How to convert slides into jpg files?

[kahill1918]

A shop mistakenly created a slideshow out of slides, and I no longer have the slides. So I tried to open the slideshow (there are about 50 images)in Paintshop Pro X3 in order to save or capture each image and create a JPG file. I only got error messages saying IFO, BUP, and VOB files are unsupported. Help! Thanks.

[df]

It's a shame that you don't have the slides still. Slideshows usually don't save to too high of a resolution.

If you open X3, then click on Oranizer in the top right, then find the slideshow (you may need to place the slideshow in a specific folder for the program to find it) you can play the slideshow, pause it and click "Save frame as Photo". You must play the slideshow from the thumbnail and not in full screen mode. This assumes that the Organizer can actually play the slideshow.

[abreuma]

kahill1918, your story makes me sad. I had about 1500 of my father's slides digitized and received some very nice high resolution images on DVD data disks. The cost was quite high but when I started looking at the results I forgot about the cost.

You probably have a particular VOB file that's quite large. That's probably the slide show with the images you want. A VOB file is typically a MPEG video file. Corel PaintShop Photo Pro isn't the tool to use. What you need is a tool that can edit an MPEG file. You can rename the VOB to MPG. You'd use the video editor to move through the movie, and at each image you'd want to export the frame to a file. Unfortunately the resolution isn't going to be great. If you want prints - ouch. If you just want to use them on the computer and email them - great.

WOMBLE has a MPEG editor that works well on MPEG files. I think they have a 30-day demo you could try first.

Now, the person or place who took your slides and did this work would have had to scan those slides into stills before building the video. Those scanned images are what you want. Do you think they might still have them?

[Ron P.]

I agree with abreuma. The slide-show is a video file, and it will take a video editor to try to retrieve the images. However they are not going to be anywhere close to a resolution I would want to print. For NTSC regions (US, Canada, Taiwan), these will only be 720 x 480 max, unless the slide-show is in Hi-def.

Is this something that just happened? If so I would make it an urgent matter to contact that shop, to get the scanned images. Unless they have some marketing package where you can come back for a period of time for further purchases, I'm guessing they will delete those images. Hopefully it's not the latter, and it is not a large, chain-type shop. The little mom & pop shops tend to take care of their customers better....

Out of curiosity, what happened to the slides? Did the shop destroy them, or did you just loose them? If the shop destroyed, or disposed of them, instead of returning them to you, it would be nice to know, so I never go there..

[kahill1918]

It was a Shutterfly shop in Oregon, and it was six years ago. They sent the slides to a lab somewhere else. I got them back all right but unfortunately I was not aware that the images were not supported and consequently could not easily be converted into jpg. I threw the slides away. We now live in Florida, and I understand that shop is no longer there. Lesson learned. Save everything including super 8 mm films, old pictures, slides, everything until you are absolutely satisfied with whatever you are trying to create. Another lesson learned...when you take things to a shop, make sure they understand to process them in an editable format if you plan to edit them further on your own.