The Top 13 Reasons Why You Should Already Be Scanning Your Photo Collection

Things Change Quickly

The cycle of change, upgrading, and modernizing have changed. Product and service revolutions were measured over the centuries and decades, today innovation is happening in all industries as quickly as a few years or even months.

So, is it a surprise if I told you your old photo collection is greatly outdated and has suffered deterioration already? Probably not.

I am going to give you at least 13 reasons why you should already be scanning your photo collection so you and others can enjoy them now and in the future.

Deteriorating

No surprise here. The film negatives and the chemicals that were used to develop them have aged beyond their life expectancy. If you had prints made these too are degrading. Exposure to the elements causes the hastening of the chemical breakdown process. Color image fading and a variety of other damage to the photos are taking place.

Storage

Most people have stored old paper photographs in shoeboxes or crates and placed them in attics and garages. The worst possible storage areas possible due to temperature extremes and environmental elements like dust, dirt, and humidity.

Once your photos or 35mm slides have been digitized properly they can be stored on USB thumb drives, Data Discs, or placed in the cloud. Just think of all the additional storage you’ll have once you decide to scan pictures to digital.

Safety

Because currently your old collection of photos and slides are stored in those dusty locations with temperature extremes the likelihood of a photo meltdown can occur causing your family trove of memories to be lost or heavily damaged. I’m talking about the real possibility of a natural or manmade disaster like fires, floods, and more.

Once you’ve had a photo scanning service scan your media to digital everything is safe on a USB thumb drive and backed up on the cloud.

Another peace of mind service we offer at The Video Editor, every client’s transfer is backed up for a limited time to Google Drive.

Easier to Scan

As was mentioned earlier scanning old photos is easier today than just ten years ago. A digital photo scanner can be bought for around $300 including the media prep cleaners to prepare the images. These flatbed scanners do take time to scan and depending on the resolution of photos to scan and the time required to devote to the project will determine if you will do the photo scanning yourself or if you will seek out the best photo scanning service company.

Scanning Your Photo Collection: Support

In the event you decide to handle the task of scanning your photos help is available. Never before has there been such a support team available to you. Thanks to how-to Youtube videos, discussion groups, clubs, and associations that you can easily find online, even a novice can produce acceptable levels of quality scans.

Saving

Besides saving your old photos you possibly could save money by scanning photos yourself. I would caution however beforehand to figure out the true cost of equipment, cleaning supplies, and the time commitment of actually learning those expert tips for scanning but then time commitment to scan. Scan times per photo vary depending on the resolution desired. A 300 DPI (dots per inch) scan might take 30 seconds while a higher resolution scan will take several minutes.

Once you have the approximate number of photos you can figure out the commitment of time for the entire project.

A word of warning, I can’t tell you the number of clients that started with a great intention of attempting the project only to abandon it and came to us to professionally finish the project.

Done Right

Professional legacy photo scanning services perform these services every day and have the depth of knowledge and equipment to efficiently turn around scanning projects in short order at the highest quality. Pricing is affordable and extremely competitive plus services come with a satisfaction guarantee. See our pricing.

Ease of Viewing

Once your entire photo or slide collection has been scanned to digital you no longer have to hold and shuffle and sort the paper photos or slides. Instead will insert a thumb drive containing the entire collection into a computer or a TV to watch and organize the photos with ease. Cloud storage options like Google Drive allow the viewer to view the slides/photos on any connected device.

Ease of sharing

Because your family’s legacy has been scanned and preserved to digital you can easily share individual images or the entire collection with others. One or several images can simply be emailed to others.

With the low cost of USB thumb drives several can be made and sent to family members spread out across the world.

An even easier way to go is the cloud option to upload to Google Drive. All of your media is uploaded to the cloud and a simple link can be sent to others to view and download the photo collection if they’d like.

Family Legacy Preserved

Helping younger generations to learn about and learn from gives children a rich sense of who they are and where they came from. This helps build a child’s self-esteem and appreciation and love of family.

Flexibility

Once photos have been scanned, they are now .jpg images and can be used in a variety of creative ways. Should you desire to make a photo book using a service like Shutterfly, load your photos in and arrange them as desired. They will return your new photo book to you in about a week. My wife has made over 15 photo books to document years or events. They are beautiful works of art. Some services will print your photos on coffee mugs, towels, and so on.

 Organization

I previously mentioned that after scanning has been completed your storage needs have shrunk down to a thumb drive. Next, you can organize what you have. Some people with a digital photo collection will group photos and file similar photos in new folders. Some will isolate and organize by dates/decades, events or by family members, or any number of other organization options. Now when you want to look at photos of grandpa you go to his folder.

Help The Scanner

When handing off a scanning project to a professional you can help them to help you later, by organizing ahead of time. If possible, organize the photos in groups of photos dates-events, etc. That way the scanner can group and label them together during the scanning process saving you time later.

Summary

We all know that to preserve our collection of slides and photos we need to stop the deterioration immediately and begin the process of scanning our family’s legacy to digital. Do-it-yourself options are available often aided by an endless supply of tips, suggestions, and how-to videos found on the internet.

Determining the scope of your project is important before you begin so you can count the cost between a pro service and attempting to scan it yourself. Remember to factor in your time commitment to the entire project, a key component.

Professional scanning services offer the deep knowledge and experience to quickly and efficiently scan your media at the best quality possible and often at hard-to-beat prices plus most offer a guarantee.

In general, most companies will scan photos at 600 DPI and 35mm slides at 1200 DPI. Higher resolutions will cost more and take more time. Higher DPI is usually only necessary when scanning for a book or enlarging the photograph for printing.

For scanning 35mm slides or negatives 1200 DPI is plenty but our machines can offer up to 10,000 DPI However do you need it? And are you willing to pay the additional price? We offer a free consultation to discuss your project and help determine the best scanning resolutions for this digital transfer service. The Video Editor number is (800)-873-7132

A typical scan output format is .jpg images.

The Video Editor has been in the video transfer service for nearly 30 years. During this time, we have added the latest technology to handle the scans and transfers.

A major advantage of using a smaller transfer company such as The Video Editor is we are not a factory. Big box companies received thousands of orders a day so do you think your scans will get extra care? We have kept our operation small on purpose to maintain higher technical standards. We work hard each day to earn your trust and business. Thank you.