35mm Slide Scanning
Every Detail Captured, Every Color Restored
Why Your Slides Can’t Wait
Your slides hold decades of memories, but they're not going to last forever. The dyes in slide film fade over time, colors shift, and dust and mold can cause permanent damage to the image. The good news is that a high quality scan can capture everything that's still on that film, often revealing detail and color you haven't seen since the day the photo was taken.
At Archival Works, we scan every slide at 5300 PPI, producing images that are 7500 by 5000 pixels for a standard 35mm mount. That's enough resolution to make large prints, crop into fine details, and preserve your photos at a quality level that won't need to be redone in five years when you wish you'd gone higher. Many scanning services use resolutions that are a fraction of this. We believe your photos deserve better than that.
Our Slide Scanning Process
One Quality Level: The Best
Every slide is handled individually. We physically inspect and clean each mount before it goes into the scanner, removing surface dust and debris that would otherwise show up in your final images. Slides that have mold, heavy dust, or damaged mounts are flagged and given extra attention.
We scan using a dedicated scanner we engineered in-house, purpose-built for 35mm slide film. This produces sharper results with better color depth and dynamic range than off-the-shelf consumer or prosumer scanners. Every scan is captured at 48-bit ProPhoto RGB color, which gives us far more data to work with when correcting faded or color-shifted images. This matters because slide film, especially Ektachrome and older Kodachrome stock, fades in predictable but sometimes dramatic ways. Having that extra color information means we can pull back detail and accurate color that a lower-quality scan would simply lose.
After scanning, every image goes through color correction and digital dust removal. This is included with all of our packages, not charged as an extra. We adjust each image's color balance, exposure, and contrast to bring it as close as possible to how it originally looked. We also digitally remove dust spots and minor scratches so your final files are clean and ready to use.
Color Correction and Restoration
Slide film fades. It's not a question of if, but how much. Ektachrome tends to shift toward blue or magenta. Older Kodachrome holds up better but still loses contrast and saturation over the decades. Cheap drugstore film from the 80s and 90s often goes heavily red or orange. Whatever condition your slides are in, we've almost certainly seen it before.
Our color correction process is done on a per-image basis, not as a blanket auto-adjustment applied to an entire batch. We look at each photo and adjust it individually. This takes longer, but the results are dramatically better than what you get from a service that runs everything through an automated filter. The before and after comparison on this page is from a real scanning project, not a staged demo.
Your Files, Ready to Use
Every scan is delivered as a high resolution JPEG, ready to view on any device, share with family, upload to cloud storage, or send to a print shop. We can organize your files to match however your slides were originally stored, whether that's numbered carousels, labeled trays, or boxes grouped by year or event.
For clients and organizations that need archival-grade preservation files, our Archive Package includes 48-bit lossless TIFF masters in the ProPhoto RGB color space, along with unaltered PSD files where dust removal and color correction are saved as independent layers. This means you or a future editor can always go back to the raw scan and make different choices without any loss. We also include high resolution photographs of any labels on your carousels, trays, or boxes, so the original organization of your collection is documented and preserved alongside the images themselves.
Find the Perfect Slide Scanning Solution For You
With three packages to choose from, we have options for every photo scanning project. Whether you have a single carousel or thousands of slides in storage, we can handle the project. We've worked with families cleaning out a parent's attic and with organizations digitizing institutional photo archives. While the majority of slides we scan are standard 35mm mounts, we also scan 126, 110, and slide formats. If you have an unusual format or aren't sure what you have, get in touch and we can help you figure it out.
Access Package
99¢ per slide, $29.95 Minimum
Full resolution JPEG scans
Slides physically cleaned
Color correction and digital dust removal
Access Plus Package
$1.19 per Slide, $29.95 Minimum
Our most popular package
Everything listed for The Access Package
Slides organized into folders based on your original organization method
Contact sheets for rapid browsing
Archive Package
$1.49 per Slide $49.95 Minimum
Everything listed for The Access Plus Package
Archival lossless TIFF files (48-bit per pixel, ProPhoto RGB)
Lossless PSD files with original unaltered scan as the base layer, all corrections saved as separate editable layers
High resolution scans of labels on your carousels, trays, or boxes
Technical metadata for advanced cataloging needs
We understand that a pre-made package is not suitable for everyone. If you have special requirements, or just are not sure what package is the best fit for you, please feel free to contact us.
In addition to these packages, we can include extra flash drives for $14.95 each.
Ready to Get Started?
Getting started is easy. If you're in the Minneapolis/Twin Cities area, you can schedule a curbside hand-off. If you're anywhere else in the US, we'll send you a free prepaid USPS shipping label so you can mail your slides to us at no cost. Most projects are completed in two to three weeks, but that can vary based on project size. Questions? Call us at 651-366-0906 or use our online estimate tool to get a quick price for your project.