How to Convert Old Family Slides to Digital Images

How to Convert Old Family Slides to Digital Images.

Family photos are one of the best ways to preserve family history; everything from the faces of relatives to the places they lived to their memories of vacations, graduations and summers spent at the beach can be preserved through old family photographs. But what do you do with old family slides? Preserving them is a bit more difficult than preserving standard photographs, but thankfully there are some simple ways that you can convert your old family slides into digital images that will help you share and preserve family history for everyone else in your family.

Why Convert Family Slides to Digital Format?

First, a quick note on why you should convert family slides to a digital format: slides can be delicate, and they may be damaged by everything from moisture to hot or cold temperatures to scratches and everything in between. If you want to make sure that your slides are preserved—and turned into photos that you can actually properly see—then you’ll need to convert them into a digital format.

Best Options to Convert Family Photos Slides into Digital Format

There are several different options for converting family slides into a digital format. Which option you choose will depend on what exactly you want to do with the slides and how you prefer to convert them.

Photo Scanning Services

There are a few photo scanning companies available online. These companies allows you to have your family slides (along with other family mementos such as old photos and even home movies) converted into an accessible digital format without having to lift a finger yourself. They usually work like this: you will receive a box kit in the mail, which you then fill with your digital slides or other family mementos that you want converted and preserved. You send the box to the company, and they will handle the conversion for you. Then they will send you your original items back along with the digital files.

This option is best if you’d simply rather have someone else do the work for you, or you don’t have access to the other primary way that you can convert slides into a digital format.

Digital Film Scanner

If you’d rather not send off your family slides to a company, then a digital film scanner is the best way to go. A digital film scanner is a device that allows you to insert your family slides, which are then scanned by the device and sent to your computer. There are many different brands that offer digital film scanners, including Kodak, Magnasonic, Wolverine, and Digitnow. Modern digital scanners often have features that allow you to view and approve or rescan photo slides in real time, so these are a great option when you want fuller control over how the slides are scanned and converted. Some even allow you to flip and rotate the scanned photo, so you won’t have to do that when you start working with the files on your computer later.

If you want to convert old family photos slides into a digital format, consider the above two options.

Now that your old slides are digital files, you can edit out any imperfections that may have occurred over time.

Click here for a useful guide to some free software you can use to edit your pictures back to their former glory!