Digitise your old photos, slides and videos

As a general rule, use a setting of 300dpi when scanning old prints, as this will produce a good-quality digital copy that can then be printed or shared.

For better-quality photos, raise the resolution to 600 or even 1,200dpi, but remember that doing so will mean that scans take longer and the finished files will be much larger. Each photo differs, so if in doubt, experiment with different resolutions until you get the most from the picture.

Also, consider the way that you want to save the scanned images. The two best choices are TIFF files and JPEG files. TIFF files are extremely high quality as they contain all the information in the image, but the downside of this is size ­ a reasonably large image saved as a TIFF file can take up more than 50MB of disk space, so a collection of a few hundred photos can quickly eat away at your hard disk. For this reason, we recommend saving each photo as a JPEG image.

JPEG images discard all but the most necessary information about the picture, so they are much smaller. When saving you’ll usually be asked to choose a quality setting ­ we recommend using a high-quality mode (different programs may call this ‘very good’, 80 per cent or eight out of 10) if saving images for posterity.

Slide rules
Scanning slides and film negatives can be a little more tricky, but with the right tools it’s possible to turn a dusty old slide into a large digital image. The most common mistake is simply to place a 35mm slide on a standard flatbed scanner. This doesn’t work as slides and negatives need to be properly illuminated during scanning, so it’s vital to buy the right kind of scanner for the job.

There are two types of product that can scan slides and negatives. Search a computer catalogue or online shop for ‘negative scanner’ and you’ll find a number of products designed for scanning only film and slides. These small boxy devices have a very high resolution, but they tend to have a high price to match. Unless you take photography very seriously, we’d recommend a flatbed scanner that includes a ‘transparency adapter’ ­ this means that it has a built-in light for scanning film. The Canon Canoscan 8800F, which costs around £115, is a good choice.

In order to scan negatives or slides using this kind of scanner you’ll usually have to insert the film into a special holder first. This is then placed into the scanner underneath a light source ­ often a sheet of plastic must be removed, exposing this light, before film can be scanned. With that done, the scanning process is much the same as that for photo prints.

Slides and negatives need to be enlarged to produce a decent size of image, so it’s important to use a much higher resolution when scanning. Our advice is to use the highest optical resolution supported by the scanner. It’s important to look for the actual optical resolution rather than any ‘interpolated resolution’ figures that are given. Interpolation uses software to expand the image, so it doesn’t add any real quality.

Scanning slides and negatives is a slower process than scanning prints, so set aside enough time for the job and save them as high-quality JPEG images just as you would with prints. Note that any dust on the slides will be magnified enormously during the scanning process, so it’s best to treat slides with care; if you’re really feeling fussy cotton gloves are also a good idea.