How to Make Photos From Negatives on a Scanner

Currently on the market are all-in-one printers and scanners that will scan negatives using an adapter, but you need not run out and buy an expensive piece of equipment. As long as you have a flatbed scanner and a small light source you can scan negatives and turn them into photos.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A flatbed scanner
• photo negatives
• a small light source
• white lid or paper

1. Take the negative you wish to scan and cut it away from the other negatives. It works better if you only use one negative at a time.

2. Place the negative onto the scanner flatbed, but do not close the scanner. Place a white piece of paper over the negative. A piece of clean printer paper works nicely.

3. Take a light source, you can use a small LED desk lamp or an LED flashlight, and place it over the white piece of paper. The light source should be roughly 4 inches from the paper

4. Scan the image in preview mode then crop the image in your personal scanning software to only scan the negative area. Each scanning program is different but you should be able to drag the scanned lines down to just the negative area in a preview scan.

5. Scan the image again and you will see the negative scanned onto your computer. Save the scanned image to your computer desktop in JPEG. format.

6. Open the photo in a photo editing program. Adobe Photoshop is the most popular and works the best. Under tools you will see options for photo effects. Here you will find an option for changing a negative to a positive exposure photo.

7. Using the positive exposure photo tool choose whether you want the photo in black and white or color. Click okay on the tool screen and your negative will instantly become a positive exposure photo.