Archiving for Photographers

We have been involved in many archiving projects over the years.
We can offer to help you with this process.
This can be in the form of advice or we can provide practical assistance in terms of supplying equipment or undertaking digitisation for you.

We can scan from negatives or transparencies - 35mm, 120 medium format and large format 5" x 4" to 10" x 8"

We can also scan from prints up to A3 - 420mm x 297mm.

Print sizes from scanned film.

Scanning at high resolution will mean that your images can be reproduced or printed larger than may have been possible using 'traditional' methods.

An image from 35mm film can usually be printed at any size up to 36" x 24".
An image from 120 film (6 x 6) can usually be printed by us at any size up to 44" x 44".

Because of the structure (grain) of film the larger the print the more this will become evident.

Family or Personal Archives

Many people have large 'archives' of family photographs often stored in a shoe box. Many of these images might have deteriorated over time and often they remain unseen.

We can offer you the opportunity for us to copy these images and possibly restore them, they can then be reprinted to send to other family members or shared as a digital file.

Old printed images, letters or original art work up to A3+ ( 483mm x 329mm) can be scanned, restored as necessary and either printed or written to disk, larger images can be copied by our specialist repro house.
Restoration work if required will incur an additional charge based on the work involved.

Beaford Archive

Some of you may already be aware of the wonderful project in which we are involved with Beaford Arts in making selected examples of the famed James Ravilious archive available for the public to buy.

It proved a real labour of love for us, who all knew James well, to help bring his study of life in Devon to a wider audience. Scanning his original negatives and trying not to drool over the contact sheets that told us the stories surrounding his well loved and iconic images.

The scanning portion of our part in the project (1,700 images) took us nine months to complete, with three of us rotating the task. We benefited greatly, of course, in having access to Alan Winn who spent some time printing for James and gave us unique insight into how to prepare the files just as the great man himself would want them.

Beaford Workflow - First Stage

Scan the negative at 4000dpi in 16 bit RGB on Nikon LS9000 film scanner Add Meta Data from supplied spreadsheet and save as .tif in scanned folder Spot Crop and resize to 18"x12" @300 dpi Desaturate image Prepare for print – Adjust levels, contrast, curves, digital burn and dodge Save in prepared folder Create 'thumbnail' image and add it the to spreadsheet. Batch conversions for print Separate landscape from portrait images Batch Resize images to 12" x 8" Resize canvas to 15" x 10" and apply Beaford copyright text Save in print folder Batch conversions for Screen / Web Batch resize images to 768 pixels for screen Save in web/screen folder See the archive : https://beaford.org/archive

Beaford Workflow - Second Stage The second stage of digitisation was carried out 'in house' by Beaford. We work from the raw files which they provide, adjust and prepare them for print. These are opened in Rawtherapee using a custom profile created especially for this project and working in 32 bit depth. They are then exported to the Gnu Image Manipulation Program as Argb files. Adjustments carried out in the Gnu Image Manipulation Program Spot Resize to 19" x 12.66" @300 dpi Prepare for print - Adjust levels, contrast, curves, digital burn and dodge Save in prepared folder as 16bit .tif files. Resize images to 12" x 8" Resize canvas to 15" x 10" and apply Beaford copyright text Save in print folder.