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Glen,
"Dark" Note that after a certain level, there's nothing in shadows but mud. You'll actually have lower resolution in the shadow. ( Which is to say, more resolution probably won't help there.) But, one of slides advantages is a much longer range - light to dark. The detail may be there.
Most of the simple photo editors - I like IrfanView - will let you adjust brightness and contrast.
First kick both. ( Tweek - check - repeat. Check at close and far. ( or different magnifications ) )
You may want to adjust the contrast or brightness curve ( more brightness and contrast in shadow... ), which some programs allow. The Gimp and Photoshop ( and ?? ) will let you dodge and burn, and use unsharp masks ( "I need more contrast in that area" ). Much of what they do and how follows what can be done in a darkroom.
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If you're trying to save precious images, go with RAW at maximum bit depth.
As other said you can enhance them with either GIMP or Photoshop, there is also a cool free image processing software called ImageJ which is mostly aimed to those who perform mathematical imaging but can read literally any format and do any kind of operations on images.
GCS d--(d+) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I think I'm gonna try GIMP, Downloading and installing this very moment, do you need the mask?
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You could consider paying for software and try Silverfast. There are cheap and expensive versions.
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Let's face it, there is a lot of bad advice here. Basically you should consider 2 formats when scanning: JPEG which uses a lossy compression and TIFF where you may use one of the lossless compressions. Consider TIFF as the archival format at 16 bits/colour/pixel. JPEG, besides the compression, has the disadvantage to store only 8 bits per colour channel. That's enough for a final picture but not one where you intend to do still some adjustments. with TIFF you are filling up your disk space.
So now scanning: Best is to use the scanner software's possibilities to do a basic adjustment of your scan, like histogram adjustments. As with your digital camera, if you get the settings right immediately with the scan you will be ok. If you want the data to be archived, what is my understanding of this, then you need to use the best physical quality your scanner can do. Use dust removal carefully and it's best when there is hardware support for this.
If dust removal is done by software, you're best using your post-processor (GIMP, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Corel Paintshop (?),...) for this. Your Post-processor should be able to work non-destructively. Use colour management through the chain to stay consitent with your colours. The best profile to use is ProPhoto RGB. The final JPEG, however, should be saved as sRGB. If your scanner and post-processor is not able to handle colour profiles then you are using the wrong tool.
The whole process, until the final JPEG for viewing/printing/fast access takes a lot of time. You shouldn't be in a hurry for the scan job or the clean-up job.
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Your quality is going to depend upon your scanner to a large part. Jpeg is fine if your initial scan is good. Try using Vuescan software. It will allow you to adjust the brightness at the time of scan. This will reduce your detail loss better than any file format option.
Next if things still seem to dark or washed out then I would suggest the software package LightZone not to be confused with LightRoom by Adobe. LightZone is free and has the ability to lighten and darken certain zones of light. I have had wonderful results with this software.
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I'll take a stab at your last question.
Imagine a world without computers, without monitors where you had photographic prints and pretty lousy resolution television pictures. For a relatively small amount of money you could purchase a fold up screen and a projector and blow up your photos to 3' x 4' or larger.
They were ubiquitous. Often you just had to show up for a business presentation with your tray of slide and you were good to go. Everyone had projectors and screens on site.
They brought terror into homes all across America as the dreaded invocation was heard. "We'll fix some snacks and you can see slides of our trip across the Rockies and from San Diego to Vancouver with two of the cutest little poodles in the world!"
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Even worse with Super-8 movies! "OK, I'll be willing to see yours, as long as you agree to see mine!"
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I know you have the hardware, but my experience back a few years ago was that under $2000 equipment just didn't cut it. Over that price I didn't try.
And the scanning services were not up to snuff except for one.
I found ScanCafe and ended up doing 10 to 12 thousand slides, some photos, and a tiny number of 8mm movies from the 30's over the course of a couple years. The whole thing was a rare, rare excursion in to very-happy-customer land for me.
They regularly have sales where the price for one media or another is way-lower than normal. Get on their email list and wait a few months to save 1/3 to a half. My slides were in the 20 cent range, some more, some less.
I sent them 50 or 100 or so slides as a test before boxing thousands of slides. The test runs were done on high importance slides that had been scanned other ways. ScanCafe's scans were clearly superior.
Answer to the parenthetical question: Slides were the only way to go back in the day. Printed pics were flat, comparatively speaking. Also, a lot of pics just work better at a big size in the distance. But that's like, do you want to see your pics on a 75 inch monitor or on a phone? Glowing or dim? Life size or tiny?
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B Alex Robinson wrote: under $2000 equipment just didn't cut it
I don't know how long "a few years ago" is on your scale. Nor do I know your ambitions. But I have a feeling that you are in the same league as those who think that it has no value to digitize worn, scratchy vinyl records unless you do it at minimum 96 kHz sampling rate (preferably 192 kHz) at minimum 24 bit sample with. Anything less will result in garbage sound, no matter how worn and torn the old vinyls are...
Five years ago, you could buy quite cheap scanners that in reality preserved everything that was possible to preserve from badly expose, badly preserved amateur photos. Even for correctly exposed and well preserved amateur photos! Tenyears ago, the scanners were as good, but moderately priced, not "cheap". I bought my first film scanner more than twenty years ago - I don't remember its price tag, but it didn't have significant effect on our family budget. With high ISO films, I could see the silver grains. (The reason why I gave that scanner away is that I said farwell to SCSI interfaces.)
Those who care about old-time photography should look up some old issues of "Modern Photography" and "Popular Photography" from the 1960s and 70s, with special attention to the lab test of both lenses and film. By modern standards, the resolution was shockingly low. The dynamic tone range was "quite limited" too, to phrase it politely. Even though some films boasted an exposure latitude of 3-4 f-stops (i.e. a factor of 10-50), the essential requiement at the end of these ranges were that you were able to recognize what the camera was pointed at. Noone expected a soft tone scale at the outer end of the exposure range.
To be blunt, we are talking about "throwing pearls before swine" if we require more than 9600 bpi spatial resolution and at least 24 bits per channel. Setting up such requirements will lead to a lot of people just throwing away those old historical photos. Scanning them at 1200 dpi at 12 bits, or even 8 bits, per channel, is far better than not scanning them at all! Fact is that noone will conmplain about the quality! (except those who look at the metadata for the image file, claiming that is it not up to their technical standards).
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I agree with all you say. My mantra is, "First, get it digitized and let the bits take care of themselves." I have a lot of phone or old point-and-shoot camera digitizations of paper based stuff. Why? Because just clicking a camera is quick and easy and the picture is phenomenal, if begging for post-processing ... someday.
My slide scan-o-thon was from 2014 to ~2016.
ScanCafe slide scans were notably better than the various other methods I tried. Keep in mind I can't physically perceive the kinds of nuances the committed "X-phile" (or even average-aged person) can sense. Just getting noise, dirt, and color-balance in half-way decent shape is worth it, though. Too, scanning thousands of slides can take serious time. Rankling though it was to spend roughly the same nominal money on digitization as I had on the original Kodak slides, there was no way I could do it burning my own time. YMMV.
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Have a look at SilverFast (https://www.silverfast.com). It is dedicated scanning software that can do colour correction, dust & scratch cleanup, etc
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It might also be that the scanner software isn't allowing enough adjustment.
I'd recommend VueScan (www.hamrick.com). It allows numerous adjustments for scanning, or a simple mode if preferred. It also supports older scanners that the vendor (Canon in my case) no longer support on Windows 10 with their official software. It is not free, but there is a free trial.
I've used it to scan a number of slides I inherited from my father, though none of them were poorly exposed so I didn't use any of the available tweaks.
It's been a while, but if I recall it also could handle scanning and cropping multiple slides in one pass.
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Aha I alreay have VueScan as Windows 10 & my Cannon Scanner not working! I'll try that! 
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In 1905 Einstein formulated a theory about space, and it was about time too.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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So you're saying that when Einstein defined the four-dimensional space-time continuum, Germany because the first of the four-axis countries?
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He had a warped view of space.
I'm not sure how many cookies it makes to be happy, but so far it's not 27.
JaxCoder.com
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He probably just came to realize the gravity of the situation.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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jeron1 wrote: He probably just came to realize the gravity of the situation.
It took him another 10 years for this.
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Relative to other such posts, at least this has some consistent-c .
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Ahh! 1st or 2nd grade:
"It's about time, it's about space, It's about time I slap you face" 
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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I bet he had quite the collection of Comet books.
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All charges were fascinated by it, and all magnets got a charge out of it.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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