The translation of film materials and slides into digital format does not lose its relevance today, when, it would seem, everything has long been processed and placed on virtual media. Old archives, photo albums and negatives require either special storage conditions or final transformation into computer files. In this regard, the question arises: "How to digitize photographic film at home and with minimal cost? "It should be noted right away that you will not be able to limit yourself to the means at hand, especially if the result is to be of high quality. Professional equipment that is used for digitizing in laboratories and studios, of course, is not required, but you need to prepare for the purchase of an appropriate scanner. and a DSLR camera, although in this case the responsibility of the manual work increases.
Digitization workflow
To understand how, in principle, the methods of converting film frames into computer image formats work, it is necessary to disassemble the technology of this transformation. By by and large digitization of photographic films provides for the division of each frame into pixels - small elements from which another, computer picture is composed. The generated in the course saves data about colors image and other photographic properties in the digital file.
Scanner for digitizing - which one to choose?
At the moment, from the point of view of digitization, there is no worthy alternative to the scanner. There are two types of these and models equipped with a slide module. The advantages of flatbed slide modules include the ability to digitize both film materials and finished photographs. If you need to digitize photographic films at home, then the slide module will optimal solution... It is inexpensive, provides a minimum of functionality for the workflow, and takes up a little extra space.
Film scanner can be classified as equipment close to professional models. It allows you to obtain high quality digitized images with user friendliness. This option will do, if you need to process both regularly appearing new frames and old film. Many scanners help to digitize images at the amateur level, but if you want to get a high-quality professional result, then drum photo scanners and mini-laboratories are required.
Optimal resolution
It is important to be guided here simple rule: As you know, 300dpi is the standard for printing - therefore, the scanner must at least support this parameter. In general, modern photographic equipment and scanning devices are capable of supporting 4800dpi - another thing is that such a format simply does not justify itself when working with old film... For example, many are interested in how to digitize film at home so that each element is as detailed as possible. In practice, it is impossible to select more from the finished frame than it provides. As the optimal resolution, you can take a format that is twice as large as the similar capabilities of film. For example, 900dpi can go well with almost all old photographic materials. Even if the resolution significantly exceeds all the boundaries and limits of the negative, you can always crop the excess - the main thing is that there will be no loss in quality.
Digitization process
On a scanner, the procedure is elementary and requires almost no input from the user. Of course, before the first processing, you will have to load the necessary drivers and software for the equipment to work - then the settings are set, and scanning starts. It is important to note that film scanner for digitizing photographic films, depending on the model, it can have a whole range of useful options that will increase the quality of the finished images. Among them:
- decrease in graininess;
- removal of dust and oil traces;
- restoration of shades;
- increased noise reduction and sharpness;
- auto exposure;
- histogram for adjusting tone curves.
In modern versions of Epson, Digital ICE technology is also provided, with the help of which the device independently cleans working and processed surfaces, and also removes scratches.
In which file to save?
The main mistake of novice amateur photographers, for whom the digitization of photographic films at home is associated with the usual conversion of files, is the wrong format for saving the image. It is not recommended to use JPEG in the output, as it will lead to significant loss in compression. The best option would be TIFF. Here again, the following principle is relevant: it is better to immediately make voluminous, but high-quality sources than to suffer in the future with unsatisfactory resolution, etc. Indeed, TIFF is a rather cumbersome format, but these inconveniences will be more than compensated for by decent printing in the future.
The problem of digitizing negatives
Most printers have a negative attitude towards the task of scanning negatives. This is by no means due to the correction of color rendition, fine-tuning of contrasts, etc. The question of how to digitize photographic film at home and without pronounced "noise" is often encountered. So negatives in this regard are considered the most problematic.
If the slides are digitized, the "noise" falls into the shadows, where it is quite difficult to detect. When processing the negative, the same thing happens, and it seems that all the flaws have gone into naturally dark areas. Disappointment comes when a scanner for digitizing photographic films turns the negative into a positive - after this operation, all the "noise" is transferred to the light. You should remember this and make the most of the autocorrection capabilities aimed at suppressing "noise".
Digitizing negatives with a DSLR camera
Many people think that this way of working with negatives is optimal for amateurs. The negative is filmed on the camera, after which it is converted and processed. Technically, the procedure is as follows: the camera is firmly fixed in front of the working platform, installed LED lamp(with filters if necessary), and the exposure is adjusted. Such digitization of photographic films can be streamed, but only if the frames have the same lighting conditions. In other cases, for each frame, for example, it is selected individually. Actually, personal revision and settings for each picture can be considered a plus: firstly, it is freedom of creativity, and secondly, they are practiced with photographic materials.
Conclusion
At the last stage, it remains only to decide on the file cataloging system. In general, the question of how to digitize photographic film at home and obtain high-quality images at the output suggests an elementary answer. To do this, you need to have an appropriate scanner or SLR camera- in the first case, most of the workflow is assigned to the equipment, and in the second - to the user, who, at his discretion, adjusts the digitization settings and the conditions for its implementation. That is, all opinions that scanning and digitizing kills all the advantages of photography are untenable. There are a lot of tools, methods, parameters and adjusting subtleties that allow you to create a real work of art from an old negative.
If you are still interested, welcome to cat.
Let's start with the fact that you need to collect everything you need, below I will give a list of the necessary, but not mandatory, why I will tell you this further.
What you need:
- digital SLR camera (DSLR)
- flash (powerful light source)
- lens 50mm-80mm
- macro rings
- photographic enlarger
- softbox
- soft to DSLR
- usb-mini usb cable
You may need:
- adapter ring M42
- sync cable for flash
- slide adapter
- Scotch
- Lantern
Let's start preparing the workplace, assembling a photo enlarger, it is most convenient to place it next to the PC.
Assembled enlarger.
What will need to be removed is circled in red. will interfere with the installation of the camera.
Let's move on to the lens, here everyone will have their own individual, I will only say that you can use almost any lens (both standard and third-party), preferably with a fixed focal length from 50mm to 80mm (no zoom), it is better to try different ones, because the lens can distort colors, I used an old Soviet "zenitar-m 1.7 / 50" through the M42 adapter ring and two macro-rings that had been gathering dust in the box next to with this lens. Macro-rings are selected empirically, more on that later.
Moving on to the assembly of the softbox, it will be used as a background. In my case, it was homemade, I took the first box I came across, cut two holes in it, one for the flash, the other for setting the background, inside the box I placed two sheets of white paper for better reflection.
As corny as it sounds, I used a tray of cookies as a background, fixed it on tape, it looks something like this.
Gives a very soft, even and diffused light, just what you need. With plain white paper instead of a background, you won't get that much light; in the worst case, you will see the villi.
A flash was used as a light source, I believe that this is the most good choice since flash has a number of advantages:
- you can adjust the power
- powerful light makes it possible to shoot at fast shutter speeds and at a closed aperture
But this does not mean that you cannot use other sources, it seems to me that diode panels will also show not a bad result.
Well, in small steps, we move from preparation to configuration. So, now is a very crucial moment, it is necessary to select macro-rings and adjust the focus, everything depends on this stage. I also want to note that any camera with interchangeable optics will do, be it CANON or SONY, this practically does not affect the quality of the picture, it is very good if it has a Live View mode. The only difference in cameras will be if you use crop or full frame - although all this is corrected by macro rings, in my case as a canon eos 7d carcass is a cropped camera and I use two macro rings, one large, the other small. Just remember that the more rings there are, the stronger the increase.
For a selection of rings, remove the slide adapter from the enlarger and fix the film in it, choose the sharpest frame, then make the backlight for the slide adapter, well, everything is very simple, I personally used my phone, opened a white screen on it and set the shutdown timeout display to the maximum, it turns out a kind of preview in the process of digitizing and used it.
We stand vertically above the table and focus on the focus, we look so that the frame is not cropped, if it is cropped, then you need to either reduce the number of rings, or put a shorter ring and vice versa. Personally, I neglected this rule and allowed myself to crop the frame a little, it turned out that about 2-3mm from the width and height was cut off i.e. in fact, I didn’t reshoot a 36x24mm frame, but a 34x22 one, I don’t think this is critical. although it would be possible to shoot the entire frame, and later crop it in the editor. We decided on the rings, half done, remove the eyecup from the camera, set it to manual mode (for canon, set the disk to “M”), turn off auto focus on the lens, connect it to the computer and put it vertically under the enlarger, insert the slide adapter with the film.
We launch remote control of the camera and catch the focus as best as possible by moving the enlarger up or down. For a more accurate focus, I opened the aperture to the maximum (f1.7) and additionally illuminated it with a flashlight.
Having caught the sharpness, I tightened all the nuts on the enlarger, moved on to more fine tuning focus, in Live View mode, made a digital zoom and already with the focus ring on the lens caught perfect focus, and then closed the aperture to maximum (f16) in order to extend maximum sharpness and have a margin of error.
We install the softbox and connect the flash to the camera, I had a built-in flash as the master flash, you can also connect it via a sync cable. The assembly looks like this:
Now I turn to setting up the camera, the whole shooting will be done completely in manual mode, I also transfer the flash to manual mode. We set ISO100, if it is possible to set less, then this is good, shutter speed 1 / 250s is the shortest shutter speed for working with a flash, for some it can be 1 / 125s, we check the aperture again, I have written f1.4, a lie in fact f16, the shooting format I chose RAW, those who know what it will understand, those who do not know, shoot in JPEG, about the white balance (WB) I will talk separately for each type of film, while I set the Kelvin temperature, in the settings we make the picture was immediately saved on the computer, well, it seems like everything remains to press the shutter button.
I will slightly deviate from the topic to view the finished photo, I used the program FastStone Image Viewer, it is quite convenient, fast and free, it works especially well with RAW, but you can use other software, for taste and color ... By default, it has hotkeys for color inversion (Ctrl + I) and image rotation, to the left (L) , Right (R.), Flip Horizontally (Alt + R) and Vertically (V). All this is very convenient and significantly speeds up the digitization process.
Let's go back to digitizing, starting with the negatives (color and B / W).
For B / W negatives, set the custom image mode to monochrome in the camera settings. Color temperature does not play any role here, we do not touch it. We can shoot.
For colored people, you can put a portrait, landscape or leave natural colors. The color temperature (WB) can be changed. In general, 5500K is suitable for most photos, but it so happens that after inversion you see that the image is too warm, you want to add coldness, then you need to raise the temperature, for example, to 6200-6500 or higher and vice versa (shooting in RAW this can be done later in lightroom or photoshop).
The most important rule for successful digitization is to calculate the flash power and choose the right WB.
Negative film:
1. The more light when shooting, the darker it will be in the end and vice versa.
It turns out that if you took a picture, inverted it and kept it clearly overexposed, then you need to add flash power.
2. The higher the temperature is, the lower it will be in the finished image and vice versa.
To be honest, I was often confused.
With positive film everything is easier, here the more light the brighter and the higher the color temperature the warmer.
A couple of examples:
B / W negative. 
Moscow. 1974 year. Colored negative. 
Moscow. Colored positive. 
To sum up, I am personally satisfied with the result, it is not inferior to scanners, if only in resolution, but this is a matter of technology, when I increase my images to 100%, the grain of the film is visible, I think there is no better place. In general, for the most part, the quality of photographs depends on the film. Perhaps from this topic it seems that this is all difficult and long, but in fact, knowing the above, I do the preparation for shooting in 10 minutes and the shooting process itself is quite debugged, over time the hands get used to it, in about 3 days (5 -7 hours) I shot 1500 frames. I will not touch on the topic of post processing.
As I promised, I will say a few words about digitizing slides. In general, for slides, the same rules apply as I described above, the only thing is that you do not need a photo enlarger.
The hardest part about digitizing slides is the slide adapter and where to get it. Personally, I took it from a Soviet projector and tied it with tape to the already familiar pallet of cookies (just lying around) and a little more scotch was gone to tie all this miracle to the book in order to level it up with the softbox.
We put the softbox, the camera on a tripod, the main thing here is to maintain flatness.
(photos are conditional, I have it not exactly) 
As a result, it should look like this: 
The distance from the softbox to the slide is 20-30cm, if white reflections appear on the film during shooting and you are sure that this is not a film defect, try moving the softbox even further or turning the slide over.
Everything else is the same as with a photomagnifier.
P.S.
You can download all the necessary software for your camera from the official website.
Here are some examples of real size 18MP photos:
Example # 1
Example # 2
Example # 3
Example # 4
UPD: I would like to add a little about the diaphragm. I always thought that the more closed the sharper, thanks to everyone who pointed out this mistake, you directly opened my eyes to the world. But everything turned out to be not so simple, I reshomed one frame at f5, f7, f9, f11 and f16, really it turned out the sharpest at f7, but there is also a drop in sharpness and optical distortion at the corners of the frame. I will say right away that the film is flat and pressed against the glass, plus I turned it over and tried different frames. So in my opinion the best option ended up on f9. Below I show what happened at 100% magnification.
F7 
F9 
F16 
Thank you for the attention. I would be glad to receive objective criticism, and I would also be ready to answer your questions.
Surely many of us have dozens, hundreds, thousands of color and black-and-white photographic films from the distant past, and maybe even the present. Only not many people know how to digitize film at home. And to throw away the pieces of the past simply does not raise a hand, and besides, one does not really want to look at slides with an overhead projector in an age of seven-league technological development.
How can the overhead projector keep up? Another half century, and people may use teleportation for travel. To kill two birds with one stone - to get rid of photographic films and simultaneously save them in a different format - digitizing photos will help. How to digitize photographic film at home? This is what will be discussed in this article.
How to digitize old film at home?
There are basically two ways:
1) Scanning of photographic films, which is carried out using a photo scanner or a flatbed with a built-in adapter for films. A flatbed scanner with a built-in slide module is significantly different from a simple scanner - a different cover and a single color lamp.
2) Re-shooting slides and negatives using a digital camera.
Thanks to these methods, you can clear your space of junk and not worry about how to properly store old film archives.
Do you know that…?
Film photography, although a relic of the technological revolution, is still used for photography. It provides the most high quality pictures, if, for example, digitize existing photographic films. Then you can use a computer to make the image even better. No wonder film photography is back in vogue. However, many do not know how to digitize photographic film themselves.
What it is?
Digitizing photographic film is breaking each frame into separate elements (pixels) and storing information about color and coordinates in a program file. How to digitize photographic film at home? To accomplish this task, you need either a scanner or a digital apparatus.
What scanner are you using?
The scanner is the most convenient device for digitizing slides or photographic films of various formats. Thanks to it, you can quickly convert a film archive into a full-fledged digital form, while maintaining optimal good quality Images. The quality in this case depends entirely on the design of the scanner.
Digitization of photographic film on scanners of various types
Today there are various types of scanners with the ability to digitize films, slides and other transparent photographic materials. All these devices are designed to work with film, but they all have different capabilities, respectively, and the price too.
You can digitize film at home using two types of scanner: the first is with a slide module, and the second is a film scanner.
Of course, a tablet tablet with a built-in slide module is much cheaper, but this does not mean that it will do its job poorly: it allows you to get a good high-quality picture, and it digitizes not only photographic films, but also photographs. Now that you know how to digitize film, you can safely use this type of scanners to preserve your home photo archives. They are compact and versatile.
If you remain an adherent of film photography and are thinking about how to digitize large quantities of photographic film at home, then you definitely need to make a choice in favor of a film scanner. And although its cost is much higher than that of the first type, it is more convenient. Of course, the image quality is also at a high level.
There are two more types of scanners that can digitize both color film and black and white. These are drum imaging scanners and minilabs. In the event that digitizing photos is not so frequent for you, the scanner is a secondary matter, and it is easier to pay for this service at a photo kiosk. A high-quality image can only be achieved in a professional laboratory, so be extremely careful when referring to a professional.
Digitizing photographic film without a scanner
It is enough to have your own camera to digitize both black-and-white photographic film and color at home. The best option in this case it will be a camera that has interchangeable lenses. Some manufacturers of photographic equipment make special attachments for camera lenses. With such devices, photographic film is photographed against a bright light background.
Digitizing photographic film in a special attachment for a digital camera
In addition to devices manufactured by firms, you can digitize photographic film using a nozzle, which is made from scrap materials. It is necessary to find a hollow cylinder corresponding to the diameter of the lens, attach to it a platform with a hole made on it for the size of the required frame. In appearance, such a design should resemble a corporate one.
The necessary operation can be performed at home even without a lens attachment. Instead, you can cut the frame to fit the frame and set it opposite white background... So you can use a monitor screen with a white document as a white background. To achieve the desired effect, you need to insert a film into this frame and take a photograph of it from a tripod.
Of course, for digitizing photographic films at home, it is possible to use more complex structure... It may include a rewinding device for a roll of photographic film, a backlit display for diffusion, a frame on which the camera is mounted. All these manipulations depend on your sleight of hand and ingenuity.
Lens attachment or homemade construction are used if you need to digitize excellent quality at minimal cost. In this case, it would be highly advisable. In addition, with the sleight of hand, you can create a design that will fully meet your requirements when digitizing any type of transparent photographic material.
The cost of digitizing photographic materials
The issue of price and quality, convenience and speed of the operation is inextricably linked with the procedure for digitizing photographic film. Do not blame the low quality of the digital picture and inconvenience in work if your budget does not allow you to complete everything on the best level... It should be borne in mind that quality work is always expensive. Here it is already important to weigh all the sides and make a decision, because if the film itself does not contain valuable information of the highest quality, then no matter what devices you use, you cannot extract good image quality from it. It is worth approaching wisely and measuring your capabilities and needs.
Most of the old shots were taken on film, which was once popular in Soviet time... The names of popular films in the past were "SVEMA" and "TASMA". They also used films such as Fujifilm, Kodak, Konica, which many Soviet amateur photographers were fond of. At that time, the quality of these films did not differ with the optimal result, and the optics of this period left much to be desired. High quality was not easy to achieve. Of course, you can connect expensive equipment to digitizing this type of film. But everything will go down the drain if the photo quality was not initially good.
Therefore, we can conclude that the digitization of photographic films from the past decades is not an easy and time-consuming business, and often thankless, since it is almost impossible to achieve a high-quality image.
The price range of the device will average about 17,500-24,000 rubles. Thanks to such scanners, you can extract good image quality, they are easy to use, they do not take up much space and they certainly will not be idle.
Digitizing the same photographic film to obtain the highest quality is best done on a professional scanner. Of course, this will cost you a pretty penny. The main thing here is to understand whether quality is really important to you for any money or not. Moreover, it is unlikely that you will be able to transfer the highest quality film from the monitor screen or in the paper version.
Output
How to digitize photographic film at home? The risk is not always justified, so leave it to the professionals. To achieve the mean positive result digitization, it is better to contact the nearest minilab. This service will not be affordable. But before going to a professional, do not forget to choose the frames that you really want to print or post somewhere on the Internet.
Feel free to add valuable photos to your archive by digitizing your films!
Conventional scanners are not designed to scan slides and negatives due to the lack of illumination. However, there is a trick that allows you to do this with a small amount of cardboard. Having built a clever structure, you can redirect the luminous flux and achieve the desired result.
If your archive contains old negatives that you would like to digitize, you have the opportunity to scan them. But a simple scan will not work for these purposes. In order for everything to work out, you need a powerful light source, which must be located behind the negative or a multi-functional scanner.
Of course, you can buy a special film scanner, but if you already have a regular flatbed scanning device, you can do it. You can use a regular cardboard reflector to scan film or slide. It will capture the light emitted from the scanner and reflect it off back side slide. Such a reflector will make it possible to scan captions and slides like ordinary documents.
To make the reflector, we need the following materials:
Sheet thick cardboard A4 size silver side
Pencil
Scissors
Scotch
Ruler
Instructions
Step 1: On the non-silver side of the cardboard, print or draw the following template.
Step 2: Cut out the template and fold it so that the silver side is facing inward.
Step 3: Join the template into a triangle. It should resemble a wedge. In this case, one side will remain open. The shiny part must be inside.
Step 4: Next, you need to glue the corners of the reflector. After the glue has dried, the device is ready for use.
Let's start using our reflector. Place a film or slide on the scanner glass. Place the reflector on top. To reach good result Align one side of the slide with the center of the reflector. You do not need to close the scanner cover. You can start scanning. If the result is uneven lighting, you can try placing a thin piece of tissue paper between the negative and the reflector. The paper will diffuse the light and prevent the scanner from capturing the space behind the film.
Having achieved a satisfactory result, you need to crop the image along the contour of the slide, since the scanner scans the entire glass, and we only need a small frame. Cropping can be done in any graphics editor. For the clearest image, scan at a high resolution. It is recommended to use 1200 DPI.
After scanning, you will need to carry out small photo manipulations with the image. If you scanned negative, you will need to invert the colors. This can even be done in Microsoft Paint, so there shouldn't be any difficulties. You can also carry out a little processing of the image in any graphics editor. It is recommended to increase the brightness or contrast.
If dust gets on the negative during scanning, it can be removed with a soft lens brush or cosmetic brush. To remove stains or scratches, you can use the Healing Brush tool. To do this, you can use free programs such as GIMP or Paint.net. They are available for free download and can be easily found on the Internet.
This image demonstrates (from left to right): forward scan, inverted scan and final image after removing scratches and dust. The whole work took no more than 10 minutes.
In general, the idea to scan and organize old photographs, of course, was hatched for a long time, it is not easy to decide on such a volume of work on scanning old photographic films (more than a hundred) and photographs (thousands). In general, since childhood, he wanted me to have digitized old photographs of great-great-grandmothers, great-grandfathers, and finally, 20 years later, he decided to move on to this business.
Scanner
The first question was - of course the scanner. At one time, about 7 years ago, I tried to digitize negatives and decided to stock up on a film scanner. There was not much money, I chose which is cheaper, it turned out to be Miktotek Filmscan 35. 
Compared to the monsters of scanning, it cost a penny, but the result was terrifying. I used Silverfast for it as the most advanced software at that time (maybe now). I don't know why, but sometimes with different passes this miracle gave me a blue or a green photo, then everything hung, it was unpredictable and very sad, I had to pore over each frame for 10-15 minutes, straightening histograms and performing other dances with a tambourine. In general, this process discouraged me from scanning films for several years, the scanner is lying around somewhere.
Now, having considered all the pros and cons, the following was decided.
There were several points to consider:
- for the most part, it will not be me who will scan, but the parents, since they have time now
- you need to scan not only films, but also photos
- you need to scan a lot
- no fabulous budget
In addition to all of the above, I understood that now the film is no longer an actual medium, and therefore most likely it will be necessary to scan only once, although it may take a lot of time.
So, film scanners fell away for two reasons:
firstly, previous experience has shown that you cannot buy such a unit for a cheap normal unit, but what is cheap - oh, I can't stand such hell a second time.
Secondly, buying a separate scanner for photos and separately for film is also somehow expensive and impractical.
Moreover, I said to myself, if I come across something good, I will take it to a professional laboratory, for a dozen shots you can go broke.
Having looked at what is on sale that can scan film, in addition to paper, it turned out that the choice is not great: either, again, sky-high prices, or just a couple of options. After the break of all shops that were open right after the holiday, it turned out that there are the following acceptable options:
- Epson Perfection V330 Photo (A4, 4800 x 9600 dpi, USB 2.0, CCD, Film Adapter)
- Epson Perfection V370, Photo (A4, 4800x9600 dpi, CCD, USB 2.0)
- Canon CanoScan LiDE 700F (A4 9600х9600dpi 48bit CIS Slide Adapter USB2.0)
- Canon CanoScan 5600F (A4 4800х9600dpi 48bit Slide Adapter USB2.0)
The rest was either too expensive, from 10,000, or, conversely, nothing was skillful. Unfortunately, the CanoScan 5600F was dropped due to the lack of it at the moment on sale, although according to the description it is very good. The rest turned out, according to reviews, approximately the same, but the decisive role was played by the fact that Epson "s had drivers for Linux, and since I would like to work not only under Windows, in the end the Epson Perfection V330 Photo won. , how does the 330 model differ from the 370, but since Linux drivers were mentioned only for 330, I settled on it, so to speak, "in order to avoid".
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to try it for Linux yet, but in the Windows software I liked the function of removing defects - it works with a bang on black and white old photographs. But you also need to be careful with her - sometimes something worthwhile can be considered a defect.
In the reviews about the scanner, in some places the problem with the appearance of stripes when scanning films is mentioned - but I have not seen this yet. Nevertheless, in my opinion, here is something useful about this, found in one of the reviews on the Yandex market: “Two years later, I can report on the results of the investigation: there is a calibration window in the scanner frame where the white balance is set. If there are dust particles, "broken pixels" are obtained, which, when the carriage is run, give stripes. This is most likely a design defect in the new LED backlight(but who will admit it ...). So gentlemen, if you have such a scanner,
remove dust. "
With what resolution to scan - this question was not the last. The scanner produces a maximum of 4800x9600, but when trying to set this when scanning a 9x13cm photo, the system began to swear at the scale, it was necessary to reduce it.
The criterion for choosing a resolution is simple: if you consider that you can print at a standard resolution of 300dpi, then in order to get the same image, you need to have a minimum of 300dpi. Considering that the photos are old, there is no point in overestimating this figure - all the same, the physical resolution will not allow you to get quality out of nothing. Again, hardly anyone would ever want to print a poster with a picture of their great-grandfather in A1 or even A4 format. If anyone writes a book, it is unlikely that the picture will be larger than a sheet. In general, I decided that for very old ones a two-fold excess will come down, for higher-quality and later ones - a three-fold excess, i.e. 600dpi and 900dpi respectively. Then I chose what was the closest to what the software gave out that came with the scanner.
I decided to use the maximum for negatives - it was not in vain that I bought with such a resolution ... Most likely this is an overkill of 4800x4800dpi, but you can always cut it down later, but the main thing is that you don't have to rescan with other parameters and you can sleep peacefully.
Scans are saved, of course, not in jpeg, in order to avoid compression losses. Everything is just tiff. It seems, of course, that the place eats more, but then scan it once - and then you don't know the problems: I do what I want. I also did not come to this right away, but practice shows that if I save now, then I will regret and return to this issue, and so, if everything is to the maximum, then there is nothing to regret later.
Cataloging
Naturally, after digitization, the whole thing needs to be raked somehow. The main task was to sign great-great-relatives, because I wanted to save the history of the family for the future, and no one would ever figure it out without competent comments.
The option to immediately process photos and upload them to the site was not suitable for two reasons: firstly, you need to process everything at once, and this is time, and the parents do not understand anything about this; secondly, technologies are changing, and who would have known how the site would look like in a couple of decades, if it would exist at all.
The use of a smart cataloging program was not suitable for the same essential reason - there is no guarantee that in a few decades this software will be alive and, accordingly, no one will understand what, where and how is stored in its smart unique format.
The decision came to mind to store the description in a regular text file with the same name as the photo - the text is also text in Africa, probably anyone can read it after ten decades, even if they come up with some other super-unicode, it's still much more reliable than special software. But as a programmer, I looked at this option with horror - well, it's ugly and that's it. Yes, and inconvenient in the process.
The parents said that they generally want it like in a Word - here's a photo, here's a signature - and everything is clear. From such a proposal, the hair stood on end, for again - today there is a Word - tomorrow it is not.
Another option is to store signatures in EXIF. It was embarrassing that when processing pictures, many EXIF softphones are simply ignored, as a result, losing precious signatures may be irreplaceable.
In general, after analyzing the whole situation, I made a decision: we scan the photo, sign it in the form of EXIF and then do all these pictures with signatures read-only, so that there is no temptation to change something, and thus we guarantee the safety of information. If you want to change - make a copy - and go. Well, backups, of course. And in general, in the end, that's what we programmers are for, in order to sketch out a small script so that the entire EXIF could be exported to a text file, just in case, "in order to avoid" :)
There are a bunch of command line tools for working with EXIF in Linux, but this is unacceptable for comfortable work with big amount pictures. However, here's what it is: exif, exiftool, exiv2, google it for more information. Next, I used exiftool for batch processing, but more on that later.
Let's see what is from the GUI. After studying what the OpenSource community offers us, I somehow settled on DigiKam - “digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX,” as they say on their website.
I decided to edit in GIMP, GNU Image Manipulation Program, similar to Photoshop, but opensource. Therefore, the ability to edit photos for the cataloging software was not required separately, but several things were bribed in cataloging itself.
First, DigiKam edits EXIF, which is what I need.
Secondly, all the photos are immediately on the screen, we sign in the window next to it and immediately go to the next one - quickly, simply and conveniently.
Thirdly, it was noticed that in EXIF itself there are several similar tags for commenting: Comment, UserComment, ImageComment, and so, DigiKam writes to everything at once, so the probability that this information will be read by other software is quite high.
In addition, reading the reviews, I was pleased with the thought that apart from just EXIF, the softphone can keep a catalog, and without copying anything anywhere, unlike many others, but simply processing everything on the spot. This was a huge plus - I did not look for this opportunity initially, but it turned out to be very useful. And what I liked - besides entering information in EXIF, she writes it to her database and then it is convenient to sort the photo and search by tags, tags, descriptions, etc. And even if at some point the software disappears and the database also disappears, then a copy of the data will remain in EXIF, which, in fact, is what I need.
Some interesting ideas on cataloging are described in the already mentioned article. So, all or almost all of this data can also be stored in EXIF and, if necessary, exported to any format as it is convenient for us.
An additional advantage of DigiKam is that you can choose any photo as the cover of the album, and I liked the idea of having a photo of the paper album itself as the cover, for which thanks to the author.
Another unobvious moment that I encountered when working with DigiKam: if there is no permission to write to a photo file, then the software silently writes only to its database, not making it clear that there are problems. For a long time I tried to figure out why there is a signature in the program, but not in the file, especially since the "save to file" option is set in the settings. So, keep this in mind - check the access rights, otherwise you can swear for a long time.
We put it on the site
So, the main tasks have been solved - scanning and cataloging. Now it's time to boast to relatives, to show friends a photo. Naturally, by uploading photos to the site. Not so long ago I already made a softphone for this case: folded necessary photos v
catalog, launched - and ready, there was an album. I wrote about this on Habré last time,. Now, using DigiKam, I decided that you can mark a photo directly in EXIF tags, whether it should be placed in a photo album or not, because during scanning there were all sorts of pictures that should not be uploaded to the site. And comments can now be taken from EXIF.
Everything seems to be good, but not very good.
Everything on the site is processed in PHP, and there is, as it seemed to me, a wonderful function for working with EXIF, read_exif_data (), but as practice has shown, this under-function shows only part of the data, completely silent about the rest. I rummaged through everything I could - and the dream of an easy life sank into oblivion, I had to pull EXIF out of the files at the stage of album generation, since there are command line tools.
As a result, I rewrote the script, recalling the caustic commentary on my previous article "The generator of php files in Perl ... Monsieur knows a lot ..." now the leg, and so a couple of minutes - and the problem is solved.
So, when processing a photo in DigiKam, we mark the photo with a flag (it is called PickLabel there). The flag is written to the file in EXIF. When we process all the files from the directory, we pull out the checkbox using exiftool:
$ flagPickLabel = `exiftool -b -PickLabel" $ fname_in "`;
Well, then, depending on the checkbox - if it is, then we process it, if not, we skip it. Everything is set in the command line, so that it is convenient. In fact, here you can process a lot of things, it already tastes and colors whoever needs it.
Link to the source code, in case someone suddenly needs to look closely or even apply: photo_album-r143.tar.gz. How to use - mentioned in the previous article, I will not repeat myself.
Thank you for your attention, and if it came in handy for someone, then I'm immensely glad.
Criticism is welcome.
UPD: I accidentally found it on Habré - I'm surprised I didn't notice it before. Let it be here to the heap.
Tags:
- photo archive
- photo cataloging
- scanning
- DigiKam
- EXIF
- exiftool