scanning

High resolution professional scanning is the most effective way to preserve your family's photographic history.
Whether it's your old slides, your film negatives, or your treasured photos, DigitalCachet.com is your best
choice for conversion of these to high quality digital images. Please contact us to discuss your needs.

Scanning is also a really big part of the "magic" of photo restoration. Each image contains a limited amount
of information which can be captured and used for the restoration effort. Whether we're working with a
negative, a slide, or a photo, we want our scan to obtain as much of that information as absolutely possible.
A poor quality scan requires more work for correction, raises costs and may reduce the achievable quality of
the corrected image. For those reasons, we strongly recommmend that you allow us to utilize our expertise,
our proven scanning protocols and our state of the art equipment to produce optimized original source scans
for your restoration project (see shipping instructions). If that is not possible, you can obtain scans in your
local area from many good print shops. These can be burned to CD or DVD and sent to us. Please print a copy
of our scanning instructions for whomever will take the scans.

For a restoration project, we would typically take several scans at different resolutions and image orientations
to assure the best possible starting point and the greatest amount of "information" possible. There is no
charge for the scanning portion of any restoration project. For best results, scanning should take place at the
highest possible level. Scanning from a negative or slide is always preferred over scanning from a print
unless the negative or slide has been seriously damaged or lost. If we're scanning a photograph, we should
see better quality from an original photo produced from the negative rather than from a photo produced from
a previous scan of the original photograph.

Color versus monochrome is an important scanning decision. At DigitalCachet.com, all our scans are taken in
RGB color and .tif (lossless) format, even if the image is monochrome. Color scans simply capture more of that
highly valuable "information" from the image, and the .tif file type ensures no image degradation due to file
compression. For slides or negatives, we would scan at 2000 to 4000dpi. For most photos, we typically scan
from 300 to 600dpi depending on original image size and the intended image size. If the intended final image
size is very large, resolution would be even higher than 600ppi. The Epson Perfection V750-M Pro is capable
of scans to 6400dpi.

We maintain current professional level versions of Epson and Nikon scanners.

The Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED gives us the capability to scan your negatives and slides at up to 4000dpi
true optical resolution. It also supports multi-format slides and film in 35mm, 120/220, and glass microscope
slides. Its embedded "Digital ICE" software reduces spots and enhances the image. Its glass filmholder also
flattens the film to eliminate film curvature distortion, and Our Epson Perfection V750-M PRO flat-bed scanners
also incorporate Digital ICE technologies and the ability to provide true dual lens high-pass scans for your
printed images. Either way, you will have the best possible scan quality attainable.