Preserve your slides digitally to prevent fading.
Slides are an increasingly rare commodity. Kodak stopped producing slide projectors in 2004 and, as of 2011, will have stopped supporting and repairing old models. Even if you have a way to view your slides, the images fade and degrade over time. With optical scanning technology, you can preserve these memories digitally. Digital images can be backed up in several places to minimize the risk of losing your memories. You don't need to purchase new equipment or hire a professional service to scan your slides for you. Though there are specialty scanners designed for slides and slide attachments for digital cameras, you can use a home flatbed scanner to achieve the same results.
Instructions
1. Remove dust and debris from your slides. Hold each slide firmly by the outer edges with two fingers, and blow compressed air over each side. If there are pieces of debris that the compressed air cannot remove, gently brush the slide with a paintbrush. Lay cleaned slides on the stainless steel tray.
2. Sort the slides into your preferred topical or chronological order on the tray. Turn them all to the same orientation, and then place them into slide storage boxes in order.
3. Lay out a row of slides on your scanner bed along the top edge from one corner to the tick mark for 11 inches. Allow the slides to touch but not overlap. Continue making rows of slides below the first row until you reach the tick mark for 8.5 inches.
4. Scan the slides at the highest resolution your scanner will allow, and save the file. Repeat with the remaining slides.
5. Open your first scanned file in an image-editing software. Select the crop tool, and draw a square around the first slide with your cursor. Crop the square, and save it as "slide 1" or whatever title you prefer.
6. Open the exposure settings. Depending on which program you are using, this may be located under the "Edit," "Image" or "Adjustments" header on the toolbar. Scanned slides are typically overexposed. Adjust the exposure (often by moving the cursor left to right) until you find a balance between too many white areas and too many shadows.
7. Re-open the first scanned file, and repeat Steps 4 and 5 with the remaining slides in that file, then move on to the next scanned sheet.
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