“FotoBridge combines a focus on high quality scans with package pricing that is particularly attractive at high volumes.”

CNN Money

Tech Cocktail

Started by some brilliant mind (or collective of minds) on Instagram to reference a throwback pic from a past event, #TBT has made its move from the digital world to the physical, with people casually exclaiming “TBT!” on the street when recollecting stories or events.

In honor of #TBT and to parallel its now-dual nature, we’ve compiled several services that will take all of your physical pictures and convert them into digital format (so you can retouch them on Photoshop, store them in the Cloud, or whatever else).

FotoBridge

A package of 250 prints at 300 dpi will cost you $54.95 (roughly $0.22 per print). Pricing is based on these packages, which all include your photos on a DVD, stored in the Cloud, and enhanced through their “Intelligent Digital Finishing.” Slide- and negative-scanning comes in 2000 dpi, but you can upgrade to 3000 dpi or 4000 dpi. Print-scanning is 300 dpi or 600 with an upgrade.

Tech Cocktail

Best Photo Digitizer

FotoBridge

154 Cooper Rd., Ste. 203, West Berlin, N.J. 856-809-9400

Your new photos are with you all the time, on your iPhone; your pre-digital ones sit in a shoe box until you get around to scanning them, which never happens. The New Jersey company FotoBridge turns that collection of analog love into ones and zeros, and you get everything back on one neat DVD. Their high-end scanners enhance color, contrast, and sharpness, and for additional fees you can have FotoBridge scan notes on the backs of the photos or compile a bound album. After as little as a few days you’ll receive scans and originals back (from $54.95 for up to 250 photos, return shipping included).

New York Magazine

“Using a scanning service to transfer your prints, slides and negatives to a digital format is a no-brainer if you a have a large collection of them– and most of us do.” From National Geograohic’s- Organize Your Digital Life by Aimee Baldridge

National Geographic

If you’re like many Americans, you have countless boxes taking up space in closets, the basement or a storage unit that are filled with irreplaceable photos and videos. Even if you’ve never been much of a shutterbug, you’ve likely collected thousands of snapshots, slides and negatives. Click-happy photographers and self-appointed family historians could easily have accumulated more than 10,000 nondigital images.

The biggest problem with analog technology is that the images (and video and sound) deteriorate over time, dooming those Kodak moments as surely as the fortunes of the once-dominant film company. As photographs age, dyes in the ink fade and discolor, and the paper often yellows or becomes brittle. Tape used for video recordings decays as the magnetic particles lose their charge and the protective layer of film absorbs moisture. Even if it has been years since you last thumbed through your photos or loaded your videos for a nostalgic viewing, they have been degraded by air, light, temperature changes and humidity.

Prints and slides

When choosing a photo-digitizing service, pay attention to the resolution the scanning process will deliver. To capture the details of an image and be able to crop or enlarge it without sacrificing quality, you’ll generally want digital images that are 600 dots per inch for prints and at least 3,000 dpi for slides and negatives.

Images that are saved in JPEG format will be good enough to share on Facebook or to remember Aunt Agnes’s face. But if you plan to heavily edit the photos or use them to print professional-quality photo books, you’ll want the images in uncompressed TIFF files to maintain their integrity. Scanning services may charge extra for these files, which include all of the image data captured during scanning. Note, though, that TIFF files take up more space on your hard drive or in the cloud.

If you have a lot of images you want to convert, a digitizing service such as FotoBridge can do the job for a reasonable price. You mail a box of your photos to the company’s scanning center, where it will scan the images and make small fixes, such as removing red-eye or correcting the color on images that have faded or shifted. The company will return the originals and digital files, usually on DVD or CD, several weeks later, typically with door-to-door tracking along the way…

Kiplinger’s

Over the past two years, FotoBridge has built a strong following among people interested in preserving photos, including educators and archivists, and its corporate clients include NBC Universal, the Smithsonian, the Indianapolis Colts and USA Hockey. The company shares photos, photography news and tips, and discount offers with its 14,000 likes on Facebook and 18,000 followers on Twitter. It also uses social media to answer questions and share blog posts, testimonials, and behind-the-scenes details of selected high-profile digitizing projects. “We answer questions and support customers primarily in real-time via Facebook,” said Ms. Morris. “For us, it’s a quick, effective and efficient way to communicate with those customers adept at using Facebook, which is becoming a larger part of our customer base.”

The New York Times

Scanning in a shoebox’s worth of photographs using an iPhone’s camera would be highly inefficient, of course. … I somehow ended up with my entire family’s photo collection. I have all my parents’ photos from my childhood through graduation, as well as all the photos that once belonged to my grandmother. I actually do have shoeboxes stacked on top of shoeboxes sitting in my closet. (That’s them, to the right).

I enjoyed pulling out a few of the old photos and sharing them on Facebook, but I soon realized that there were so many photos I wanted to share.. Perfect timing. Of those services I had checked Fotobridge, seemed competitive, sometimes even cheaper.

TechCrunch

Woman’s World

If you have a lot of images to convert, a service such as FotoBridge (https://www.fotobridge.com) can do the job for a reasonable price. You mail a box of photos to the company, which scans the images and makes small fixes, such as removing red-eye or correcting the color on images that have faded. The company will then return the originals and digital files, usually on DVD or CD, several weeks later, typically using door-to-door tracking.

Chicago Tribune

“We need to figure out how to curate our lives, to sift through all the material we are generating to tell a story about ourselves that will have meaning to others after we’re gone.”

Huffington Post

Clutter-Free Holiday Gift Guide

You know how it feels to get a gift you really don’t want or need. And I’m guessing you don’t want to give gifts that clutter up someone else’s home. That’s why I put together this clutter-free holiday gift guide with some of my favorite ideas. If you know someone who talks about getting photos organized, but never gets around to it, a Fotobridge gift card would make a great gift. Give the gift of memories.

Family Circle

The Best Photo and Video Digitizing Services

FotoBridge combines a focus on quality with package pricing, particularly attractive at high volumes. The company is working on features that will more easily integrate legacy memories with digital life, including a partnership with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers photo upload to SmugMug, and efforts toward date-stamping.

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Best Photo Digitizer

FotoBridge

Clutter-Free Holiday Gift Guide