0, because I just don't want to have to wait to load all those special tools just for simple retouch/print jobs.

The resolution depends on how you intend to print. I've found that for "naked eye" prints on glossy paper at 8 x 10 or so, 400 dpi is fine. 600 is OK, but overkill if your printer is limited to say 300 dpi. The advantage of higher resolution is that you can crop and still have adequate resolution for the enlarged portion of the image.

For magazine work, I use my images for small illustrations, so I typically save in jpeg at 5 x 7 at 400 to 600 dpi. I send in articles on a CD.

I don't have a printer capable of larger than 8.5 x 11 in. If you intend to print at 11 x 17 or similar, you still might not see much difference between 300 and 400 dpi. The difference will primarily be in the file size.

When scanning 35mm negs, the limiting factor seems to be the sharpness of the image and the film grain. After scanning, I usually retouch and adjust color, whiteness level, and contrast, then when I'm happy with the "cleanliness", I use sharpen filter to make it a little more clear. Too much "sharpen" causes additional graininess, but I think it's a useful tool.

pmdave

colourbox

The resolution is just math. For example, let's say you want to print a negative as a nice 8x12 enlargement, and your inkjet prints optimally at say 240dpi, which is pretty typical of Epson inkjets.

What you need is:
8 inches x 240dpi or 1920 pixels wide, and
12 inches x 240dpi, or 2880 dpi tall.

You need a 1920x2880 pixel image.

The 35mm negative is 1.4173 inches along the long side, and you need 2880 pixels along it, so that means the scanning resolution needs to be 2880/1.14173 or about 2522dpi to achieve the final 240dpi resolution at the final 10-inch size. My film scanner does 2700dpi, so it does just fine.

As far as scanning time goes, wow, that's a long time to wait. On my scanner, basic scans are rather quick, but slow way down if I turn on the dust and scratch removal, multisampling, and other quality improvement features. Multisampling is a big one. Are you turning on things like that?