I next deal with scanner calibration, slide film calibration, and negative film calibration separately. This ensures that scans reproduce color in a consistent and correct manner. The key to achieving this lies in the initial color calibration of the scanner and films, described below. In simple terms, most of the slides and negatives need to be perfect, or nearly so, without additional, individual color (or other) correction. Whilst digital color reproduction is probably the key issue, with layers of complexity behind it, an absolutely critical part of the solution for this is to have each scan as good as possible without needing post-scan processing. Setting upĪs highlighted in Part 1, a key issue in bulk scanning is to get consistently good digital color reproduction of the original images, with as little intervention as possible. And the key to getting these color settings right lies in calibrating and setting up your scanner for different films. THE key to bulk scanning is to get very close to good color reproduction without resorting to individual frame adjustments in post scanning. In Part 2 I look at the detailed scanning setting for color slides, color negative and black and white films, as well as the scanning set-up. The first part described the problems associated with scanning large numbers of analog images, and how these tools, along with the lowered cost of disk space make it possible to digitally archive large numbers of images.

This is the second part of a two-part article on bulk scanning slides and negatives using a Nikon Coolscan and VueScan software.

Vuescan slide scanning