Preparing Your Slides To Be Scanned.
"Fronts", "Backs", "Rotating"
It is important!

We haven't changed our 35mm slide scanning fee since 2004 and that is when we lowered it because of competition from India as well as anyone with a cheap scanner that wanted to call themselves a "scanning company" getting into the business and so many people not knowing the difference we make in comparison. I'll guarantee you that there are a lot of people out there that never knew that their slide scans could look so much better if they had gone with our service. This price is still good for you but, in order to keep these prices the same, we need your help in preparing the slides for scanning before you send them to us.

If you want your scans that have signs or text or license plates or door openings or pictures on the wall to view the right way and to look correct, you have to get all your slides stacked with the Fronts and Backs facing correctly BEFORE scanning.

• This is really very easy and all you have to do is don't OVER-THINK THIS.
• 99.9% of the time the side with the "Logo" on it is what we call the front. See pictures below.
• By "Logo" we will just say it will be the most colorful side of the slide holder and will generally have the type of Film, such as "Kodak" or "KodaChrome" or similar. The processor might also have their name on the Logo side.
• "Slide holder" will be the cardboard or plastic that "holds" the film.
• As opposed to the colorful "Front", the "Back" will generally be very plain with possibly just a number or date stamped or embossed on the back. When in doubt, go with the date or the number from the processor being on the BACK.
• Plastic slides will often have "This side towards the screen" printed on the FRONT.
• If you have the ability to "flip" your images, after you get them back, it is not hard with a free program, then it probably is not as important for you to get your "fronts" and "backs" facing correctly.
• You still will want to get your slides ALL rotated to the same "landscape" orientation so that heads do not fall outside of the scanning "frame". See info below.

Hopefully, the information below will help you to understand how to get your slides rotated and stacked correctly for scanning.

These slides below are all Fronts. They should face UP in your stacks of slides. The top slide will be the first one scanned and the rest will follow in order. They have "Logos" and might be colorful.

 

These are all Backs of "cardboard" slide holders. They are "plain" as compared to the fronts.

 

Most slides that have plastic slide holders will have the text either printed or embossed on the FRONT of the slide. It will say "This Side Towards Screen". This is the front. Always.

 

Some plastic slides have a solid color, gray or black on the FRONT of the slides and white on the back of the slides.

 

Once you understand Fronts and Backs, you are almost ready to start making your stacks of slides. Just to be clear, we are a "slide scanning company". We are not your slide "organizing" company. We prefer LARGE stacks of slides. We do NOT want small stacks of slides. We have had some people send us 100 slides and want us to put them into 15 separate folders. This is organizing. We do scanning and expert editing not organizing. If you send us slides in what we would consider unreasonable stacks, we will combine them and you can move your images around as you like once you get them back. We need to be able to do the scanning quickly and having to stop and make a new folder for every little stack slows us down and we actually lose money on a project like this. We can't afford that. Are you still being paid what you were back in 2004?

 

 

Now, before you start on your stacks, there is one more very important thing to remember:

All slides get rotated to "Landscape" orientation regardless of the content of the slide. If you do NOT do this, you are probably going to lose a good portion of your photo. You don't even have to look at the content of the slide. Every slide gets rotated the same. No exceptions. That is pretty easy.

 

Now that you understand Fronts and Backs and Rotating to Landscape, you can make your "Larger rather than Smaller" stacks.

The top slide in the stack will be scanned first. The bottom slide in the stack will be scanned last.

You will number and not name your stacks. Your folders on the disk or flash drive will be named with a number. If you do not give the stack a number, we will do that for you. If order is not important, you do not have to number your stacks.

If the order within your stacks is important, then number the FRONTS of your slides in the stack. Sometimes a handful of slides may drop to the table during scanning. If you have not numbered the slides, there is no way for us to get them back to the way you had them. We will not be reordering them later on if you did not number the slide fronts.

If you need more slides in any particular "folder" than you can fit in a stack, then label the stacks as "a", "b" and etc.

 

 

One more time:

• Large stacks
• All Fronts facing UP in the stack
• All slides rotated to LANDSCAPE orientation
• Cardboard and Plastic slides can be in the same stack but NOT inter-mixed.
• First slide under the numbered stack label will get scanned first, if the front is facing up.
• If the front is not facing up then we will assume that maybe you put the stack label on the wrong side of your stack and we will start scanning from the opposite side of your stack.
• This might mean that your slides will get scanned in just the opposite order as you had intended. All we can do is assume your have followed our instructions and, if you haven't, you are capable of flipping or rotating your images once you get your disk.

Here is a really good idea for packaging your slides for scanning. These boxes are just the size of your slides: 2" x 2"

Notice that this customer has written on the inside of the box that we should start scanning on "this side" of the stack.

You can use "cards" to divide up the box. Once again: Be Reasonable.

 

Finally, the storage methods below slow us down and we do not want the slides sent to us in these types of storage:

 

GAF or Sawyer Carousels that hold 100 slides cannot be sent. Kodak Carousels that hold 80 or 140 slides can be sent.

 

Notebook Sleeves cannot be sent.

 

Airequipt Cartridges cannot be sent AND you must remove the metal clips from the slides.

 

 

We are sorry that we have to have these limitations but we are a business and we can't take work that will slow us down so that we lose money.

We want your scanning project to turn out to be the very best experience possible.