DPS Dave.com.
High resolution and cheap.
All on his website.

I had 1500 old slides photographed-to-digital in a similar manner by a professional slide service. What I learned is that the old slides colors faded (oxidized?). A few seemed extreme, leaving just a reddish black and white kind of look. Others came up more of a muddy green color and some were bluish. (The color digitized jpegs were right on what the slides were showing)

Except in the most extreme cases I could do a pretty good job of restoring the jpegs in Lightroom. In fact on the very first pass I believe the contrast control stretched the color graph and got most of them well done without having to struggle with the other color adjustments.

I get good prints from an ET-3760 (same innards) but it didn't come easily.

I used to print a lot using an Epson 6 color photo printer, but when I stopped most printing, and Epson stopped making the special inks, I junked it, and for what little printing I needed, started using the ET which was my newest office printer.

I used Epson Ultra Premium Matte and Luster photo papers from before and tried every printer setup I could imagine printing from a variety programs from Photoshop and down. All were disastrous. And telephone help from Epson took lots of time with also bad results.

Then I tried a last shot. Epson ships a simple program called Epson Photo+ with their printers. I opened photos to print in this program, and let the Epson program send the print instructions to the printer. I used the Ultra papers mentioned above. The printer lights up and asks for approval to change the paper. The results are quality prints.

I haven't printed a lot this way. But the resolution looks no different than the 1440 dpi I used on the photo printer before. The color looked fine, but I have not printed enough to look at the shadows carefully and see if the 4 color inks are up to the same task that the 6 colors were before.

Most of my printed photos come out of commercial printing of glossy books. My first impression of the ET photos are better than that and look like the print photos you get from my photo shop or Costco.

Its worth a try. And from my previous experience, only use Epson paper--it is seems essential with Epson Inks.

I use an iMac (apple desktop) with their new "M" chips. First class all the way, although a bigger monitor (I used to use a 27") would be an improvement over my 24".

Since you have a top end monitor, the new Mac Mini with M2 chip, with max Ram, would do a whiz bang job of it. Apple might tout you on their "Studio" computer, but for Lightroom and photoshop it is probably overkill.

Worth looking into.

Like others here, Dad took photos and processed them in a basement darkroom starting about 1938. He must have given me a 35 mm camera (probably used) about Christmas, 1959 and I began by shooting slides.

The reason this is so fresh in my mind is my #1 son has been “bugging” me for over a year to digitize this old box of slides for him. I finally broke down and sent them out for scanning, at 6000 dpi last summer, knowing that they didn’t age well in the box. Some were faded and the Kodachrome, Extachrome and Fugichrome colors sometimes shifted over time. I loaded them into Lightroom and just finished 10 days ago, dating and saving what I could. I ended up with 2462 photos from the Spring of 1960 through 1986.

It was a lot of work but rewarding living through the family, people and places from all these years. If others have an old box I recommend the work for yourself and family members like my four children who are receiving thumb drives of photos from their birthdays on.

The second one is most compelling.

No. My suggestion is to use the 17" as a monitor, and the mini is the new computer with internal and maybe external drive to get what you need.

I am no expert--just a suggestion that IF this works as a monitor (talk to apple) this would be thousands of $$ cheaper than the studio setup.

If $$ are an issue, and if the iMac 24 screen is too small, I would look at driving your existing 27" with a Mac Mini with the new M chips.

Would you please report back on how the "export" version goes.

I have a file of 2,700 photos I want to put on four separate thumb drives to send my four children I also expect to do the same with my whole Lightroom catalog just before old age stops my subscription to Lightroom.

Your feed back would be much appreciated.

For a few photos at a time I find Photoshop, Lightroom etc don't always give me what I expect.

So an easy solution, since you have an Epson Printer, is to use "Epson Photo+" which is a program that installs with the printer software (You can probably download from Epson for that matter) There is no instruction manual (but there is an extensive help file) but a brief fiddle with the tools and a .jpg will get you going very quickly.

It seemed silly to move things to a separate program for printing, but you get just what you want and the ability to layout and print multiple photos on one page. It becomes easy to use.

If you have lots of photos to print, I go to Blurb.com and use their Bookwright software, also quite easy to use, and have them print a book. I have printed 15 books of 50 to 120 pages each with my photos. Easy to do; I'm a big fan.

A GREAT photo.
I have taken hundreds of Church photos, and looked at even more all around the world. This one is outstanding from the composition, cropping and lighting.
I felt someone should tell you just how great this photo is.

Me too...quick on all counts!

An alternative user: I use a trackpad with my iMac computer instead of a mouse. I find my fingers are a lot less tiring than working a mouse. Then when it came to Lightroom and Photoshop I find it very, very easy to use for editing etc. Only from memory (years ago) my fingers are better on the trackpad than my Wacom plus stylus ever was with a computer. Just an alternative to consider.

Blurb.com
I have made 14 books over the years with Blurb. I use their software which is incredibly easy to use and their first step up glossy paper (but paperback covers) and I am very happy with the results and speedy service. Recommended.