Scanning Negatives and Slides 2e: Digitizing Your Photographic Archives

The book is very informative as I am a first timer at scanning negatives and slides. I would highly recommend the book.

Like many of you I have been looking for a good guide to scanning my slides and thought finally this might be the answer. The blurb on the jacket sounded promising especially as I use a Nikon scanner and software. After reading the book I am disappointed. I am not a critical person by nature but feel this book was a waste of time.It reads more like an advertising brochure with little practical advice on how to approach the scanning process. If you already know how to switch the scanner on, put a clean slide in the right way round and use curves to adjust the black & white points then I can see very little else you would get from this book. The images themselves are without exception very poor and many feature depressing images of zoo animals or old photos with no redeeming factors. If you plan to scan Velvia for reproduction for prints then there is no mention of this process.The main problem is that each chapter is more about what you CAN do rather than suggesting a way of HOW to do it. The suggested workflow for using a Nikon scanner and software is found after 188 pages, but is just one page long. My own scanning workflow is more comprehensive and I am just an average home user with no claim to be an expert on this. I have had my scanner for 2 1/2 years and use the approach in John Shaw's excellent article on the web.A couple of handy hints about useful plug -ins for CS2 were appreciated. The DVD supplied has a few of the poor images on it as well as all the Silverfast documentation. Nothing for Nikon though. Free try-out of CS2 and a couple of others as well as the free programs for relabelling file collections - all available on the web anyway.Sorry for the negative review but I feel all in all you can get better advice on the forums. I think those most likely to get benefit from it are people who are brand new to scanning and have never heard of or seen it done beforeeg in schools or college. If you already own the gear then very little of it will be new. I would suggest asking a local library to order it in and then you can read it and return it. My copy is going to go to a friend and I'm not too bothered about ever getting it back......

Try searching famous video broadcasting sites and basically type tutorials in scanning negatives and slides....this should help you all !