Glossary of Scanning Terms

A few terms concerning Film Formats - Slides, Negatives, and Transparencies.

Film

- Film is a photographic material consisting of a celluloid base covered with a photographic emulsion. It is used to make negatives or transparencies and can be contained in a roll, cassette, or cartridge. Larger film usually comes in sheets.

Film Format

- The size of the film.

Frame

- One still image. A frame can be single or part of a filmstrip containing multiple frames. All our scanning is priced per frame, not per filmstrip.

Filmstrip

- A piece of photographic film that contains one or more photographic frames.

Transparency

- An unmounted positive photographic image on film. A transparency can be colour or black and white.

Slide

- A single transparency frame that has been placed in a slide mount. In other words, a slide is a mounted transparency. There are different types of slides but the most common is a 35mm slide.

Negative

- The inverse of a positive image. Blacks appear white and whites appear black if you view a neg on a light box. Negative film comes in all formats and can be colour or black and white.

Matted

- One frame that has been taped/attached to a piece of board. Any frame can be matted but medium format transparencies are most common. Matts usually fold over like a book and contain a window for viewing the image.

DPI

- Dots per inch. Refers to print resolution, or how many dots a printer can produce in one inch. 300dpi is standard photo quality. Higher DPI = better quality, lower DPI = lower quality.

SPI

- Samples per inch. A scanner reproduces images by taking "samples" across an image, and so a scanner will take 4000 samples in a 4000spi scan. SPI is basically the technical term for the resolution the scanner uses when you are in the process of scanning or taking samples.

PPI

- Pixels per inch. This is a measure how many pixels are displayed in a digital image, the result of the scan. A 4000spi scan results in a 4000ppi digital image.

You can find more Information on film formats here