Once you have decided to scan your photos so you have digital copies of them, there are a few ways to go about doing so. You’ll need to consider the pros and cons of each method to decide which method best meets your needs.

In-Store Kiosk
Many stores that sell photo prints have in-store kiosks that allow you to scan photos and either make prints or save the photos in digital format. The main benefit is that this method is fast and convenient, allowing you to walk out 10 minutes later with your product. The downsides are that you have to scan all the photos by hand, which takes a long time if you have more than one or two dozen pictures, and the quality may not be top-notch.

At-Home Scanner
Several companies sell scanners designed especially for converting negatives or slides into digital files at home. You scan photos at your leisure, and can work on them a little bit at a time. However, you will have to do any needed editing, such as color or exposure correction, on your own, which requires additional photo software on your computer. Also, to get near-professional quality results you’ll need a dedicated film scanner for digitizing slides and scanning negatives.

Photo Scanning Service
Sending your slides or negatives to a photo scanning service is the best way to get a large order done quickly and professionally. It can even be less expensive than buying a scanner and doing the job yourself, that is if you value your time. The benefits include speed, quality, and a professional eye to give you high-quality digital images.

Regardless of the method you use to scan photos, you will benefit from doing so — you’ll have a backup for your original pictures, and you’ll be able to easily edit photos or post them online.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by Max Chang

Many adults of the baby boomer or older generation have boxes of photos that they rarely flip through. The photos remain inaccessible and are difficult to sort through and find what they are looking for. Next time you need a gift for your parents, consider digitizing the photos so they can view them on a computer.

Parents are becoming increasingly computer-savvy, and many of them know how to view photos online and use software to sort photo albums. Giving them digital copies of the photos they took when you were young allows them to organize photographs by year, subject and other features so they can find what they need when they need it.

Here are just a few of the best reasons to digitize photos for your parents:

- The task seems unwieldy to them, so they are unlikely to do it on their own

- Allows them to find pictures they might not have seen in years

- Helps them more easily share photos with distant friends and relatives on social networking websites

- Makes it easy to create photo books and other photo gifts on websites

- Creates a digital backup of the photos and allows them to burn photos to DVD for another layer of security so they know they will never lose these images

- Allows them to give copies of photos to your siblings and others who may enjoy having a set of the family photos

When you want to digitize photos for your parents (see above for reasons), you can do the job yourself or use a photo scanning service for high-quality images.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by mescon

Photographic slides are the once-popular image-producing films that require the aid of a projector in order to properly view the images. Photographers and filmmakers of all skill levels are no strangers to these films because of their ability to produce quality images, but as advances in photo technology continue, slides have become obsolete, leaving collectors and users of photo slides with a large inventories of inaccessible images.

The trouble with storing photo slides is that they tend to take up a lot of space and pose the risk of deteriorating because of their storage environment, moisture and other factors. The best way to preserve the images on photo slides is to convert them into digital images. Converting slides to digital images is an easy and affordable process. While an individual with a digital slide scanner can convert slides, it is recommended that owners take their slides to a photo scanning service to achieve the best results.

At a photo scanning service, a professional technician converts slide images into digital pictures, also applying any necessary cropping and handling red eye removal as well as any other needed touch-ups. The finished and newly digitized photos are crisp, clear and of the highest quality possible. Owners then have the option of having their images either stored on a DVD, an online gallery or both.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by Phil Roeder

Most people know that their memory deteriorates with age; what they don’t know is that their memories deteriorate with age, too, especially if those memories are saved on VHS tape. VHS tapes start to deteriorate after about 10 years. Once you hit the 20-year mark, your ability to view tapes could be seriously affected. Factor in the space that the tapes take up, and it’s clear that converting from VHS to DVD is probably a good move.

When you are ready to do the conversion, you’ll need to choose between doing the job yourself and finding a VHS to DVD service or photo scanning service to convert your tapes for you. If you choose to convert VHS to DVD yourself, you can either buy a DVD recorder that allows you to just pop in a tape and a blank DVD and do one touch recording; or you can use your computer. There are computer programs that convert analog to DV; you then convert the information to MPEG and save it on a DVD. To save a step, you can use a hardware capture device that will save the information as an MPEG on your computer directly. However, these methods can be time consuming.

A VHS to DVD service, whether one of the photo scanning services or a service available through at a drugstore, does all the work for you for a fee. The downside is that you cannot copy any movies or other copyrighted material, but you will be able to save all of your home movies. The upside is that the process is not terribly expensive, and it can be carried out much more quickly and easily by a service. Whatever the method, converting your VHS tapes to DVDs is a good idea.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by Hugo_Fstop

FotoBridge – Photo Scanning Services. Features, reviews, ratings.

FotoBridge.com was recently awarded “BEST OF” honors for photo scanning services by one of the web’s newest and increasingly trusted comparison search sites. Unlike “best of” services that are merely veiled paid advertisements, …FindTheBest.com is an unbiased, fact-driven comparison engine. Hailed by The New York Times, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, and MediaPost for it’s innovative approach – FindTheBest.com is setting a new standard for helping people make quick, informed decisions.

The site’s “Smart Ratings” are complied from the most respected experts in each category and robust online data sets. It’s approach combines a proprietary technology platform with human curation for superior results presented in easy to use tables with powerful filters.

Now, finding the photo scanning service thats right for you can be as easy as clicking on FindTheBest.com.

Unlike film, video tape tends to deteriorate quite quickly. It’s likely that tapes older than 10 years have begun to deteriorate and beyond 20 years many tapes are often compromised in some way, typically with degraded image and color quality. There is little difference between analog video tape and digital video tape when it comes to longevity, it’s often the tape itself that gets compromised. But if you plan to convert or transfer the tapes yourself, you’ll need to know if the originals are analog or digital in order to select the right equipment for the job.

Analog video needs to be converted to digital before it can be saved to dvd or a PC hard drive, digital video can be transferred directly to PC and saved to disc without conversion.  So whether you want to convert vhs to dvd or any video to dvd – you’ll want to determine what types of cassettes are in your collection.

Analog Video Cassette Types

- VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, Betamax, Video8, and Hi8

Digital Video Cassette Types

- MiniDV, Digital8, MicroMV, DVC Pro, and DVCAM

Of course, “digitizing” video tapes really only applies to analog video tape types since the process for digital types is merely a transfer of digital information from one media type to another. Nevertheless, some photo scanning services and video transfer services use the terms interchangeably.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by LinaMon

About the only downside to digitizing photos from your old collection is the time it takes to get the job done. But it’s well worth the effort because once its complete, those old photos can be preserved forever, copied, edited, shared and combined with your digital photo collection as if they were born-digital images. And if you don’t have the time to scan photos yourself, using a photo scanning service can be a good alternative.

But after those photo prints are scanned and digitally backed-up, there may be a couple questions left for you to answer. Such as, what to do with the old prints? What’s the best way to store them if I choose to keep them?

Once you have made multiple redundant copies of your newly digital photos to protect against hardware failure and media destruction, there may not be an urgent need to keep your old prints. After all, you could always reprint from the newly digital files (and those images are likely to look even better than the originals in many cases). Nevertheless, it may be a good idea just the same. If you dump the originals you forever loose the ability to rescan them in the future. Similarly, keeping photos in keepsake albums and having those old worn Polaroids often can have a nostalgic quality difficult to recreate from a digital file.

There are a few things you can do when storing those prints to make sure they are preserved and protected.

1)  Protect from light – Photographic prints can be harmed by light, so store them in a dark spot. If displayed, use a UV filter to protect the photo from ultraviolet light exposure.

2) Protect from acid – Boxes, storage sleeves and other materials used around the photos should be acid-free. Test materials with a pH testing pen to confirm the absence of acid, switch out materials that test positive.

3) Protect from heat – Store your photographic prints at constant temputures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

4) Protect from humidity – Moisture levels should be between 35 percent and 50 percent humidity which can be tested with a hygrometer.

5) Protect from fire and water – Consider a fire-proof safe and store at least a few feet above ground level.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by John Picken

If your lucky, some of your most treasured memories have been captured and saved on a variety of mediums over the decades. Perhaps some of that rare imagery is on old Kodachrome slides, packed away in photo albums or stored on 8mm film reels. Scanning photos to digitally preserve and share online is gaining popularity as scanners and photo scanning services become more affordable and easy to use.

Often, transferring 8mm film to DVD is the next logical project after digitizing photos. If you have reels of 8mm film but don’t have the equipment or inclination to do the job yourself, a photo scanning service may be the best option. If so, what should you look for in a home movie transfer service ?

1)  Editable Files – If you plan to edit and perhaps reuse the digital movies in creative productions, make sure your movie transfer service delivers uncompressed, editable files. Some services deliver self-playing, encoded (not directly editable) DVD discs as standard and editable files as an upgrade or option. Typically, the best choices for editable files are .avi for windows and .mov for Apple.

2)  Color and Exposure Correction – The top transfer services can often radically improve the colors, tones and contrast of old movie film. The best quality enhancements make colors seem natural and true and tones consistently well-balanced. Many movie transfer services include basic enhancements in their standard packages, although special editing and transitions may be extra.

3)  Soundtrack – If your film has sound, make sure your movie transfer service will capture it under their standard service.

4)  Full Frame Transfer – Although not common, some services crop the visible images during capture so be sure your movie transfer service captures full frames.

5)  Basic Repairs – Cleaning and basic repairs should be included in any movie transfer service offering, but check to make sure. Also, find out about what types of repairs are additional should they be needed.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by Kevitivity

Affordable flatbed scanners are ubiquitous these days, their utility and ease-of-use make them favorites for digitizing documents and images. Scanning photos is often a significant driver of demand for higher priced, more advanced flatbed scanners. But what if your photo scanning requirements extent beyond photo prints to include scanning negatives and converting slides to digital ?

Many of today’s flatbed scanners marketed for photo scanning come equipped with film scanning features and adapters that make it possible to capture images from slides and negatives. But keep in mind, flatbed scanners are multi-purpose devices designed primarily to digitize reflective media. Expanding the types of media to include transmissive media (slide, negatives) certainly increases the functionality of the flatbed scanner, but often at a cost of image quality when compared to what is possible with a film scanner.

Film scanners are designed only for scanning negatives and digitizing slides. They are optimized to scan film and can require more effort to use than flatbed scanners. Scanning negatives is necessarily an exacting exercise requiring precise focusing, positioning and optimized settings – all of which are typically implemented better on dedicated film scanners.

The opportunity for higher quality image files from film scanners means most photo scanning services use dedicated film scanners for digitizing negatives and scanning slides.

Photo Credit / Creative Commons by Lars P.