UAF Geology & Geophysics Computer Lab

Scanning Slides on Geos-10

1.  If the slide scanner is not already on, first turn it on and then restart the computer (from the Windows Start menu, select Shutdown – Restart).
2.  Make sure slide is clean.  Lint and dust are very visible on scanned images.
3.  Insert slide in scanner (upside down, emulsion-side away from light).
4.  From the Windows Start menu, select Programs – Polaroid Slide Scan – PolaColor Insight.
5.  Click Preview button.
6.  Drag frame boundaries to eliminate black borders or crop unwanted portions of the image.
7.  Click Scan tab.
8.  With a scale of 200%, change the resolution so the image size is something between 1 and 5 MB.  This will give high resolution, but keep the file size manageable.  File sizes >10 MB are excessively large and could cause you a lot of problems later on.
9.  Click Scan button.  Save as a TIFF file.  If the computer won’t save it (“insufficient memory” or “out of disk space” messages), save the file to the e:\slide temp folder; later you can move the file to your bedrock folder or to a CD or zip-disk.

Adjusting appearance and reducing file size of scanned images using Corel Photo-Paint

Open the file in Photo-Paint:
1.  From the Windows Start menu, select Multimedia ... Corel Photo-Paint10
2.  From the Photo-Paint menubar, select File ... Open, and browse to your TIFF image.

To adjust brightness and contrast

1.  From the Photo-Paint menubar, select Image ... Adjust ... Brightness-Contrast-Intensity.
2.  Experiment with the different settings.  This is very subjective, and depends a lot on the original quality of the slide.
3.  When your image appears as you'd like it, click OK.
4.  You can undo a limited # of adjustments through the undo command. But once you save the image, retreat is not an option.

To "sharpen" an image

1.  From the Photo-Paint menubar, select Effects ... Sharpen ... Sharpen
2.  Experiment with the different settings.  Again, this depends a lot on the original slide quality.
3.  When your image appears as you'd like it, click OK.
4.  You can undo a limited # of adjustments through the undo command. But once you save the image, retreat is not an option.

To reduce the file size by saving as a jpg (JPEG bitmap) file

If you will be using the image in CorelDraw, or in a web page, or attaching it in an e-mail, you can reduce the file size considerably by converting the TIFF file to a JPEG file:
1.  From the Photo-Paint menubar, select File ... Save As.
2.  Change "Save as type" to JPEG bitmaps.
3.  In JPEG export window, adjust the compression and smoothing bars as high as you can (especially compression) without compromising the image quality too much (you can "drag and pan" in the left preview window to see how the changes will look in critical areas of the image).  The new file size will appear below the right window.

revised April 2002