9.3. Migration from Film to Digital

For many photographers, one of the most daunting prospects that awaits them when moving to a digital workflow is the migration of their legacy film archives. We may have lots of valuable imagery on film—possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of images in various film formats. If you have ever tried to sit down and make a hundred scans on a conventional film scanner, you've probably given up hope that your film archives could ever be integrated into a digital archive.

For most photographers, it doesn't make any sense to scan every image, but it makes a lot of sense to scan some images. Different images will require different treatments. In this section, we'll take a look at some strategies for bringing your film images into your digital archive, with an eye to doing it in the most cost-effective way.