making a photo CD

[jonathan smith]

I have no idea how to go about making a CD of my photos. I need to in order to enter a couple of juried shows, as well as apply to school. It seems like a handy thing to have anyway. I shoot BW 4x5 film and print traditionally. I know very little about digital photo or the computer's role in photography. Is scanning the negative the best approach, or will a good print suffice? Is this something I should even attempt myself, or are there labs that specialize in scanning/organizing? I have Photoshop, but not much of a scanner.
Thanks-Jon

[Donald Qualls]

If your print has manipulations such as dodging, burning, spotting, etc., it's probably much easier to make a good scan with whatever full-frame manipulation is needed to replicate the print than it is to replicate all the local manipulations on a negative scan. Unless the judges will be printing the files and viewing the prints, resolution isn't a big issue, since screen size can't begin to approach what you'd see in even an 8x10 print at arm's length.

Also worthy of note that even quite cheap scanners can do a decent job of copying a print accurately, but you'd probably have to spend some money *and time* to acquire a suitable film scanner and learn to operate it. I've been scanning negatives for about two and a half years, and I still learn new ways to do it better pretty regularly...

That said, unless you're pretty confident you can make an accurate representation of a print, you might well want to hire that done even though you start from the print. It should cost less to get a quality scan of a print than to get a quality negative scan, too, because there's so much less prep involved; an experienced operator with a quality scanner can just about lay the print on the glass, close the lid, click the scan button, and be finished.

[robc]

there are hundreds of free bits of software for making image slide shows which can be burned to cd

googles picassa is one. just look on the google more page.

[Paul Moshay]

How about making 35mm slides of the prints and scanning the slides. Ektachrome E100g makes great B&W slides from prints, provided you balance the light with appropriate filters. I do it all the time, works for me. Paul