Digital Slides - General Considerations

Slide Imaging Options

Media Services offers a slide-from-file service which provides extremely high quality 35mm slides at very low cost (see our ratesheet) every weekday. Guidelines for this follow; please read them and any relevant links carefully.

Slide Imaging at Media Services

There are many ways to make 35mm slides by computer. Whichever method is used, the production sequence always results in the creation of a temporary EPS, TIFF, PDF, POWERPOINT or JPEG file which is sent to Media Services using File Upload.

Frames and Backgrounds

1. Unlike a blank sheet of paper, which is usually white, a blank 35mm slide is BLACK. This means that unless some other background is explicitly provided, the contents of the slide will appear to be floating in a black field in which any black elements will be altogether invisible.

2. 35mm slides are somewhat more elongated than a letter-size page. Because the standard film frame measures exactly 24mm by 36mm, slides should be composed with this 2:3 aspect ratio in mind. Failure to do so may result in wings of color bracketing the image.

3. Finally, unlike printed hardcopy, which almost always preserves an unprinted margin around the edges of each sheet, or a computer monitor, which maintains a black margin around the edges of the displayed screen, 35mm slides do not provide any margin around the edges. No important information should be placed near the edge of the frame.

In fact, due to various irregularities in processing and projection systems, as much as 15% of the edges of a 35mm image could be obscured upon presentation, so use generous margins!

Often, these requirements may be satisfied by simply drawing a rectangle of the required color, shape and size around the other elements to be contained in the slide. The rectangle may be drawn either before or after the other elements; it must be filled with a solid color or gradient, be of the proportions 2:3 (or 3:2) and provide an adequate margin around the other contents of the slide which -- obviously -- it must be BEHIND.

Resolution

35mm slides produced by Media Services are imaged at a resolution of 4000 by 2700 pixels, and always stretch or compress each image to completely fill the entire frame. Image files containing or entirely consisting of bitmaps should be composed with this in mind; indeed, the number of pixels available on the ultimate output device often governs every step in the production of such images, from scanning through composition and output.


This image will appear grossly degraded when enlarged to fill an entire frame...

...but is the perfect size to fill one-third of a 35mm frame.

Submitting Files for Slides to Media Services

Enter a file name of the form "lastname.image.format" where "lastname" is your last name; "image" is a short term enabling you to distinguish one file from another and "format" denotes to our staff the application used to create the file. The format as mentioned earlier can be ppt from Powerpoint, eps from Freehand or Illustrator or a pdf from any application whatsoever.

File names must be less than 27 characters long and contain no spaces or non-alphabetic characters such as slashes,colons, parentheses, etc.

Submit your file for imaging. Send your presentation to the makefujix directory using Media Services' File Upload followed by an email (media@med.nyu.edu) detailing the size, quantity and payment method.

If you are a member of the Skirball Institute using a Macintosh computer, log on to Saturn, the institute file server, and mount the volume "DMC"; it contains a folder named "makefujix". Copy your file to this directory followed by an email (media@med.nyu.edu) detailing the size, quantity and payment method.