Have someone else digitize your old photos

How long would it take you to scan 1000 photos? I’m thinking it would take me quite some time and I don’t think I’d be able to do anything else if I wanted to get them scanned in a reasonable amount of time. If you have a large amount of photos sitting in closet, basement, or attic, you may want to check out ScanMyPhotos.com. The service promises to professionally scan 1,000 photos for you, the same day it receives them, and put them on a DVD for $50.

The company uses a Kodak scanning machine that can process a hundred photos per minute. From an informative New York Times article about the whole process:

Because it must feed your photos through this machine, ScanMyPhotos has set some rules. Photo sizes can range from 3 by 3 inches (Polaroids) to 11 by 14.

The photos must be put into similar-size bundles (4-by-6 prints together, for example) with rubber bands. The only way to label the batches is to write on index cards, which are scanned along with the photos like title cards. If you want the bundles scanned in a certain sequence, you can number the index cards.

The photos can’t be in albums or scrapbooks. That’s understandable, but it can be heart-wrenching to have to dismantle photo albums that somebody once spent a lot of time and effort creating.

Your photos can’t be in envelopes, either. For my test, I submitted about 20 years’ worth of pictures. (I found out later that there were more than 1,800 in all. I had no idea it was that many; those bundles look deceptively small.) They came from dozens of drugstore envelopes, meaning that I had to separate them from their negatives, probably forever, given that matching 1,800 prints with their original envelopes would take the rest of my life. And my descendants’.

The photos are scanned exactly as you send them. If one is upside down or backward, that’s how it winds up on the DVD. Similarly, you’re supposed to ensure that all horizontal photos are upright, and all vertical photos are consistently rotated 90 degrees the same way.

Finally, you pack your bundles into a box, stuffing it carefully to avoid shifting.

The company’s Web site offers copious photos of the right and wrong ways to pack up your pictures. The bottom line is, ScanMyPhotos will do the scanning. But you have to do the prep work, and it’s not insubstantial.

This seems like a pretty reasonable option for digitizing your old photos. Preparing your photos for shipment looks like the most labor intensive part of the whole process. It seems like a rather even tradeoff, though, for getting a DVD full of your digitized photos.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted by Matt on Aug 19, 2008 | Comments |

44 comments posted

  1. Posted by Chris @ Lifestyleproject - 08/19/2008

    Brilliant thanks for this. I’ve been looking for companies that do this internationally (ScanCafe don’t and there are no alternatives in the UK).

    This will certainly help me with my digitisation of everything (I did all my CDs manually and that took ages). Once I have digitised everything I will have far less clutter.

    If only they could learn all my friends etc and tag them in flickr for me!

  2. Posted by J. - 08/19/2008

    Before you decide, check out ScanDigital. I sent them stuff for scanning (all the way from Holland to California) and found them really good and reliable.

  3. Posted by Battra92 - 08/19/2008

    As a professional photographer it pains me to see people “preserving” their photos on volatile digital media which can crash, corrupt, delete etc.

    Yo do also realize that those negatives probably would yield better prints than scanning old color photos right.

    Of course, I make things smaller by shooting Kodachrome. :D

  4. Posted by Julie Bestry - 08/19/2008

    Matt, with regard to matching the original prints to their negatives and envelopes, it sounds like one quick precaution that you already mention yourself should make it easy to get things back together.

    1800 pictures divided by an average 24 shot film roll means you had perhaps 75 rolls/bundles. Since you pulled the photos out of the drugstore envelopes, those could have been labeled identically to the index cards (1-75 to make it super-fast to return them to their envelopes).

    Enjoy your photos!

  5. Posted by Peter - 08/19/2008

    @Battra92
    I agree with you, however, it is good to have both copies. No one says you have to get rid of the originals.

    The funny thing to me about this service is you have to question….how long will DVDs be in??? Better get a Blu-ray :)

    http://yinvsyang.com/

  6. Posted by David - 08/19/2008

    I can recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510. A scanner that takes up to 50 sheets and scans them at a time. You can produce PDF files from documents, even as duplex, even OCRed, or scan photos one-sided with a better resolution.
    The resolution is good enough to reprint the pictures or edit them. You can’t get much more out of a print if you would increase resolution and you don’t want to have overly large files.
    I had some issues with color shift at the top edge with some images, but still have to figure out whether this is a generic problem or one with my scanner. I also have some lines on the scans, but this may also be due to dust on the sensor.

    However, it enables you to scan hundreds of images decently quick. You don’t have to worry about lost pictures through shipping and can order the files as you scan them.

    It does cost quite a bit, but you can buy a used one, team up and buy one together or sell the scanner after using it for still a lot of money. It’s an option you might want to consider.

    For details, check the product homepage or the product page at amazon or so.

    If you have any questions about practical use of it, drop me a line.

  7. Posted by Battra92 - 08/19/2008

    By the way, in my no caffeine morning I somehow gave myself a promotion from amateur/enthusiast to a pro. I did try going pro a couple years ago and it didn’t work out.

    My apologies for pretending to be something I’m not.

  8. Posted by Angie Roberts - 08/19/2008

    I’ve been using ScanCafe for several months now and send a year’s worth of photos at a time. I think they are reasonably priced considering the time it takes to scan yourself with a standard scanner (I know, I’ve tried.) The quality is also great and so far no problems losing my photos. I will say that the turnaround time isn’t fast, usually 5 to 6 weeks.

    I’ve enjoyed having my photos digitized so much more than having them in albums. I have my laptop in the kitchen with a photo slideshow screen saver and we see all of our pictures all of the time. Plus, it’s a lot easier to save thousands of pictures on a DVD or thumb drive than to try to carry them out in a fire or other disaster. They can always be printed!

  9. Posted by Deb - 08/19/2008

    I bought a scanner that does a decent job of scanning slides and my yield averages about 100 slides on days when I can devote my time to the job. I have an “Epson Perfection 4990 Photo” scanner which comes with dust removal and image restoration softeware. For $600. it was my best alternative to the many thousands of dollars a drum scanner would have cost. At the time I bought it, CD’s of slides were running $35.00 to do 15 slides.

    As Peter said, no one says you have to get rid of the originals. Now I am torn between decluttering the originals and perserving them “in case” the media is so volatile that the images are lost from CD’s, the hard drive and the flash drive on which I have them stored.

    Most of them are not worth anything to anyone but me, but living in Arizona has taught me that slides which lasted 50 years in the basement back in Illinois can be ruined just by sitting in the U-Haul one night in August. I, at least want them to last another 50 years.

    This has been a big dilemma for me and I wish I knew how to keep the images archived. Upload them onto a website? Anyone know what people are doing?

  10. Posted by Lizzy - 08/19/2008

    I don’t think 300 dpi is good enough to make additional prints. Am I wrong in thinking that?

  11. Posted by Karen - 08/19/2008

    I just used scanmyphotos for a bunch of my old photos.

    The Good: Price, efficiency, quality of customer service.

    The Bad: Weird pink, blue, green artifacts on some of the scans especially those of low contrast photos. Very few photos were affected. Also, scanning at 300dpi is good for most purposes, but if you have to crop a photo, it may not be high enough.

    The Ugly: I used “fill the box” with signature confirmation. USPS did not follow through and get signature confirmation and I was very freaked out until I heard from scanmyphotos that they had received it. Also, on the return trip, my box was damaged in transit by USPS. My photos and DVD were fine, but I would pay extra to use FEDEX if I had to do this over again.

    So, I’m thinking about getting organizers for the negatives. I’d like something better than what came from the developers. Anyone have ideas about this?

  12. Posted by timgray - 08/19/2008

    As a published, professional photographer I’m glad to see people scanning the photos and putting them in a digital format. I have seen way too many lifetimes erased by a flood, fire, or other event while digital will last forever if TAKEN CARE OF. (meaning copy, backup, copy copy copy…)

    your precious photos from great grandma will fade away. Plus you cant share it with the family. The digital copy can be sent to your nearest 500 relatives and have multiple copies on DVD’s and CD’s put in safes, secure deposit boxes, kept at friends or family, etc….

    Honestly, very few people have their photos printed on high quality paper that were developed right and protected to last more than a few decades. Most of the photos from my youth are fading and color shifting (as well as slides) so digital copies are the only chance you have of having those photos looking right in 40 years.

    Back them up on digital media, and share the DVD’s of them to everyone you know.

  13. Posted by Jen smith - 08/19/2008

    I think this is a GREAT idea and it sounds very reasonable. I recently started disassembling my large group of photo albums anyways because the older photo albums were not acid free and the pictures were fading and yellowing. Plus I had been moving about 100 pounds of photo albumbs around for 20 years.

    Also, I realized upon review that I had no idea who was in some of the photos. The disassembly is allowing me to save much needed space, get help from friends and family on the unknown photos and pitch the ones that I no longer want to save. How many drunken college pics does one person need to save anyway?

    Plus - have you seen some of the products for creating digital scrapbook albums? Very cool!

  14. Posted by C - 08/19/2008

    This is so timely! I plan to scan my photos as a birthday gift to myself and make digital photobooks instead of having traditional albums (which I don’t care for).

  15. Posted by Stephanie - 08/19/2008

    I just finished a lofty scanning project without outsourcing. I was scanning them one at a time and then halfway through realized that I could scan more than on pic at a time and the computer program would separate them.

    I chunked a large portion of pictures that were important enough to get a scan but not something that I felt I absolutely needed a hard copy of. Many of my pics weren’t superb quality (like my 110 film pics) so they were fuzzy and not worthy of keeping anyways. I also have backed up my pics to an external drive and I will back up on discs to keep them out of the house.

    The originals that I plan on keeping will fit into a small archival quality box. I don’t shoot with film anymore so I don’t plan on needing much more space than that.

  16. Posted by Cyrano - 08/19/2008

    As an amateur photographer, I have to disagree with Battra; get your photos on digital medium as soon as you can.

    “Digital Media can get corrupt” - You should store them in multiple places or online. I put mine on Flickr, where they have better backup and disaster recovery solutions than I’d be able to afford in ten lifetimes. Not to mention that physical medium has little redundancy (if any) so if a fire breaks out, your photos are gone, gone, gone. Heck, a lot of my old photos are just misplaced somewhere. If Flickr’s servers catch on fire or explode, they call whoever does their remote-site backup, and your photos are back. This isn’t some ad for flickr, either. Any photo site will do this.

    Quality - If you are shooting with a Hasselblad or some medium-format camera on giant photographic plates or are taking awesome photos with your SLR camera using awesome lenses, then sure, quality is a concern. For most people, though, the 1,000’s of photos they’re having scanned are pictures taken with an SLR body with the kit lens, a 35mm point and shoot, or maybe even a disposable camera. Not to mention that half the point of scanning it is to get it off physical medium so it doesn’t take up space - you probably won’t be printing it again, and if so, anything larger than 5×7 will be the exception.

    I was an early adopter in the digital camera age, so I’m incredibly biased. But all I know is that in the past 9 years, I haven’t had to move a single photo album between apartments, have been able to find pictures I want to look at nearly instantly, looked through photos that would otherwise be in a shoebox in some attic, and have printed out my photos on a small handful of occasions, mostly for other people.

  17. Posted by Anthony - 08/19/2008

    I’ve used Life Preserver and they’ll take anything-albums, individual photos, slides, negatives-and do a lot of professional retouching, etc. They’re a bit more expensive, but for a higher quality, hassle-free service, I’m willing to pay more, IMHO.

  18. Posted by Someone - 08/19/2008

    As someone with degrees in both computer science and library science, I can say that digitization is NOT about preservation– it’s about access.

    However, it can be used in the service of preservation. If you scan photos for day-to-day use, you can keep the originals that are most important to you in much more favorable archival conditions than you could if you needed to access them regularly.

    Digitization is helping to preserve a number of old original materials in just that manner. A high-quality digital copy is made (much, much more than 300dpi) and 99% of all research can be done using the digital images– thus allowing access while still protecting the original from light, handling, humidity changes, etc. There are now library websites that offer images of rare, old materials to the general public for free that twenty years ago were almost impossible to get permission to see– while the originals are safely back in their protected environment.

    So while digital preservation is being researched but is still a myth– if something can be destroyed by fifteen years of benign neglect, it’s not preserved– digitization is still very useful in the service of preservation.

  19. Posted by Anthony - 08/19/2008

    Oh, and LP has a standard resolution of 600dpi and will go up from there.

  20. Posted by Christian - 08/19/2008

    Great post!
    I remember a while ago I tried to help my parents and scan all of our old photo albums but it really was so time consuming. I ended up sending them to ScanDigital.com (I think they are located in LA?)

    They did a great job with my pictures and I would highly recommend their
    photo scanning services.

    christian

  21. Posted by Christian - 08/19/2008

    Great post!
    I remember a while ago I tried to help my parents and scan all of our old photo albums but it really was so time consuming. I ended up sending them to ScanDigital.com (I think they are located in LA?)

    They did a great job with my pictures and I would highly recommend their
    photo scanning services.

    christian

  22. Posted by Anne - 08/19/2008

    my husband as a gift to a young couple volunteered to do a picture song video for their wedding…
    never again
    The girl brought 100’s of pictures of both her and groom, from infant to present day…
    He scanned and cropped and arranged. It turned out amazing! But next time, I will get a silver frame and a card! lol
    This might be a neat gift to a person wanting to digitize!

  23. Posted by Heather - 08/19/2008

    I second David on the Scansnap - I convinced my boss he needed it for work. Now I have a box of personal photos ready to be scanned when things are slow (or after hours). Then I dump them on Flickr so everyone can see and comment!

  24. Posted by Lia - 08/19/2008

    How timely! I spent 2 hours yesterday searching for a decent site to do this for me. YAAY!

  25. Posted by Matt - 08/19/2008

    Good post. I’m in the midst of a long term project to digitize all of my photos, slides and 8mm film. I used DigMyPics.com to transfer my films to DVD and was happy with the result. Shortly after I received my materials back, I learned that there facility and some of their customers materials were destroyed by a fire. This is something to worry about if you are shipping things out! I had Costco digitize about 100 slides for me last week and they were finished overnight. Most of my photos are from digital cameras, but for the paper copies that I get from mom and friends, I am scanning them in with a Canon scanner. I can do one photo about every 20 seconds with it, so it takes a while. I hope to eventually have all of my old photos digitized. That was the good thing about the difficult old way of taking pictures on the film: at least I didn’t accumulate too many pictures! I do keep all the originals, BTW, Battra92. As Someone pointed out, digitizing is just an easy way to view, organize and share. Also, I have a fairly thorough backup system where my pictures are copied to two other computers in the house and backed up to an external hard drive monthtly that I then take to work. When people ask me what one “thing” would I save from my house if there were a fire (other than my family), I always answer “the pictures”, so I think it is worthwhile to take care of them!

  26. Posted by Nat - 08/20/2008

    Sounds like a fantastic service! Wish I’d known about that before I offered to scan photos belonging to my parents onto computer. Have done nearly 1800 photos so far and has been a mammoth project. Worthwhile in the end in as much as the photos (stored loose in drawers and boxes) can now be packed safely away and enjoyed in a much cleaner fashion!

  27. Posted by Grey - 08/20/2008

    While this is great if all your photos are in shoeboxes, does anyone know of a company that will scan actual, physical albums?

  28. Posted by Raisin - 08/20/2008

    These days, I have relatives that send batches of negatives to me, and I scan them, send them back and make copies of the DVDs for everyone that is in the photos. This way, there are multiple redundant copies and it would take several well timed natural disasters in multiple states to destroy the images.

    I’ve been doing this for a while, and I’ve been using a Nikon 5000ED. Overkill for most, but it started out with my wedding about 10 years ago. I took all the film from the wedding, as well as all the film (no prints) from all the guests, scanned them, and made DVDs for everyone that contributed film of all the images that were taken that day.

    This has since evolved since everyone has moved to digital cameras. During family events, (graduations, weddings, etc), at the end of the night, we dump everyone’s memory cards from their digital cameras onto something like a Epson P5000 and we burn a DVD of all the images for everyone that contributed a memory card.

  29. Posted by Lynn - 08/20/2008

    I did alot of research before deciding which company to send my pictures too and I was the most impressed with Life Preserver because they seem to really care about your pictures.

    You can give them pictures that are in albums, trash bags, loose, etc. and they’ll organize them to the best of their ability. They will then sit down with you afterwards and help you drag and drop your pictures to organize them (which was a definite perk for me because I am not very tech-savvy!)

    They come and pick the pictures up from your house (assuming you’re in the Los Angeles area) and will bring it to their headquarters. I was not comfortable with my pictures being outsourced and it was a relief to feel safe and secure giving my pictures to them. Also, since I have 6 kids I was able to give all of them copies of our family pictures and memories because they were starting to bicker about who got what pictures!

  30. Posted by J - 08/20/2008

    @ Grey

    I sent 78 photo albums to Life Preserver. Over 10,000 pictures in all. They had it done in less than 2 weeks.

    J

  31. Posted by J - 08/20/2008

    Looks like they’ve been mentioned above.

  32. Posted by Christopher - 08/21/2008

    I can personally vouch for Life Preserver Digital Archiving.
    They blow all the competitors out the of the water with their pricing, resolution, and personal service.

    I recently sent test projects to Scan Cafe, Digital Pickle, Scan Digital, and Life Preserver and I found Life Preserver to be the best bang for my buck. They even came to my home and picked up my media for me, free of charge.

    Thanks LP and keep on doing what you are doing.

  33. Posted by Mitch Goldstone - 08/21/2008

    Matt - Thanks for the posting from David Pogue’s “Personal Tech” New York Times Aug 14th column. We’re getting lots of visits from your posting as well. Beyond super fast photo scanning, I couldn’t resist noticing the photo you used at the top. Hope you don’t mind, but I just had to uncluttered the faded picture and make it brand new.

    Here’s a link to the before and after ScanMyPhotos.com restoration. You can see why the photo business is such fun - helping bring back special memories.

    See link from the ScanMyPhotos.com blog: Tales from the World of Photo Scanning.

    http://blog.scanmyphotos.com/2.....terer.html

    Mitch Goldstone
    President & CEO
    ScanMyPhotos.com

  34. Posted by Duncan - 08/22/2008

    A few years ago I actually did this manually by hand for all my photos. I WISH I had known about these services then!

    I bought one of those scanners that has a feeder tray and spent about 10 hours on scanning thousands of photos in bulk. Then I uploaded all of them to flickr privately. From that point on all my photos we’re shot digitally and uploaded to flickr. I keep the bad shots private and make the good ones public. I now have roughly 90 000 images on flickr the majority of which have been taken since then… I still keep local copies of them but it turns out that its way easier to find pictures after the fact using flickr because I tagged everything!

    It was so much work to get it done right. If I was to do it again I’d probabaly just mail them off to these scanmyphotos guys

  35. Posted by carsonm - 08/25/2008

    I find it odd that digmypics[dot]com is back in business.

    Why do they think the public will trust them again after the fire?

    Their 3 month temporary website showed lots of pictures aka “dig my pics out of the charred rubble”. It was filled with all kinds of support from customers who lost their stuff.

    Not one word from folks who lost part of their heritage.

  36. Posted by Michele - 08/26/2008

    This is a great post. I have a huge box of old photos that I am working on scanning and organizing.

  37. Posted by laure - 08/28/2008

    Does anyone have a recommendation for a place that will scan your negatives?

  38. Posted by Raisin - 08/28/2008

    @laure

    My local Costco offers a negative scanning service. In fact, any local 1 hour photo that offers photo cd services should be able to do it.

  39. Posted by annbel - 08/28/2008

    Does anyone know who will do international negative scanning to NZ? I’ve asked scanmyphotos but they only do international photo scans at the moment. Is it a problem getting negatives through customs do you think?

  40. Posted by James - 09/19/2008

    For those who want to digitise old photos and documents, I have built a site for people to join and use free of charge, http://www.fotoscentral.com its still in beta but any comments and ideas would be welcome.
    I made the site when we were sorting my fathers possession after he died, he had so many photos that where memories of his and others life’s that I knew he would want to share them with those in the pictures and their families, its not meant to be archive quality but you can use you camera phone to capture 5 or 6 pictures at a time,then upload the one image, it needs to be around 700kb but the site will tell you if its to big and how to reduce it using paint (I am dealing with that so better quality can be posted) their is a video tutorial link on the site and I have tried to keep it simple stupid to use,( cause I don’t, sorry can’t do hard)
    If you use it and have a comment mail me at james@showmehowto.org and please tell your friends about it!.
    All good things
    James

  41. Posted by David - 11/28/2008

    I used http://www.scantodigital.com to scan about 500 of my mom’s photos. I tried to do this myself and did not have the time or the patience. Cost $60.00 and they had them done in 4 days. Pretty sweet.

    Dave

  42. Posted by Ryan - 12/01/2008

    Perimeter Digital is a Canadian company that has been devoted to helping businesses convert paper documents to digital for over 20 years. It has also done extensive work for major archives within Ontario, Canada. Through this work with the archives (as they have many pictures, slides, negatives, roll film etc…) Perimeter realised that there is a great need for helping people capture and preserve their personal photograph collections. Thus, Periemter has now launched Digital Life Memories. It’s focus is to capture photos, slides, negatives, roll film etc… to digital allowing people to share their memories through email, slides shows, coffee table books etc.. Digital Life Memories uses the same technicians and experience, as well as the latest state of the art scanning equipment, gained from over 20 years of helping it’s business clients to ensure that each personal photograph collection is captured to the highest quality and standards. Why give your personal memories to a company that just decides one day that scanning photos is a great business when you could send your collection to a professional company with over 20 years experience? Also, being a Canadian company you can take advantage of the exchange rate.

    You can check out Digital Life Memories through Perimeter Digital at http://www.perimeterdigital.com

  43. Posted by Hal Schwartz - 12/22/2008

    I would like to get a recommendation about a scanning facility for family photos from someone in the photographic field or very savvy and critical amateur. I am interested in finding a facility who makes high quality scans from old photos, is careful in handling photos, pays pretty close attention, and maintains color fidelity, improves contrast where needed, eliminatesw scratches and dust. Also I would like to know if it pays to scan at 600 dpi rather than the 300 dpi which is ordinarily offered.
    Thanks for any help you might be.
    Hal

  44. Posted by Why Tomorrow’s CES Tech Trends Are Old News At ScanMyPhotos.com « More Tales from the World of Photo Scanning - Offical Homepage - 01/06/2009

    [...] “Have someone else digitize your old photos” – Unclutterer.com [...]

Subscribe to this entry's comments

Post a comment