subject: Preserving Your Precious Photo Memories Forever- UK Scanning Service to Disc [print this page] Preserving Your Precious Photo Memories Forever- UK Scanning Service to Disc
Photo scanning, the act of preserving old photo memories to disc or memory stick is big business in the UK. Estimates of half a billion photos languishing in old boxes, cupboards and drawers are probably about right but who really knows? One thing is for sure though and that is we all can lay our hands on old photos which capture some memory of times gone by. I recently had some old Royal Navy photos from 30 years ago scanned and to see them in large format on my 42" TV was a revelation. Details I had never noticed before came bouncing off the screen.There are very few, to the best of my knowledge, less than 3, companies in the UK who can offer scanning to disc for photos, slides, negatives and videos (to DVD) but Google will help you find them. Typical prices are about 10p per photo upto 40p for slides and a typical video will be about 10 to transfer to DVD. Try to find a company who will arrange the whole process for you, from secure collection through to secure delivery back to you. Ask them if they are using trackable couriers or trusting them to the royal mail. Losing all of those precious memories would be a disaster.Couriers are by far the most reliable of the two in my experience and if you are trusting your precious photos to anyone it should be an organisation that take security and trackability seriously.In terms of resolution you can ask for 300 or 600 dpi, obviously the latter being a higher quality. The costs of 600 dpi usually carry a surcharge. Don't bother with the higher resolution if you are only copying old black and white photos with a grainy image as its a total waste of money. 300dpi would be good enough for those oldies. Slides and negatives are usually scanned at 1800 dpi resolution and are more expensive due to this and the labour intensity required to produce a good quality result.It is possible of course to do all of this yourself and most high street scanners are capable of reproducing original photos to an acceptable quality. What you probably will not want to do is decant those originals from an album and some albums have such sticky mounts that to try and remove the originals would definitely damage them. In my view, and of course I'm biased as the Marketing Manager for the UK's premier photo scanning service, is to trust those precious photos to a professional company. You can even ask for them to be placed on DVD with a favourite piece of music as accompaniement. Anything is possible. Including titling, fade in and fade out and once you've seen your photos on big screen you will be searching those cupboards, drawers and loft for more memories to capture and preserve.Hope that all helps and thanks for reading.
