# Commercial Scanning of Negatives



## Camera Bug (Nov 30, 2019)

I have quite a few negatives which I am planning to send out. They will either be sent to me in JPG, or for a premium I can have it sent to me as a TIFF.  I am aware of the problems with JPG, but I am unclear if TIFF would give me more flexibility to make adjustments in Lightroom. Is all of the information there like with RAW, or is it something different?


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## clee01l (Nov 30, 2019)

Are the negatives going to be converted to positives when sent to you or after?   Are they color or B&W?   Are they 35mm or something larger?

I'd probably go for 35mm B&W as JPEG.   High quality color, I might spring for the lossless TIFF version.


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## PhilBurton (Nov 30, 2019)

Camera Bug said:


> I have quite a few negatives which I am planning to send out. They will either be sent to me in JPG, or for a premium I can have it sent to me as a TIFF.  I am aware of the problems with JPG, but I am unclear if TIFF would give me more flexibility to make adjustments in Lightroom. Is all of the information there like with RAW, or is it something different?


What about scanner resolution?  Is there a difference in pixel counts between the JPG and TIFF scans.  What size negatives?

Phil


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## Camera Bug (Nov 30, 2019)

They are 35 mm color negatives. The plan is that they will be printed out at some point in the future. Again depending upon cost, I can have them done at 2000, 3000 or 4000 dpi.


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## ChuckTin (Nov 30, 2019)

I would not get JPEGs. I'd spent the extra for Tiff's. Tiff's have lossless compression jpegs do not. Tiff's have been universal since scanning started. Jpegs are a child of the internet consortium from the 1970s. The jpeg standards were engineered for the 1400 baud modem era.
Even considering the improvements of the Jpeg standard since "go" the format still had drawbacks.


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## PhilBurton (Dec 1, 2019)

ChuckTin said:


> I would not get JPEGs. I'd spent the extra for Tiff's. Tiff's have lossless compression jpegs do not. Tiff's have been universal since scanning started. Jpegs are a child of the internet consortium from the 1970s. The jpeg standards were engineered for the 1400 baud modem era.
> Even considering the improvements of the Jpeg standard since "go" the format still had drawbacks.


Agree on the TIFF recommendation.  Also, consider the rule of thumb, which is that you want 300 dpi for prints.  So for a 4" x 6" print, you would need 1200 pixels, so for best quality, get scans at 2000 dpi.  If you want 8"   x 10" or A4 size prints, go for the 4000 dpi scans.

Early modems were 300, 1200, and 2400 baud.  (Hayes, anyone?)

Phil


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## johnbeardy (Dec 1, 2019)

Depending on your needs, a 35mm film scanner might be a good alternative.


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## Paul_DS256 (Dec 1, 2019)

PhilBurton said:


> Early modems were 300, 1200, and 2400 baud. (Hayes, anyone?)


I remember those. We had to wait for the 2400 baud before we could upload images with one side 2000 pixels or larger


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## ChuckTin (Dec 1, 2019)

Funny I remember 1440 and 2880, & think I've still got a chassis in the back with a modem still installed (i.e. not so long ago)


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## aces1200 (Dec 23, 2019)

My opinion: if the photos are important or precious to you, get TIFF.  They are large files but you don't lose any information that's in the original.   Once you have them you can always export them as jpegs for sharing.    (and yes, LR editing is better with TIFF).  The only question is how much data storage can you handle.


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## ChuckTin (Dec 25, 2019)

I did scanning in a pro lab. The best output is always RGB Tiff, uncompressed. As long as you can handle the size.
Even for B&W you'd want RGB scans. That gives you extra data in case somebody graffetti'd on a family album or the colors have faded ala Kodacolor.
Also ask about dust reduction. Better done during the original scan than hunt-&-peck in PS believe me, I've done my share


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## CloudedGenie7 (Dec 27, 2019)

I had all my 35 mm negatives (and a heap of old slides and prints) professionally scanned two years ago. I opted for the TIFF files, and would do it again. I had them put the scanned photos on a USB hard drive and send it to me.

At the price, I could have paid for a good scanner, but the negatives would have been (unscanned) in the box next to the scanner...

I did buy the slide scanning gadget for the D850... I will still use it, one day  

Christelle


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## RoyReed (Dec 30, 2019)

Ask if there's a difference in bit depth between the JPG and TIF options. If the TIFs are 16bit per channel (as opposed to 8bit) then that's the option to go for as you will have MUCH more colour information - and it might explain the price difference between TIF and JPG.


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## AmeliaClarkson292 (Jan 29, 2020)

Thanks for sharing this wonderful info .


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## ChuckTin (Jan 30, 2020)

I'm not up on all recent specs for Jpegs but I'm doubting they're 16 bit per channel.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 30, 2020)

ChuckTin said:


> I'm not up on all recent specs for Jpegs but I'm doubting they're 16 bit per channel.


Jpeg only supports 8 bits per color. I do not see anybody here saying anything different.


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## ChuckTin (Jan 30, 2020)

RReed said to check. Perhaps he meant to see if scanning was done in 16 bit then down converted to 8 for Jpeg. But as jpegs are 8 bits (by the definition I learned) I don't see any advantage to asking the question.
If it's a budget constraint, and that a legitimate concern, then Tiff's on media are probably out. But 16 bit Tiffs, providing the OP can use them(!), will be the superior output. And regardless of the originals I'd get RGB Tiff's as there are some tricks that can be done in color mode that aren't available with grey scale.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 30, 2020)

RReed obviously meant to check whether TIFFs would be 16 bits/color.


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## Klaas (Feb 3, 2020)

The last year I scanned a lot of slides and negatives of the 35mm size with my Nikon scanner, with 4000 dpi each. I started with JPEG, but then I changed to TIFF, since only with TIFF a colour depth of 16 bit is available. TIFF gives you far better colours, especially, when you have colours of the same kind but with changing brightness, like a blue sky. TIFF is space comsuming, yes, but hard disk space is nowadays not a real problem. I store my TIFFs uncompressed, so I get about 110 MByte per TIFF. But on my hard disk is still a lot of free space, even if I have about 20,000 TIFFs and additional 15,000 JPEGs.  A high dpi TIFF is worth it's price, I think.

Klaas


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