Negatives & Transparencies

TownsWeb Archiving’s negatives scanning service uses expert digitisation technicians with a wealth of experience in scanning negatives and transparencies. Our technicians are fully aware of the challenges this unique material can present.

Digitisation protects your negatives and transparencies from loss or damage and makes them quickly accessible.

TownsWeb Archiving is able to capture most items, regardless of deterioration, and can create output formats in TIFF and JPEG (JPEG2000), or any other industry-standard image format you may require. We can also create further surrogate files for the creation of thumbnails, for example.

Find out how much your project could cost

Visit our digitisation studio – See how our Negative & Transparency Scanning service works

Hear what our clients have to say about our digitisation services

I can safely say that with TownsWeb I happily recommended them to other companies for similar scanning and digitisation [projects] because I know they can be trusted. They can be relied upon to get the job done… they get it right, first time, every time.

Chris Amos

Project Manager

Thanks to the digitisation carried out by TownsWeb, we have been able to extend the reach of our collections, for example by using the high quality images on our website. This makes the material available for those that cannot physically get to our museum due to its rural location, but also globally for research and educational purposes.

Aneesa Riffat

Museum Curator & Project Leader

TownsWeb offered us a complete end-to-end service, from scanning and transcription, to web design and content management software. Their work was completed quickly and to a high standard, and we are extremely pleased with the results.

Lt Col David Owen, MBE

Museum Curator

Digitisation Frequently Asked Questions

We use bespoke, specialist Epson scanners and Slidesnap and Film Strip scanners for to capture negatives and transparencies. The equipment allows us to place the absolute minimum of pressure on the material and mitigate against any chance of damage. We can scan any size in a variety of DPI and creating a variety of output formats. We will generally produce image files between 1200ppi and 4000ppi in TIFF and JPEG formats, although we can produce other file formats. Images can be produced in full colour or greyscale and we can enhance or graphically restore them too.

All files are captured by our highly trained digitisation technicians using overhead, daylight balanced, non-heat producing lighting, or other equipment like the Epson, Slidesnap, or Film Strip scanner before undergoing a formal quality assurance checking procedure. During the image capture process, we can create a folder structure to keep the project organised and incorporate metadata into the filenames; such as the date they were taken or what equipment was used to capture them. The final step in the process is the delivery of your electronic files by hard drive.

As standard, TWA survey all material prior to any digitisation project being carried out to ensure that it can withstand the scanning process. If there is evidence of fragility, brittleness, and/or mould, or any other signs of damage to your negatives and transparencies, then recommendations will be made for how to repair and stabilise the content appropriately.

There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when costing your digitisation project, such as:

Condition
Scale of the collection
Negatives and transparencies needing to be removed from and returned to folders or envelopes
Any cleaning required

Consequently, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer as to cost, but you can get a rough estimate using our digitisation calculator.

By their very nature negatives and transparencies are a tricky material to digitise because they cannot support themselves. Care must be taken when handling such items to avoid damage through slipping and accidental dropping making a flatbed scanner the best method for capturing them.

Capture the data within your Negatives & Transparencies

Digitisation places your negatives & transparencies in the perfect format to capture the valuable data contained within them, offering great potential for system integration and online access and discovery.

Capture the data within your collection with handwritten transcription, identifying any handwritten or cursive script within images and converting this to searchable and machine readable textual metadata through a process of scanning. Using bespoke transcription validation software we can guarantee highly accurate results, carrying out any preprocessing measures required and outputting to any format.

Learn more about Handwritten Transcription

Publish your Negatives & Transparencies online

PastView is the perfect platform for publishing your negatives & transparencies online, offering great potential for access and discovery. Manage and publish your collection with:

High Resolution Zoom: Revealing every minute detail through large scale manipulation
Featured Collections: Gathering specific images into their own collections to showcase them
Digital Downloads: Making select items uniquely accessible in order to generate revenue
Watermarking Security: Safeguarding and protecting your images from copyright infringement