Scanning slides

[shafke]

I have quite a few old slides that I want to scan and burn to CD/DVD.

I have a 4800dpi flatbed scanner (epson 4180)with a that can scan slide and negtives.

I scanned a couple of slide at 4800 dpi and there is way too much film grain. I am trying to limit post processing to dust cleanup, levels, white balance.

My plan is it scan the slides and save the unedited scan as a psd file most likely. These can then be edited and saved as a jpg for creating slide shows and what not.

What settings for the scanner would get me the best results with just minor post processing?

 

[Gdad]

I am not familiar with that model but I use an Epson V500. For settings I just uncheck everything except Digital Ice which works great for keeping dust off color film and slides (not for B&W.) I have found that using sharpening in the scanner increases the graininess.

 

[seashoreCM]

Depending on the quality of the slides you may find 2400 dpi or 36 dpi to be sufficient. But if the slides vary in quality, you may find it simpler to leave the dpi set to 4800.

When a photofinisher copies or prints a slide or negative, he eyeballs it and adjusts the brightness up or down, or sometimes the machine he uses will autoexpose. But he, not you makes the decision and the results may or may not be what you want

Most of the time consuming part of scanning slides and negatives is adjusting the brightness. Some scanners bury the shadows on dark slides and blow the highlights on light slides no matter what you do, for example brightening an underexposed slide does nothing more than change blacks into grays with shadows still buried (now in gray).

 

[shafke]

Here are a couple of test examples. I have to clean the dust but how do these look...

Scanned at 3200dpi
Edit in Photoshop to auto correct color and increase saturation a bit.