Scanning film & slides into PSE5

[GuyReylek]

I've begun to scan film and slides for storage and in many cases, correction.

Among others I have the options of Jpeg or Tiff as formats in which to save.
I understand that PSD is supposed to be a better format for working in PSE5.
I'm at a loss to figure out how to scan as a PSD. Perhaps not having the option which of the two others is best to scan at.

Also, for the negatives I've been scanning anywhere at a resolution of 300-600 depending upon the subject on the film in case I want to enlarge beyond 4x6 inches. Is anything over 300 overkill?

What resolution do you recommend I scan 35mm slides at?

I am so looking to just shooting in RAW and loading to the computer directly without having to mess with all my old film stock.

Thanks for any and all help.

[Tom K]

Hello Guy;

Welcome to the forum, its a great place to hangout.

As to the scanning - what I do is scan jpg at the highest level of my scanner.
Tiff eats up to much storage, unless the picture is very special.
When you edit an image is when you will 'save as' in psd format, thats how you save the layers.

You failed to mention if you were using a flatbed scanner or film scanner as
there are some differences...

One suggestion for you is plan out an indexing scheme built into the file name
if possible, or after 6 rolls you will never find that one picture that your are looking for ( that is a real problem for me ).

Good luck Guy - there are many great people here to help.

All of the afore mentioned is only one opinion...... Tom :D

[GuyReylek]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the welcome and advice. I actually joined the forum and subscribed to the service as a result of the helpful advice shared here that I found from a Google search. I was working with PSE3 some, but never really got into it. Now I've switched to digital exclusively and felt is was a good time to start putting years of film/slide stock into order.

I'm only using a Canon 8400f flatbed scanner. Its working very well for what I need it to do. Virtually all of my negatives (so far) were sleeved and in good condition free of dust and scratches. Many of the exposures leave a lot to be desired.

Right now I'm simply putting the scans into a folder called "scanned film" and plan to further sort via tags and collections in PSE5.

Again, I scanning the film at resolutions mostly of 300 and a few higher giving me file sizes anywhere from 670kb to 2.5mb. If I see something I like I'm scanning higher in case I want to make a larger print. I don't know high I should go. If I use the highest resolution on the scanner I'll get file sizes in excess to 50mb. No thanks! My main purpose of the scans is to preserve and organize the images. Right now some of the original prints are fading (over 20 years old) and we've boxes of disorganized photos all over the place.
Slowly they'll be dealt with.