Protect Your Old Photos

A typical household has thousands of photos prints and slides taken before the digital photographic age. They capture some of the greatest memories of your life, your relatives, and your family and friends. If you are lucky enough, you also have photos of ancestors going far back in time. Would you be upset if you lost these photos for good? Interested in sharing them with others or building up a family tree on-line? Want to tag them so that the names are recorded with the photo itself? If you answer "Yes" to any of these questions, then it's time to take action. Scan your photos and slides today!

If you only need to scan a small number of photos, then you can do this yourself or use scanning services provided by most local photo print retail outlets. For all other situations, I would recommend using a professional scanning company. They typically scan at higher resolutions (600 dots-per-inch for photos), handle other formats such as slides or negatives, and provide additional services such as image enhancement, and photo restoration. The improvement in final image quality is noticeable!

Why Scan?

Scanning your photo and slide collection offers several valuable benefits. Once scanned, you can:

Protect your photo prints and slides: We all worry that photo prints or slides can be misplaced, damaged beyond repair, or destroyed in a catastrophic event. By having a digital archive of your originals, you have the comfort of knowing your scanned images can be reprinted at any time.Restore them back to their former beauty: All photo prints fade over time and images get washed out. Slides and negatives decay. Loose photos get scratched, bent, or ripped through years of mishandling. Have a close look at some of your older photo prints and you will notice these changes. Professional tools such as Photoshop? can reverse the years of decay and damage in your originals and make them look as clear and vibrant as the day they were taken.Share them with friends and family: If you own a digital camera, you can make your pictures readily accessible through you phones, computers, and televisions. You can also email pictures to friends and family, post them to internet websites, make presents in the form of personalized photo albums, and much, much more. Now you can do the same with your scanned collection!

Scanning Options

Once you decide to scan your photo prints and slides, the next question is "How do I go about scanning them?" You have several options:
Do it yourself: If you have a scanner or an all-in-one printer, then you can scan your photos yourself. I'd only suggest this option if you have less than 50 photos, and final scan quality is not that importantUse Scanning Services at Photo Print Outlets: Most retail photo print outlets or pharmacy stores offer basic photo scanning services. Typically, only loose print photos are accepted and no image enhancement or restoration services are offered. Their sheet-feed scanners can easily damage old and delicate photos. I'd only suggest this option if you have less than 100 photos, your photos are in good condition, and final scan quality is not that important. The main benefit in using print services is the time saved in having someone else do the scanning.Use an internet scanning company: If you search the internet, you will find a number of professional scanning companies. They can handle a large number of photos, and most handle non-standard originals such as slides, negatives, or albums. Scan quality is usually good. Most offer image enhancement and restoration services. What starts to separate the offerings are 1) price, 2) whether the photos are processed locally or sent abroad, 3) turnaround time, which can be days or weeks, 4) ability to tag photos, and 5) ability to handle non-standard content such as newspaper clippings, old documents, mementos, or scrapbooks.This article has been viewed 21 time(s).
Article Submitted On: March 21, 2011