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Published: Wednesday, 04 March 2015 16:01

Do you still store your technical drawings on aperture cards? You need to go digital and open up a world of possibilities.

Aperture cards were once a great solution to storing numerous technical drawings in one place. With the introduction of newer and more efficient technology however, they are now pretty much obsolete. There's a much newer solution in town and it's taking the world of drawing storage by storm!

What is Aperture Card Scanning?

Aperture card scanning is the process of digitising your aperture cards and converting the contents (whether that's technical drawings or maps) to the required format so they can be stored digitally rather than in hard copy format.

Why Should I Scan My Aperture Cards?

Storing technical drawings on aperture cards is no longer the most efficient solution for a number of reasons;

• They cannot be edited easily. In fact, for edits to be made, a whole new drawing would need to be created.
• The only way to share them is to send the card itself to the recipient and they can only be viewed one at a time.
• It can be difficult the find the drawing you want particularly if you store a number of aperture cards.
• Drawings can be damaged as aperture cards are made of flimsy and delicate material.
• You will also leave your drawings open to potential theft.

The digital world holds a certain sense of superiority over previous analogue forms. Remember when TVs only had analogue channels or when books could only be read on paper pages. The digital age has changed the way life works bringing more exciting technology and efficiency and the world of document storage is no different.

By digitising your aperture cards, you can save space, money and time as well as increase the flexibility of your drawings with the ability to view, edit and share your work quickly and easily. With digital drawings you also safeguard your drawing against loss, theft and damage.

Pearl Scan's Aperture Card Scanning Service

Here at Pearl Scan, we offer a fully bespoke yet affordable aperture card scanning service to digitise the technical drawings held on aperture cards. Our service is fully accredited and undergoes strict quality checks throughout the process to ensure your drawings are of the highest quality. You can benefit from all of the advantages mentioned above and more with OCR processing or your files, file encryption, document management software provided and hosting through our online cloud platform, Pearl Cloud. For more information on the aperture card scanning service we offer, browse our website and blogs or get in touch today for a free, no obligation quote for the digitisation of your technical drawings.

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Published: Wednesday, 04 March 2015 15:59

Bringing your negatives into the digital age can reap lots of benefits and there are a few ways you can do it. Let's take a look.

Remember the days when you used to send your film off to be developed and it would return in that envelope with a little pouch of negatives in. Before the digital era, negatives were the only way to get reprints or replacements of your images. Nowadays, they are sometimes the only remnants of history we have left. For this reason they need to be preserved for future generations to see. In their hard copy, negatives are susceptible to loss, theft and damage so more and more people are turning to digitisation to open up a whole new world for their negatives.

While this new solution gathers speed, let's take a look at three different ways you can go digital with negatives...

Photographing them

If you just have one (two or three at a push) negatives you would like to convert to digital, photographing them is your cheapest option. It's not the easiest way but if you budget is tight, you're better off giving it a go. Take a look at this in-depth video we found showing one of the ways you can photograph your negatives using a decent digital camera, a flash, a cardboard box and a piece of paper (Yes, we couldn't believe it either!). This process would work solely for the digitisation of a very small number of negatives as it would take a long amount of time to have the digital images just as you want them.

Quick Summary-

Advantages- It's cheap and you have complete control over how your images come out.

Disadvantages- The process is slow and cannot realistically be applied to a larger scale project.

Using a Scanner

A quicker way to have negatives scanned and digitised on a larger scale would be to purchase a negative scanner. The price of these scanners can range anywhere from £40 right up to £200 with the higher price providing the better quality scans and they can usually be purchased online. If you decide to put a fair investment in the scanner, you can get pretty high quality images and their are a range of brands that produce specialist negative scanning. Here is one particular example providing a step by step guide to digitising your negatives with a scanner.

Quick Summary-

Advantages- You will get better quality scans than photographing and the process is quicker.

Disadvantages- Negative scanners can be expensive if you want high quality scans.

Negatives Scanning Services

For the most effective solution to scanning negatives in bulk, you should consider outsourcing to negative scanning services. These services use state of the art equipment to scan your negatives in the best quality possible. They can even usually retouch colours and brightness to give you better images than the original prints would have been. With this method, you can leave your negatives with professionals and relieve the pressure of doing the job yourself.

Quick Summary-

Advantages- You can get high quality scans from professionals, usually with a quick turnaround.

Disadvantages- You will have to trust the company to produce the scans you want.

How Can Pearl Scan Help

Here at Pearl Scan we offer a fast and affordable negative scanning service for clients wishing to future-proof and safeguard their images. We have dealt with a range of projects including historical archives of negatives to negatives of old family photos. We believe you shouldn't have to compromise on speed and cost of digitisation so we offer the best of both worlds. For more information on the negative scanning services we offer take a look at the information on our website and blogs or get in touch today for a free, no obligation quote for your scanning project.