
The point is to provide some distance between the screen and the negative.īelow is my laptop screen laid flat with two cans for height and then a piece of glass from a picture frame and my negative on top. Following his suggestions, I placed my negatives on a piece of glass from a picture frame and elevated it from the computer screen using two cans of mushrooms. One of our readers pointed out that the reason for this was not due to the scanning apps, but due to the pixels from my computer screen. When I first scanned my negatives this way, I got a pixel effect in my scanned photos. To quickly fashion a lightbox for this purpose, I used my laptop computer in tablet mode, with Windows Notepad (any word processing app would work) open so that the majority of my screen was white. To begin scanning negatives, you will need a smartphone with one of the above apps downloaded (I used my Samsung Galaxy 8) and some kind of lightbox which can be described as a flat box with a side of translucent glass or plastic containing an electric light to provide an evenly lit flat surface.
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How to Begin Scanning Old Negatives or Slides Thank you to everyone who took the time to share advice. This article was updated on 10/11/19 to reflect suggestions made by readers that improved the outcome of the scanned images. Do your own careful experimentation to see what works best for your needs. As I wanted to use only free genealogy apps for this comparison, I did not purchase the upgrade for this app.Īnd, while I chose to use 35mm film negatives in this article, many of the available apps can also accept 120 film and old slides. While all of the apps tested are completely free, Photo Negative Scanner requires a purchase to access photo editing.
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While I did not test the apps on an iOS, similar versions are available for your iPhone or iPad. Sounds amazing, right? Well, I wanted to find out how well these apps actually work, so I did a comparison of the three best-rated negative scanner apps for Android available through the Google Play Store.
