Making Scans on an Epson Flatbed Scanner

Making Scans of Film Contact Sheets:

1. Remove the reflective white board from the inside of the scanner bed. Place your sleeved negatives on the scanner bed emulsion (non-shiny) side up. Make sure that the small rectangle at the top of the scanner bed is uncovered.

2. For Mode, select Photo Mode

3. Select the following options in Main Settings:

Document Source: Transparency Unit (with Film Area Guide)

Document Type: B&W Negative Film

Image Type: 16-bit Grayscale

Resolution: 300 dpi

Scanning Quality: High

4. Press the Preview button on the bottom. The scanner will show a preview of what is on the scanner bed. Make sure you can see all of the negatives and the film is in sequential order.

5. Confirm that the Input Image and Output Image are the same (i.e. 8 x 10 inches).

6. Open the Color Management setting and change Color Management to None. Do not make any adjustments in Epson Scan 2 (you can make edits in Photoshop).

7. Change the Image Format to JPEG.

8. Under File Name, select Settings and change the name to the filing system you are using for contact sheets (ex: BW_ContactSheet). Check the Use File Counter box to include sequential numbers to your filing system (ex: BW_ContactSheet01, BW_ContactSheet02, etc.)

9. Under Folder, select your hard drive (you may also scan files to the desktop and then transfer to your hard drive).

10. Press the Scan button at the bottom. The file is simultaneously scanned and saved to the location you specified.

Scanning Individual Negatives:

1. Remove the reflective white board from the inside of the scanner bed.

2. Load the negative to be scanned into the correct film holder (i.e. 35 mm, 120, 4x5). Follow the directions of the film holder to determine how to load the film (i.e. numbers right side up or numbers upside down).

• Please note that there are two different forms of scanning your film. You can either scan your film emulsion-side up or emulsion-side down. If you do scan your film emulsion-side down, do note you will have to horizontally flip your scans afterwards. 

3. Place the loaded film holder on the scanning bed so that the white triangles on the right side of the holder slot into the scanner bed.

4. For Mode, select Photo Mode.

5. Select the following options in Main Settings:

Document Source: Transparency Unit (with Film Area Guide)

Document Type: B&W Negative Film

Image Type: 16-bit Grayscale

Resolution: at least 3200 dpi

Scanning Quality: High

6. Press the Preview button on the bottom. The scanner will show a preview of what is on the scanner bed.

7. In the Preview window, drag a rectangle around your chosen frame.

8. Open the Color Management setting and change Color Management to None.

9. After that, click on Advanced Settings -->Detailed Adjustments --> Histogram

10. Adjust your histogram to make sure there is no clipping occurring in your scan. For B&W, you only need to adjust the RGB histogram. 

11. If you wish to scan multiple frames, create multiple marquees and do your adjustments according to the histogram. 

12. Select all of your marquees

13. Once the edits are done, change the Image Format to TIFF.

14. Under File Name, select Settings and change the name to the filing system you are using for individual negatives (ex: BW_Negative#). Check the Use File Counter box to include sequential numbers to your filing system (ex: BW_Negative01, BW_Negative02, etc.)

15. Under Folder, select your hard drive (you may also scan files to the desktop and then transfer to your hard drive).

17. Press the Scan button at the bottom. The files you selected with the marquee will be scanned and then saved to the specified location. 

18. Open the file in Photoshop and confirm the document profile, image size and resolution. Follow your workflow for spotting, contrast, sharpening and any other edits you want to make to the final image.