Ask HN: How to scan and archive slides and photos?

1) scan at a reasonable resolution. Don't scan less than 4k resolution (3840x2160), and not more than 200-300 dpi for the largest print you'd want to make (really, an 8x10 print will look fine at 150dpi, which is only 1200x1500, but you may want to be able to crop after the scan, so more pixels would allow that). Know that there won't be enough latent image content in the slide to warrant > 20MP, even if it's on high quality 35mm velvia slides.

2) pick out a handful of different "exemplar" slides from your collection (a portrait, a group shot, a landscape, ...), and for each, try out the built-in auto exposure, auto image quality enhancers, and auto dust removal features. Some work great, some turn your scan into a posterized mess, and some will only work well for certain shots.

3) put your slides into yyyy-mm-dd directories, or name the image something like `yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss.jpg`. Some software (like PhotoStructure) will infer the captured-at time based on the date encoded in the file name or parent directory of it's missing from the exif metadata. You may want to pre-sort the slides by date to make this easier.

4) if you're going to edit all of them after scanning, use TIFF. If you aren't, use JPEG at a high quality setting (like 95%).

5) clean the slides beforehand if you can (research how to do this safely). It's a lot easier to make a nice scan if the source was cleaner to begin with.

6) see if you're scanner supports batch or gang scans. If you've got 3200 slides and you can do them in batches of 8 or 16, that's a lot less fiddling than doing every one, one after another.

7) take your time. You'll burn out of you do too many in one sitting, and not finish.