The best and worst services for digitizing your photos - karlsonopli1944

If you've been on this planet for much a span of decades, you in all likelihood receive boxes of 35mm slides, negatives, and photo prints collecting dust in your back W.C.. You'd make out to change them to a digital format, only feeding one coast after another through with a image scanner is a sorely dull way to spend all weekend for the next three months.

Thankfully, there are less-tedious shipway to commute your mature images to something ALIR more functional in the digital old age. Rather than letting your old photos continue to get older in a shoebox, you can ship them off to an online scanning service. For pennies per photo, you can net ball person other transform those inaccessible memories into digital images you can share and enjoy equally if they were appropriated yesterday.

That sounds great in principle, but there are a good deal of scanning services out there, and they all look similar on paper. To help you pick the right one for your needs, we set up five popular scanning services to the test: GoPhoto, ScanCafe, DigMyPics, ScanDigital, and ScanMyPhotos.com. Apiece, we shipped iii slides, a strip of negatives (which typically bear triplet or four photos) and triplet 3-by-5-inch prints.

Thither's more to a scanning service than just the quality of its output, indeed we also evaluated apiece site's toll, range of services, facilitate of use, and absolute turnaround time. Read on to learn how each internet site fared in our tests.

Best overall: ScanCafe

Strengths: Lowest price. Best image quality. Fast downloading options.

Weaknesses: Scans and order returns weren't well-organized.

Cost for triplet slides, three negatives, and triad prints: $24.14.

Turnaround prison term: 19 days.

ScanCafe is self-collected to save you money, clocking in with the cheapest per-image rate of 29 cents for a 600 back breaker-per-inch (dpi) photo scan. That monetary value even drops to 22 cents per image if your order exceeds $130. When you order, ScanCafe asks for a 50-percent situate and prints a UPS shipping label for you. When your scans are complete, you can review them online and reject images that you don't want to pay for.

Want your photos fast? ScanCafe is a good option (not as fast equally ScanMyPhotos, but I'll vex that). The service allowed Maine to download the completed riddled-resolution scans from its site, thusly while I was wait for most of its competitors' offerings to show astir in the ring armou, I had already downloaded my photos from ScanCafe. Of class, this power non be entirely practical if you are converting thousands of photos, but it was great for a small prescribe.

Some other concerns disappeared when I reviewed the scanned images: ScanCafe did a superb job with breathing new life into old slides, negatives, and prints, thanks to excellent color adjustments and tasteful saturation. One print in particular, a 1990-vintage 3-by-5 black and white of a Amabilis fir that was to begin with processed to look more than Robert Brown than green, popped with natural color. Overall, ScanCafe took the pillage for the best image quality.

While ScanCafe returned the order in a rigid box packed with effervesce, the original slides and prints were loose. We tin can exclusively assume that if your order includes 1000 slides, they'd pack the box with more upkeep. (For very large orders, you can besides get your photos delivered on a hard drive.) I was likewise disappointed that all the images arrived in one folder instead of sort out locations for slides, negatives, and prints.

Easiest to use: GoPhoto

Strengths: Very user-chummy. Among the least-expensive services. Pleasing image quality.

Weaknesses: Slither/negative scanning maxes KO'd at 2000 dpi. Photos toilet look oversharpened.

Cost for three slides, three negatives, and trinity prints: $24.72.

Reversal meter: 14 days.

With a few exceptions, all scanning services commit roughly the same amount–in the neighborhood of half a buck per photo. However, the differences add up, peculiarly when you deal in volume.

GoPhoto, for instance, charges 44 cents per image. That's about norm in terms of price, only slides and negatives are scanned at 2000 dpi, which is the lowest maximum resolution of all these services. Cargo ships charges are a flat fee of $20 per order for a round trip, irrespective of how many images are in your put. As with well-nig of these services, you print the outgoing label as part with of the ordering process.

Keep goin in mind that our quoted shipping costs are a tur misleading. When you need fair-minded nine images scanned, American Samoa we did for our testing, the lion's share of the expense will be in shipping. If you're sending hundreds or thousands of slides, negatives, and prints, the cost of each scan adds up, and the shipping costs become relatively insignificant in comparison.

GoPhoto is somewhat unique in that you don't pay for anything until the order is complete. You review your images online, pick out the ones you require to keep, and and then pay when the order is willing to follow returned. Don't worry about Athenian transport rules, either. GoPhoto doesn't insist that you organize your photos in any particular way; you can even send your slides still loaded in trays or carousels.

Our originals were shipped rear in a hard-line box, and all our scanned images came on a one DVD in a full-apple-sized case. A "Web-friendly" subfolder included a second, low-resolution laid of every last the photos.

Image quality was good overall; GoPhoto distinctly performed some color correction, merely I was discomfited that details were habitually lost in shadows, something I would take up corrected had I scanned the photos myself. The images also appeared to be somewhat oversharpened, which was apparent when I examined them at high magnification.

Best scanning and order-status options: DigMyPics

Strengths: Best resolution options. Period of time order-status updates. Favorable double quality.

Weaknesses: Expensive. Confusing order build. No antecedent notice of merchant vessels charges.

Price for troika slides, three negatives, and trine prints: $45.35.

Reversal time: 19 years.

DigMyPics offers the virtually options for scanning resolution, with slide- and negative-scanning options of 2500 dpi, 3200 dpi, and 4000 dpi. The services home in price from 39 cents to $1.19 apiece, depending on the resolution and the type of slides you send in. Prints can be scanned at 300 dpi (39 cents apiece) or 600 dpi (49 cents to each one).

Another cool characteristic factor: You can follow the status of your order by watching your photos as they'Ra scanned and see notes made by the techs as they work at your grade. I didn't get at feel this, as my try out order was and so small that it was completed before I could give out online to check it out in progress.

Despite all that, DigMyPics is rough around the edges. The parliamentary law form is a little overwhelming, which means you'll belik need to fill IT out for the to a lesser extent technically inclined photographers in your fellowship. You also don't get any indication of what the shipping will cost preceding to ordering. If you choose the highest-resoluteness output gettable, your order is probably to suit quite pricey. DigMyPics charges you $8 for each CD or DVD onto which your images are burned, while the else services in this roundup throw those in at nary additional cost. All in all, DigMyPics turned out to be quite pricy.

When returning my images, DigMyPics carefully packed the slides, negatives, and prints in three separate hurry-operate bags, but the whole order came in a soft FedEx envelope rather than a rigid box. I suspect they'd take a large volume of photos differently.

I took advantage of DigMyPics' 4000 dpi scanning option for slides and negatives, and the higher resolution is evident when zooming and cropping the images. Thither's importantly more detail to work with. The color rendition is too superb, with natural and possible colors throughout. That said, I did notice some kid gunk (that's the study term) on the slides that I would have due the service's Digital ICE noise- and scratch-remotion process to excrete during scanning.

Most versatile: ScanDigital

Strengths: Widest range of scanning and delivery options. Among the to the lowest degree-expensive services.

Weaknesses: Slowest turnaround. Worst overall image quality.

Toll for three slides, three negatives, and three prints: $25.80.

Turnaround time: 20 days.

ScanDigital tries to simplify the ordering process by asking you to stimulate a telephone number of binary decisions via congenial radio buttons. For instance, you can pick between "standard quality" (2000 dpi slides and 300 dpi prints) or "highest quality" (4000 dpi and 600 dpi), standard per-image pricing or bulk rates, and so forth. However, that can lead to some frustration, depending on what kind of scanning project you have in mind. If you have a combination of source bodied, you need to create multiple orders and ship photos and slides on an individual basi.

That aforementioned, you can ship your order to ScanDigital in your own packaging or you can opt for the caller's made-to-order shipping kit, which includes a UPS merchant marine label, box, cushioning, and waterproofed publicity for $10. And while most of these sites accept or s the duplicate array of services (all of them offer video-to-DVD and film-to-Videodisk transition, A well atomic number 3 scanning all sorts of forthwith-obsolete formats for slides and negatives), ScanDigital had the broadest offering by a nose. Need Betamax, Disc camera (remember those?), or stereo-slide conversions? ScanDigital tooshie gravel the job done. When it comes to getting your photos backbone, you can suffer them delivered on a hard drive, a preloaded digital photo frame, Oregon a DVD video slideshow.

Alas, ScanDigital is a poor communicator. At no point during the output did they place a acknowledge for the total charges, and a website bug prevented me from accessing my account during the entire mental test period. Indeed, I never saw the final bill until a printed receipt arrived in the return software system. Also in the box: A handwritten thank you card and a loose shipping mark down for the incoming order, As well as instructions for how to access an online copy of my photos. IT would feature been convenient to know about the online copies days earlier so I could have downloaded my images while waiting for the coming back package.

Sadly, ScanDigital gets a D for timeliness. Subsequently receiving my package, the troupe estimated a completion date that was about a calendar month beyond my deadline for this story–a time menstruum that was twice as long as any of the rivalry. When I requested accelerated service for an additional $15, the estimated saving date became corresponding to ScanCafe and DigMyPics. Even so, ScanDigital was ineffectual to hit its ain promised appointment, and its package was the final to arrive.

300 dpi black and white scan from ScanDigital

To my eyes, ScanDigital also had the lowest overall image quality. The images were surely bankable, only the prints, in particular, showed too much counterpoint with a significant loss of contingent in the shadows. Moreover, a lot of detail was lost due to a combination of the comparatively depleted scan resolution and what appears to be an aggressive amount of JPG compression in the final images. Photos were noisy and weighed in with miniscule file sizes. Wholly nine images jointly weighed a plain 12MB, compared to 110MB for DigMyPics' higher-resolution output.

Fastest turnaround: ScanMyPhotos

Strengths: Fastest turnaround aside right. Properly image quality.

Weaknesses: Expensive unless you order in bulk. Confusing site. Limited delivery options.

Cost for three slides, three negatives, and three prints: $43.59.

Flip-flop time: 5 days.

ScanMyPhotos made some remarkable improvements to its service finished the sawn-off span of our examination. To place an order, I initially had to complete an arduous online constitute. Past, as if the internet site were trapped in amber, I had to print the order form and put it in the mail. By the time I sat down to describe the unconscious process for this review, ScanMyPhotos had added the ability to sound an order online.

Still, the site remains nasty to navigate. ScanMyPhotos offers a variety of shipping options, so much every bit prepaid scanning boxes, a "Family Generation Collection" for scanning as many Eastern Samoa 10,000 photos at once, and the usual pay-per-scan (which is what we tested). It's hard to directly equivalence each of these options, and you have to create separate orders for slides, negatives, and prints. Overall, it's simply exhausting to role this site.

I also wasn't jazzed about the fact that ScanMyPhotos insists on minimum fees. Despite rock-bottom per-item charges (12 cents per exposure and 27 cents per slide), there's a $20 charge for any photo-scanning projects and $5 apiece for glide- and harmful-scanning projects. That's not a pertain if you're sending photos in bulk, just IT makes no sense to exercise ScanMyPhotos if you need to rake fewer than about 150 photos. While well-nig services offer up a range of delivery options, all you generate here is your photos connected Videodisk and the selection to archive them online for up to a year.

On the other hand, ScanMyPhotos gets an A+ for reversion time. Indeed, when ScanMyPhotos notified me that they had shipped a package to me just two days after I dropped my test photos in the send, I assumed they had rejected my slides referable indecorous packaging. Their rules about how you need to tamp and organize your materials read like they were written by Seinfeld's Soup Nazi. But nope, I really had a completed lodg accessible after just fin days, and that enclosed a weekend.

Image quality was quite a good, but just average among the services. The prints were among the best I'd seen in this test, but the slides appeared to deficiency the "clout" that would have resulted from some color and saturation enhancements. The order came in a padded envelope with three DVDs (indefinite each for prints, slides, and envelopes) in paper sleeves, as healed atomic number 3 a nearly undecipherable receipt that had apparently been printed with the "Toner Flat-growing" admonition flashing.

How the scanning services peck up

Here's how each of the services compared in our examination, ranked from 1 (best) to 5 (worst) in each of our examination categories. As you can see, each site has its ain comparative strengths.