- 1). Clean your scanner by spraying a glass cleaner onto your lint-free cloth and wiping down the glass surface. This will remove any streaks, smudges, fingerprints or dust. It is best to use a glass cleaner that does not leave a residue.
- 2). Use the orange antistatic cloth to wipe down your slides, paying attention to any dust or smudges. Orange antistatic cloths are used by professionals in the darkroom and for scanning because their soft texture will not scratch negatives.
- 3). Place your slides into the provided carrier. If you are scanning mounted slides, you can place them directly into the slots once the carrier is already in the scanner. Mounted slides can be scanned horizontally and vertically. If you are scanning slide strips, lift the plastic guard on the carrier and insert the edge of the strip (shiny side up) into the slots. Snap the carrier into place, making sure the negative is flat along the guides. The strip carrier has two slots for strips of five images.
- 4). Hold your canned air four to five inches from the scanner surface and spray to remove extra dust or hair. Release the air in short spurts, focusing on areas you see that might be dusty. Dust and hair on scanned negatives can mean a lot of retouching work. It is important to remove dust with canned air and not with your fingers. Touching slides will leave smudges and oils that can eat away at your image.
- 5). Open the dialogue box for the ScanGear software that comes with the CanoScan 8800F. Select "Color Positives" as your format, then choose "35 mm Mount" or "35 mm Sleeve" from the drop-down menu. You can make adjustments to your image to correct fading, grain, tone and backlight intensity. Once your images have finished scanning, you can save them in the desired file format.
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