USE OF PRE-SCANNED LOW RESOLUTION IMAGERY DATA FOR SYNCHRONIZING APPLICATION OF RESPECTIVE SCENE BALANCE MAPPING MECHANISMS DURING HIGH RESOLUTION RESCAN OF SUCCESSIVE IMAGES FRAMES ON A CONTINUOUS FILM STRIP

A plurality of color photographic images that have been captured on a continuous color photographic film strip are pre-scanned at low resolution and then rescanned at high resolutin by an opto-electronic scanning device and processed for storage as a plurality of digitized images in a digital imagery data base. The film strip contains notches to spatially locate pre-scan frame data during rescan. During pre-scan the film strip is translated past an opto-electronic scanner in a first direction to obtain a plurality of first digitally encoded images. During high resolution rescan, the film strip is translated in the reverse direction. The high resolution imagery data is mapped into image storage memory on the basis of the contents of respective first digitally encoded images. During the rescan the mapping process is calibrated on the basis of information contained on the film strip other than the notches, such as detected interframe gaps and a correlation of low resolution and high resolution frame `fingerprints`.