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Ok, how do you do this? You can't just slap a few slides on your scanner bed and click scan. You'll get nothing more than dark blotches. You'll need a scanner with the additional capability for scanning them. Until recently these scanners were either pricey or they performed poorly. No longer. This Canon model, for example, is available for $88.24 with free shipping:

I'm not thrilled that it looks like the hood of a 1970s muscle car, but it does an excellent job of scanning both 35mm negatives and slides. You simply lift out the tray located on the underside of the scanner lid, load the negatives or slides, replace the tray and scan.

You won't want to stare at it until it's done, however. It's reasonably fast, but you've got better things to do. Set it up on your desktop next to you, and you can go about your business while it goes about its. You can scan either six negatives or four slides at a time at exceptionally high resolution and color quality.

Once you've scanned them, I highly recommend that you take some time to improve their quality in an image editor (Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, etc.). I can't emphasize enough how important it is to your bottom line to learn as much as you can about editing images, whether they're yours or somebody else's. In most cases it takes only a few moments to crop, adjust brightness and contrast, sharpen, and improve color quality.

Happy scanning!

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