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#1
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Bulk scanning service for thousand of photos and slides
I spent a few days going through my boxes full of photos spanning the period
1970-2006. I have about two thousand photos to be scanned. In many cases, I have the negatives. I haven't counted my slides but I probably have around 400-500. Many of the photos and slides would benefit from basic automated enhancement using Digital Ice, dust removal, color restoration. I would like to digitize my entire collection, but it is too large a job for me to handle on my own. I would like to hire a service to convert my material to digital photo files, preferably TIFF's. I would like the photos scanned at 600DPI and the slides scanned at 4,000DPI. Could anyone recommend a photo-processing firm to do the conversion work for me? I have looked at the web sites for ScanCafe and DigMyPics, as well as various others. It is important to me that the work be done on the US and not sent overseas. Anytime anything is transported, the chance of loss or damage is increased, and I'd rather pay more than increase the chance I will lose thirty years of photos. I am very interested in a quality, automated job, meaning that I don't expect a technician to individually inspect and color-correct each photo, but some equipment can automatically correct imperfections. Can anyone recommend a company that can capably handle this assignment? |
#2
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Bulk scanning service for thousand of photos and slides
"Z1Z" wrote in message ... I spent a few days going through my boxes full of photos spanning the period 1970-2006. I have about two thousand photos to be scanned. In many cases, I have the negatives. I haven't counted my slides but I probably have around 400-500. Many of the photos and slides would benefit from basic automated enhancement using Digital Ice, dust removal, color restoration. I would like to digitize my entire collection, but it is too large a job for me to handle on my own. I would like to hire a service to convert my material to digital photo files, preferably TIFF's. I would like the photos scanned at 600DPI and the slides scanned at 4,000DPI. Could anyone recommend a photo-processing firm to do the conversion work for me? I have looked at the web sites for ScanCafe and DigMyPics, as well as various others. It is important to me that the work be done on the US and not sent overseas. Anytime anything is transported, the chance of loss or damage is increased, and I'd rather pay more than increase the chance I will lose thirty years of photos. I am very interested in a quality, automated job, meaning that I don't expect a technician to individually inspect and color-correct each photo, but some equipment can automatically correct imperfections. Can anyone recommend a company that can capably handle this assignment? Really good folks here, been around a LONG time too: http://www.colorservices.com/ (California, in a town of 7 campuses of Brooks Intitute of Photography). Some important stipulations need be designated for scanning is printing dimensions and pixels per inch, downsampled after the scan to 300 PPI is all that is necassary. If 35mm, then both positives and negatives can and should be scanned at the same initial resolution. The general top dimension printing size for 35mm is 11-12x16-18 inches or so, not quite poster size, and pretty much the same dimension as a 6 megpixel digital file from a digital camera. 35mm is a 3:2 aspect ratio which is more rectangular than 4:3 (equal sized sections by equal sized sections), for whatever point. However as well, files can be software-interpolated to larger by up to 300% so that a print can be bigger, and still look perfectly fine. You wouldn't keep a file that is literally totally 4,000 PPI! Much less 2,000 of them. That would take up some massive area on any kind of disc! Just the 300 PPI and the dimension is all that's needed for the perfect print whether Frontier machine (bathed photo paper from digital projection exposure) or Giclee (ink jet). ....hope this helps with your decisions, and good luck. -- Giant_Alex })))* not my site: http://www.e-sword.net/ |
#3
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Bulk scanning service for thousand of photos and slides
"Barry Watzman" wrote in message ... Probably www.scancafe.com, but like many of the lower cost services, they send your originals outside the US to have the work done, and there are some horror stories of material that was submitted and then lost. There are some domestic services, but they tend to cost more ... a LOT more. Sam's Club does slide and negative scans for 18 cents each. The quality and resolution are not great, but [typically] it's done locally on-site. I have used them as "insurance" against total loss of material that you are sending out for a higher quality scan from another source. That turned out to be a fabulous idea, wish I had thought of it. I visited my local (Elmsford, NY) Sam's Club today and dropped off a mixed bunch of negatives with instructions to print each and make me a CD of the digital files. The cost for that service is twenty cents per image. Better yet, they will do just the scanning-to-CD part for just ten cents per image. They did my scans, but just the 35mm. The operator told me that the other sizes jammed the machine. All work is done on the premises. They don't do slides. My order was done in about one hour, but was only 16 negatives. When I got home I popped in the CD and inspected the images. The scans are 300dpi horizontal, same vertical, 24 bits. They are all 1818 pixels wide and 1228 pixels high. Average size is about 800KB. For a dime per image, this is a very good deal. Many of the photos will never be printed, so just the basic scan will be adequate. I can send out any really good negs and have them scanned at 2000dpi or 4000dpri. I did observe noticeable amounts of 'dust' (white specs) in the scans. What software is recommended for this problem? I will still have to deal with my slides, and photos for which I don't have negatives, but this is a big step in the right direction. I just hope that when I go through my shoe box of negatives, I turn up a lot of 35mm's. (Since I was going to Sam's anyhow, I uploaded a couple of digital images to be printed. I sent them TIFF files that were just under their limit of 6MB per file. Results were mediocre. On a portrait, they chopped of the model's head and started at the middle of her face. The operator spotted the problem and immediately reprinted the photo. I found this issue surprising, since I would have thought that they would print whatever was in the digital file, and I had test-printed it on my color laser printer before uploading it. Based upon that experience, I don't think I would use Sam's for anything critical.) |
#4
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Bulk scanning service for thousand of photos and slides
I just noticed this thread today, and have a number of different
comments - hopefully some of them will be useful! First of all when it comes to scanning a large number of old negatives, I like that solution of having Sam's do it. It sounds like a quick and inexpensive way to get low resolution scans of a collection. I have never had that done myself (I have my own scanner), but if the quality of the digitized images is good enough for web presentation, you've got most of the job done right there, and this can allow you to see what you've got so you can separate out those real gems for more specialized (i.e., higher resolution) scanning. If you're like most of us, there aren't going to be a large number of these. Secondly, I wouldn't completely throw in the towel on getting quality prints from Sam's. You mentioned that the operator noticed the cropping error. That is a good thing right there! It shows that he/ she was observant of the results and did what was necessary to get it right. What size (aspect ratio, really) were you having this image printed to? Was this simply a case of the more squarish aspect ratio of your print size (e.g., 5x7 or 8x10) requiring some of the top/ bottom of the 3:2 aspect ratio image to be cropped off? If so, then it was good that the operator was standing by and willing to override whatever default cropping the machine chose, and then reprint it. (My apologies if you are familiar with cropping and aspect ratios and all that - I don't mean to be insulting, but I don't know what your level of experience with image processing is). In any event, my experience with Sam's is that I can get very nice prints as long as I properly prepare the image ahead of time. For me, this means editing it it to the exact aspect ratio and print dimensions at 300ppi and converting to sRGB color space (if it isn't already), and making sure to select "no enhancements" when making the print order. I also downsize a TIFF file to a level 10 JPEG in Photoshop, just to reduce the file size and make handling of the data easier. When it comes to higher resolution scanning of some of your better negatives and then your slides, I am afraid I don't have a good answer for you. There are services which will do a good job, but they are not inexpensive (not in the quantities you are asking about anyway). The "standard" recommendation on this forum is to acquire (beg, buy, borrow, or steal!) a good dedicated film scanner - probably one of the Nikon Coolscan models - and do the job yourself. On the plus side, you can buy the scanner used, then recoup most (if not all) the cost of the purchase by selling it when you are done. And, if you are dedicated to learning the scanning process in detail, you will likely be able to obtain better results than just about any commercial service. However, if you go this route, do be aware that it can take a very long time to get a large collection scanned, and may also involve quite a learning curve to perfect your scanning techniques. It all just depends on how particular you are about image quality, and how much effort you are willing to invest in what ends up becoming sort of a "sub-hobby" to whatever photography is to you. I am also a proponent of performing full-resolution scans when using a dedicated film scanner. Not necessarily with all your images of course, but those which can make use of it. I can say with some confidence that many of my images benefit from the full 4000dpi that my scanner can do. Again, many images will not warrant the full resolution. If you are farming out the job and have to make a one- size-fits-all choice... well then I sympathize with your dilemma! (sorry, I know that's not very helpful) As for file size, I can vouch for the claims made previously. My 4000dpi Canoscan FS4000 scanner produces TIFF files which are up to about 67 Megabytes for 24 bit scans (8 bits/color), and 134 Megabytes for 48 bit scans (16 bits/color). In my experience, there have been very few instances when the difference in bit depth has proven to have any effect on the final image at all. Sometimes when I have a very dark slide, I will go with the higher bit depth thinking that I will get a less noisey result when I have to "rescue" the shadows in photoshop, but even then I am not sure if I have been able to really see the difference. This all relates to slides - I am not so sure about negatives. |
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