What You Should Know About Scanning Negatives

Finding a collection of negatives can be very exciting. Even though they may seem like a relic from an earlier time, these negatives are the closest thing to the original picture that was taken, capturing the actual moment when the photo was taken. 

And since it’s the original, it’s also used when printing images that you and your family can display around the house or share with family members. And today, scanning negatives is becoming more popular as well, with many people using convert negatives to digital services that can protect the precious memories and immortalize them in a digital format.

In this article, let’s dive deeper into the subject of negatives, looking at whether you should digitize negatives, why they are unique, and how to care for them.

Your Negatives Are the Original Photos

As mentioned before, negatives and not the photos you have printed are the actual originals. The negatives are used when creating the images you have around your home, and they can also be used for scanning.

So, if you have an old photograph that’s suffered damage and still has the original negative, you can use it to make a brand new photo that will look just like the original. And before the digital age, this was the best method of copying images and replacing old ones that got damaged.

Negatives Are Perfect for Digitization

Because negatives are first-generation images and contain the actual first photo taken, they are perfect for digitization. Compared to scanning physical photos, scanning negatives allows maintaining better quality and recreating images that look perfect.

If the negatives are undamaged, they can be used to produce a virtually unlimited amount of images, so it makes sense that it’s also a very convenient way of transferring them to your computer using negative scanning services.

Negatives Have Been Around For a Long Time

Even though we’ve been using negatives until very recently, they’ve been around for a very long time. The technology for capturing images in a negative was developed early in the 19th century when Henry Fox Talbot invented the first camera negative in 1835. 

Over the following decades and centuries, the technology became much more advanced and convenient, making it accessible to households and creating countless memories that many families still cherish to this day.

Negatives Are Not Permanent

Negatives are incredibly durable. In fact, Kodak claims that in perfect conditions, it could last thousands of years. But even though they can last that long, it’s not the case most of the time.

After a couple of decades, most negatives will lose some of the qualities of the captured photographs, with colors fading and the potential outcomes of scanning negatives becoming less than ideal.

And then there are the always-looming risks of flooding, fire, or misplacement, which means that for most people, using negative scanning services should be something worth considering.

You Can Clean Your Negatives

When you find negatives covered in dust or even grime, you may be thinking that they are lost beyond repair. But there are ways to safely clean negatives and make them usable again if you know what materials to use and what mistakes to avoid.

You should use Isopropyl alcohol and lint-free cloth for best results, carefully rubbing the negatives until the grime softens and starts to budget. The process takes time, and you need to be sure to do it in a well-ventilated area, but if you want to convert negatives to digital service, cleaning them beforehand is a good idea to achieve the best results.

You Can Remove Imperfections 

If you’ve found a collection of negatives that are damaged or scratched, that’s also not the end of the world. In fact, with black and white negatives, that can happen fairly often, which is why professional scanning services providers have adopted tools that can help restore the images to their former form.

Digital ICE is a special software technology that can sometimes improve image quality and remove imperfections. When that’s not possible, expert digitization specialists can work manually with each image, removing the scratches and other issues and restoring the images to the way they looked originally.

The Best Time to Digitize is Now

Scanning negatives is something that takes effort and investment. Even if it’s just arranging details with the service provider, you still need to find the right time to take on such a project. But while it may be tempting to delay it, the facts we discussed above clearly show that the best time to digitize is right now.

Negatives may be durable but can get damaged, collect dust and grime, and become more challenging to restore as they age. With negative scanning services becoming more available, there’s no reason to risk losing your collection when you can have it digitized and immortalized forever today.