What's Next?

So, you've got your scans back. What's next after photo scanning?

Here's a simple suggestion which can transform your images. Learn how to crop your photos.

What's cropping? It's simply a process of removing anything in the frame that distracts from what the image is, or ought to be. Just as we used to trim photos with a pair of scissors today's photo editing software offers ways of removing parts of the original that really don't help.

How? Take a look around the Photo / Edit and you'll see a Crop command. In Apple's program Aperture you simply click on the crop icon then click where in the image you want the new frame border to start, then drag it across the image until you're happy with the result. Let go of the cursor and click Enter. Just takes a few seconds and you have a more dramatic picture.

Any rules? Well, it helps if you have an understanding of compositional guidelines but beyond that the only rule is there are no rules. Just don't be afraid to go in tight, remember the saying "if your photos aren't good enough, you're not close enough". We scan at 600 dpi so you'll have enough detail left in the image to get decent resolution after even a severe crop, so don't be afraid to go for it.

Photo Scanning - MFP

I don't know anybody who scans more photos, slides and negatives than we do - particularly across Nikon, Kodak and Epson scanners. So I follow other peoples comments on photo scanning hardware with particular interest, most often via various blog posts. The photo scanning topics vary with several common themes recurring in posts. There are the "how tos" (scan, improve colour, crop, rotate, email, share and backup online) alongside several reviews and recommendations of hardware and software.

Over the last few days several posts have popped up with the theme "don't scan photos on an MFP device". Really? If you're not familiar with the abbreviation MFP stands for multi function print, those combined units that will print, fax and scan documents and prints. Given that you can buy one in my local supermarket for around £50 the quality of each functional unit isn't going to be as good as a dedicated printer or a dedicated photo or document scanner. But does that mean you should never, ever think of using an MFP unit to scan photos? Of course not, thanks to the help of one of my neighbours I checked scan quality on an Epson unit. At 300 dpi the scans of a decent print were more than acceptable. Hike the quality setting and scan images fell away, but modest results were achieved at lower resolution.

Are MFPs a photo scanning solution? If your needs are modest, and you only have a few photos to scan I think they could be. But they suffer from chronic slowness, as does any flatbed scanner. It's a one-by-one process so it will take a long time if your archive comprises hundreds of photos. Certainly you'll get a better result if you increase the quality of scanner you use but I would certainly not say you should "never" use an MFP to scan photos.

Photo Wallpaper

We're often asked how big can prints be made from our photo scanning service. Usually its for clients who want to make a photo book or a canvas print, or on relatively rare occaissions a poster. Today I saw an interesting advert for a service being promoted by Tetenal and Shiraz Software - photo wallpaper. Yes, truly massive enlargements neatly printed on 24 inch wide strips of paper, nicely butting together with no need to fiddle about with an overlap.

So, dig out that photo of Rover, the kids or that lovely sunset, send it to us for scanning and you could soon be looking at it on your wall.

Slideshows from Scanned & Digital Photos

We offer a service of creating a slideshow from the photos we scan. As a photo scanning service we want to add other services and slideshows from scanned photos is one.

However we can also create a slideshow from a mix of photos we scan and those already in a digital format.

All you need do is send in the digital images (on CD, DVD or USB stick) along with the photo prints. We'll scan the prints, slot in your digital images, then create the slideshow.

What colour is monochrome?

Visiting the Ansel Adams exhibition on Wednesday set me thinking. One thought, given the brilliance of his images, is why we bother with colour. His photos eclipse mine by a long way even though me best shots comprise a palette of thousands of colours and his are just, well, just variations in one tone. But what colour is his tone?

I noticed in an video clip of him making a photo he talks to his assistant (he operated a huge old fashioned plate camera, you'd need help lugging that around) about his Zone System exposure guide and placing black at certain values. So I think at the back of his mind he would say his images are in tones of black through to white. Except when you look at some and they have either no soot black and / or no snow whites. Beyond that, well, they don't look completely black rather than tones of gold or a mellow hue. Yes, some are obviously black - white, all are monotones, but some seem based on a tone other than simply 8 bit greyscale.

So that's what I've been thinking about as yesterday I scanned a batch of monotone prints. As a photo scanning service we want to get the best results and for a while I've believed the advice I was given when being trained to operate our first film scanner - that if the image isn't a colour negative or slide, it's black and white. The next step is to calibrate the scanner to capture all that it sees as digital values between total black and total white. Now this does add "pop" to an old image, and many clearly are b&w, but equally many have a tone, an element of blue, or gold, that suggests they may not have been intended to be variations of black.

Scanning these as b&w forces them down an avenue that may never have been intended. Scanning as colour captures the tones and gives a tech savvy client the option to render those as b&w should they wish. I'm more inclined to think we should scan all photos as colour even if they are obviously monotones.

Ansel Adams & Photo Scanning

Yesterday I took some time out and tripped over to Greenwich to see the exhibition of Ansel Adams photo prints. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Adams came in just after the beginning or modern photography and pretty much defined the style from which vast amount of modern snappery is derived. No Adams and I guess we'd all be trying to replicate Constable and Gainsborough. The prints are fantastic (apart from one or two I thought rather run of the mill for an exhibition) and a great way to spend two or three hours.

One of the highlights was a rolling film show covering his life and times, including an interview with the great man in his later years. He mentions he has come across a digital photo scanner and is impressed by the possibilities such a device would open up for his stock of negatives. I don't know if he ever invested in a scanner but that comment brought a smile to my face, I might lob it in the direction of those of my acquaintance who think photography belongs only in the analogue realm.

Another smile moment was the mention of Adams starting his photographic career with a Kodak Box Brownie. Yet again the conjunction of Kodak and image making; not printers or document scanners, no Kodak = photography. Earlier in the day I'd been to the funeral procession for Margaret Thatcher and seen a mass of people snapping away with the cameras on their smartphones. Each one a prime opportunity for Kodak.

Brother's at Kodak

Over the last five or six years we've become very close to Kodak as they enabled us to take photo scanning into a new dimension. Their Kodak s1220 was the foundation of our bulk photo scanning service. Over the years we've had the privilege of helping them by testing new scanners as they became available.

Of course most of us became familiar with Kodak as kids, because Kodak own imaging. Our family has owned Kodak cameras and the majority of our photos and slides were taken on Kodak material. I felt immensely sorry when Kodak ran into trouble, not half as much trouble as I felt they'd gather when their CEO decided to reinvent Kodak as a printer company. Lately they've been in a financial harbour, waiting for a combination of patent sell-offs and restructuring to allow them to join the market once more.

But what about our friends in the Kodak imaging business? I'm sure they hear rumours but I've no idea who will take them under their wing, except today there's been an announcement that Brother of Japan seem to be making a bid for the document scanning arm of Kodak (which might I'm guessing include photo scanning).

So let's be clear about this, a successful printer company is offering to buy the scanning division of a company with a proud heritage in photo systems, to fund it turning itself into (yet another) printer company. And the CEO of Kodak hasn't drawn the obvious conclusion?

Photo Scanning and Software

It's tempting to think of photo scanning as being the same as digital photography, after all you end up with a jpg file of a person, an event or a scene. Just like you do with your digital camera or phone.

Except it's not. First, you've got to think about the controls of the scanner being similar to those of your digital camera and I'm afraid scanners aren't great when it comes to exposure, colour balance etc. Second, even if you get a faithful scan of that photo, the original may have been badly exposed or composed in the first place, leaving you with post scanning work to do.

Hence the need for some decent software to accompany the scanning process. My first mention then is for decent scanner software. As a photo scanning service it's worth our while to invest on that - we use Silverfast for our Epsons and an honourable mention must go to Kodak's brilliant scanner code particularly in its ability to automatically restore faded colours.

Most of the post scanning image adjustment work I do, including to my own photos, is done on Mac computers using Apple's Aperture program. I think it's great and it does all I need of it. However I am concerned that Apple seem to be neglecting this part of their empire (maybe they're all worrying about iPhone 6) so I have to accept the case for using Adobe's Lightroom product grows stronger by the day.

Scanning Photos and Exposure

Over the years we have worked with many people taking their historic images and moving those into the digital era. Pretty much all of those have taken up digital cameras for their current work. Lately we've seen a few photographers who have taken up traditional photography having secured a grounding in the digital method. So we have received photo scanning orders for negatives and slides taken in the last days and weeks, some on almost antique 35mm or medium format cameras.

It's been a very different experience. Mostly it's gone pretty well but for two clients negative scanning and slide scanning has thrown up issues in their technique. In essence they are questions over exposure. I've found myself scratching my head trying to remember what I used to do to get a reasonable image. One problematic negative prompted a memory of me, in student days, standing one winter morning by the side of the river in Lancaster, taking shots of the sun rising over the town. A keen photographer cycled past and with a cheery wave shouted "Don't forget to allow for the sun!"

Sage words, but allow what? More light? Less light? How much either way? We have a large format negative sent in taken in similar circumstances. A broad expanse of beach with a brilliant texture, against a sun low in the sky. So we scanned it as it was shot. No adjustment in the scanner, just matching the scanner range to what was on the original. Immediately you could see rather than a smooth tapering of values at the far right of the histogram there was a truncated effect. The original was over exposed. To cut a long story short the photographer was disappointed, so we did further scans and I think we now have an image which better captures what he wanted.

The loop of getting what the client wanted has raised a couple of important points. First, if a client sends and over or under exposed image the scan will be as accurately as we can, reflect that. We can't tell whether that was the effect the photographer wanted or not. If we're told otherwise we can do something but our standard approach is to scan what is on the original as faithfully as possible.

Second, with any camera to get an optimal result you need to know how the system (lens, camera, film or digital file) works together to create an image. The two key variables are shutter speed and aperture. In a modern camera that can safely be left on auto and for most images you'll never feel let down. But if you're trying to capture a challenging scene an adjustment to a setting will give you a much better result.

Photo Scanning and Grand Central Station

Scanning prints - easy, scanning negatives and scanning slides it's a problem. Simply, which way round does the source material go?

Does it make a difference? Technically no but clients will obviously be disappointed if text is inverted or clocks have the wrong numbers. If the scan is wrong programs such as Aperture or Photoshop have simple tools to flip the image the right way up. Oh, and it's further complicated for us because or slide scanning and negative scanning hardware (Nikon and Epson) have different ideas about which way "up" slides and negatives should go.

Time takes its toll, I think the older film is the harder it is to tell which side is the emulsion side, that being the key to which way is "up". So I was amused to watch a video on the New York Times website which covered Grand Central Station and a few lesser know facts. The ceiling is painted with the stars and their constellations. If you've ever been to Grand Central you'll appreciate what a task that must have been. Well an astronomer provided the basic star chart from which the painters worked, but he made an assumption about which way up they'd hold his original. He or they got it wrong, so the stars are on the ceiling with a view you'd get if you were standing far above the universe looking down.

I sympathise with their problem, it's an easy mistake to make.

End of an Era, or Two

Today marks an end of a couple of initiatives / changes to our offerings.

First, the scanner buy back scheme is ending. We've run the scanner amnesty for several months and many cheap and nasty scanners have been sent to scanner heaven (or hell). I've spoken to a couple of people and if they get their scanners in to us this next week we'll honour their machines, but for the rest of you .... sorry, it's over.

Second, we're making changes to our video conversion services, details on the product pages. Given this has been a successful part of our offerings why stop? First, demand has dropped. Obviously there are only so many video tapes to be converted and there have been times when we've felt they've all been in the hutch. However volumes have been noticeably down since the early part of the year.

We have also seen significant growth across the other areas of our services. We're doing over twice as many photos as we were a year ago, and we're getting many more orders with fewer than 200 photos. This means we need more space for incoming / outgoing parcels and as the hutch doesn't have elastic walls, something had to give. Getting rid of all the boxes needed to convert videos will free up a lot of space.

The third reason is to enable us to concentrate better on the areas of the business that we want to grow - photo scanning and slide scanning. The growth here is significant and we don't want to spread ourselves too thinly.

On Being Let Down - or Not

Feedback from one of our clients, Stephanie, who kindly says -

"Thank you for your prompt and efficient service, I especially liked being able to view photos online, an unexpected bonus. It was also refreshing to view the photos online, an unexpected bonus. It was also refreshing that you actually sent the pictures before being paid, very trusting. I hope you don't get let down too often."

So, why send before payment? This is a bit of a bee in my bonnet, paying in advance. Pretty much everything I buy, in our local High Street, at Lakeside or Bluewater you can touch and feel before you get to the till. Marks & Spencer have built a brilliant reputation in their generous returns policy. I hesitated when I started to use Amazon but I've had experiences when I've had to return items and they too are brilliant. I'd like 1Scan's clients to have the same peace of mind and returning work first, then invoicing, does, I hope, give you that feeling.

How often have we been let down? This year there are two events that have raised my blood pressure and turned me into Victor Meldrew. Earlier this year I was contacted by a teacher at a public school in London. She was arranging a class photobook (nice idea) but she had to get the ball rolling. Would I be prepared to scan first, then be paid about six weeks later when the book is sold. Idiot me said OK.

Fast forward to September, our invoice isn't paid. Teacher has moved on, school denies any responsibility even though deal was confirmed on school headed notepaper. Do I sue for a few quid or bite the bullet? Sure it's a matter of principle but for much less than £75 is it really worth the bother?

Then just as I was closing down on Friday I got an email newsletter from Head Teacher of a local secondary school (budget £6M+). Over the earlier months of this year I've scanned 300 to 400 prints to drum up support for a fund raising day. I haven't charged, and don't expect any money, but was told I'd get a mention in their publicity. So I was particularly annoyed to see in the newsletter that every other company involved (including at least one who'd charged for their services) was fulsomely thanked and their company logos / adverts reproduced in front of over 3,000 parents. Was 1Scan there? No.

Yes Stephanie, we do get let down. Despite this we'll continue to scan, mail, then charge - I'd feel bad doing it any other way. But if another school asks for a concession, or a freebie, forget it; two bad apples have blown it for the rest.

One is a Loneley Number

Every photo is unique, of course, so why wouldn't you want a unique number for your scans?

For me it's been pretty obvious but it does take a bit of thinking about. Many clients want us to scan their images into several folders, each one given a meaningful title so they are easier to organise. Just suppose though at some point you want to change things around, for example you want to sort through your photos and send a folder of your kids photos over to Granny. This will probably pick images from each of those folders, and this is where the problem will arise if you don't have a unique numbering system.

With our approach each folder contains uniquely numbered images. You can copy any of those photos into a new folder without problems, you won't have to renumber five 01s, four 02s and nine 08s.

One small nightmare avoided. Unique photos with unique numbers.

When is a square not a square?

Answer - when its a pain. Even when expressed politely it's hard to get it across to clients that their images are rarely square. I don't mean they should be described as "oblong" or "trapezoid", it's just that they are not quite square. Why? Typically it's a result of the way prints pop out of processing labs. Recently they've been using machines that have inside them giants rolls of photographic paper onto which they print your image, then a mechanical guillotine whips across the paper and your print drops into the output tray. Very, very close to square, but often not quite.

If you try to square off the print you have a problem, very often two edges are not cut truly on the square. Inside our scanner is a computer chip which has been given the job of managing the scanning process. As the print goes through the system receives a massive amount of data from which it has to construct an image scan. What does the poor algorithm do? First, it could chop away some of the image and create within your print a true square, discarding some data. I can just imagine the outcry "You've chopped off Uncle Harry's nose!" Put it back, immediately. Second, it could create a shape as close as possible to a regular one outside the image. No data is lost, a small grey / black strip is added; and that's the option Kodak went for. When I think about it that's the only sensible option.

So here's the deal. If you want not a trace of black infill, send us images with four 90 degree corners. Better get it dead right because we operate down to 1/600th of an inch.

How To Sell Your Photos

Many of our photo scanning clients are professionals, but many more would like to turn their hobby into a paying interest. "How can I sell my photos?" is now one of our most frequently asked questions.
It is not easy, the main problem is getting your images in front of people who might be prepared to pay for image rights. Here in the UK it's tough, established image libraries are picky about accepting new photographers, and are very demanding in terms of image quality. Unless you have a massively important or unique collection of images it's likely that setting up your own website will be doomed to failure, you'll never get back the cost of setting up the site and publicising it effectively.
So, check out this potential solution - Flickr.
Yes, that's right. One of the biggest amateur photo sharing websites has a link with Getty Images. This means you can flag your images as being available for sale, buyers are then able to access your images and who knows, you might make some money.
Looking at the site today I was impressed with the help and guidance available on the site, so if you're looking to dip a toe in the waters of paying snapping, check out Flickr.

Photo Scanning - Crossing the Borders

Some years ago I was asked by Kodak if there were any enhancements I could suggest for their photo scanning software. One of my suggestions was to find a way to automatically remove the white borders that appear on many prints. Sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, I guess there's hard maths behind that. Anyway, that feature has yet to appear.

When we scan slides we typically crop inside the frame, so the client sees a "borderless" image, same with negative scanning. the only exception is with professional photographers who typically don't trust us to get the crop right so want every last bit of data.

Recently we've added a slideshow building facility and I'm pleased to say it's being well received. We off three options and ask clients to express their preference. Each slideshow has it's attractions but none is outrageous so I expected preferences to fall pretty evenly across each style. Much to my surprise one is an out front leader, and guess what? It automatically adds a white border to all the images in the slideshow.

Kodak. More Than Oops.

So, once proud Kodak has filed for protection from its creditors. For people of my age Kodak, like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Ford and so on, was one of the names we grew up with and as I've said many times it's a company that owns photography. So it should, it invented most of it.

I wish Kodak well, particularly those we've had contact with in their photo scanning division. Kodak is needed, not just by this business, but by everyone who has ever picked up a camera. Let's hope this tactic will give them the time they need to pull through.

Although I wish them well I have to say I think they're on the wrong track. Kodak IS images, not printers and certainly not flogging off their patents, which seems to be the plan of the current top man. Why, why, why are they flogging themselves to death advertising printers when surely the evidence of their own eyes must prove that nobody is bothered about printing.

Yesterday I was in a branch of PC World. Yes they had a cute display of Kodak printers, curiously at ankle level. Nobody taking any interest. People were congregating by the large displays of cameras, still and video, an area where once Kodak would have dominated. Nikon, Olympus, Leica are all great names from the past who have somehow pulled through to the other side. It would have been nice to see a Kodak credit on some of those cameras.

Best of luck Kodak, hope you make it, but you might have to forget those printers before it happens.