| |
|
 |
|
|
|
Please also...
See our FAQ for Slide
Scanning and Film Scanning.
See our FAQ for Scanning
Prints.
See our Photos to DVD FAQ.
See our Shopping Tips FAQ.
See our Video to DVD FAQ for
8mm,16mm, and tape.
See our Testimonials to see what
our customers are saying.
|
|
How
does it work? What is the process? |
|
You fill out an order form on
our website. Once you click the submit button, you'll be given
a screen with a mailing label. That mailing label contains a bar
coded order ID. Simply print and affix that label to a well packaged
box containing the photos you want us to scan and ship it to us.
When we receive your box, we'll scan the bar code which activates
your order in our system and sends you an email to let you know
we've received your photos. Once we finish processing your
photos, we'll send you an invoice and upon payment you'll be able to
view your photos on our website. We then ship everything back to
you. It's really very easy.
 |
You can watch our back
stage tour
video to see exactly how our process works.
|
|
|
How much does it cost? |
|
Our pricing is based on type of photo or film and quantity. We
have a calculator to help you calculate our pricing.
Click here to get
an estimate. Our pricing includes everything to make your
photos "slide show ready", meaning we will crop, rotate, color
and exposure correct your images on an image by image basis by a
skilled photographer/computer graphics technician. Others
either don't do that service, charge a lot more for it, or use
automation to do it for them. We've found that the results
from automating those functions to be unacceptable. The way we do it
costs us more, but it gives you much better results.
|
|
Why should I digitize my photos? |
|
Because your photos are important to you and your family.
See our
Why Digitize page for some important reasons why you'll want your
pictures in digital form.
|
Why
shouldn't I just buy a scanner and scan my photos to CD or DVD myself?
|
|
You certainly could, and if
you only have a couple of photos you want scanned and optimal
quality isn't that important for those photos, it may make sense to
just do it yourself. Otherwise there are 3 good reasons to
hire DigMyPics! to do it for you; Quality, Time,
and Convenience.
Quality: We have a variety of different types of scanners,
some costing many thousands of dollars. We can match the best
scanner for the photo we're scanning. Our technicians are
highly trained, university educated, graphics and photography
professionals. At least 3 different technicians will quality review
each image and correct scanning, exposure, and color imperfections
on an individual photo by photo basis. We've spent
considerable money, time and effort to develop the best technologies
and techniques for scanning photos at optimal quality so you can be
sure your images will be the best they can possibly be.
Time: Don't underestimate how much time and effort are
involved in scanning a lot of photos. Consumer grade scanners
that sell for a few hundred dollars aren't designed for high speed
photo scanning so expect to spend considerable time scanning and
tweaking each print to get it right. 100 prints would take you 300
minutes to scan if you could scan them at the very quick pace of
only 3 minutes each. That's 5 hours! But wait, you still
might need to crop, rotate, convert, organize, burn a CD,
print the thumbnails so you can find what's what and make a label.
By the time you do all of that, you've spent nearly a whole day on
just 100 photos. We can scan and archive those same 100 photos
for just $39. Is your day worth $39 to you to get just 100
photos scanned? For scanning slides and film
the process is even more involved and cumbersome and the right
equipment is costly and much more difficult to learn and use.
Convenience: Besides the convenience of having all of your
photos scanned for you, we'll create and professionally label all of
your disks and we can provide a thumbnail book that indexes those
disks making it easy to find just the image you're looking for every
time. We can even organize and neatly place your photos into
some of our storage products so they're ready to tuck away when you
get them back.
|
| What
format will my scanned pictures be in? |
|
We scan to TIFF then
convert to
JPEG file
format using minimal loss, 100% quality compression. We can also
deliver the lossless TIFF files if you prefer, but your file sizes will be
considerably larger and much slower to work with and display.
The rule of thumb is this: if you plan to edit your images then get
TIFF, if you just plan to view and print them then get JPEG.
|
| At what
resolution will my pictures be scanned? |
|
Prints: We scan standard prints at 300
or 600dpi (dots per
inch). That means that from a 4x6 print at 300dpi you'll get
an image that is 1200 x 1800 pixels or 2400 x 3600 for 600dpi. From our tests, 300 dpi
provided the best balance between quality and size using standard
photographs for viewing and printing purposes. If you plan to
do significant cropping on the images, you may want to consider 600
dpi or higher. We can scan at optical resolutions up to 2400 dpi
so if you have special requirements, we can accommodate them.
Please indicate when you order that you would like a higher
resolution.
Slides and Film: Negatives and Slides are scanned at 2000 dpi by default
and up to 4000 dpi if requested. You can learn more about
resolution and what it means by reading our article on
Resolving Resolution.
|
| How
long will it take for you to scan my photos? |
|
Our current turn around
time is updated constantly and posted on the left sidebar of every
page. We offer a rush service if you need them in a hurry; just
contact us if you need us to expedite your order.
|
|
Who will work with my photos? |
|
DigMyPics! hires only
imaging and graphics professionals with college degrees in the
arts. We pay competitive wages and offer benefits like health,
dental, and employer matching 401(k). These offerings allow us to
hire the best people while giving opportunities to people who want
to develop a career in photography. We invest heavily in training
new hires to our high standards and we have a strict set of policies
and checks to make sure our standards for quality are maintained.
|
| Will
the work be done in the USA? |
|
| Some companies quietly ship your photos to a foreign country to
have the work performed to increase their profit.
For instance, BritePix of Miami will ship your photos to Costa Rica and ScanCafe in California
will ship them to India to have the scanning done even
though these companies never mention
those
facts on their websites or they give the information in carefully
chosen language and they bury it in far less prominent places than their
pricing.** |
 |
| Nothing against Costa Rica
or India,
but I wouldn't want my photos shipped there by a third party and out of my control. |
While outsourcing to another country may make sense with high
volume, low margin manufactured goods, it hasn't worked so well with
services. Irrespective of the clear risks involved with sending your
photos to a third world country, it's quite clear that dealing with the company's employees
who are working on your project in your language and culture
produces a much more efficient and gratifying end user experience as
well as a superior final product.
Rest assured that
DigMyPics never ships your photos anywhere else and that all work is
done right here in the USA by professional American photographers
and artists.
See our Shopping Tips FAQ for other
things to look out for when choosing a company to scan your photos.
**ScanCafe didn't like
that we publicized the above statements so they had their lawyer send us a
threatening letter demanding we remove all information about them
from our website. If you're
interested, you can read more about
ScanCafe's intimidation attempt. Meanwhile, we
refuse to be intimidated by ScanCafe, their high-priced lawyer and
her fancy law firm and are standing by our American right
to free speech. We believe people need to know what's going to
happen with their photos and what the risks are.
|
| Will
the work be done in the USA? |
|
| Some companies quietly ship your photos to a foreign country to
have the work performed to increase their profit.
For instance, one company in Miami will ship your photos to Costa Rica and
another in California
will ship them to India to have the scanning done even
though these companies never mention
those
facts on their websites or they give the information in carefully
chosen language and bury it in far less prominent places than their
pricing.** |
|
| Nothing against Costa Rica
or India,
but I wouldn't want my photos shipped there by a third party and out of my control. |
While outsourcing to another country may make sense with high
volume, low margin manufactured goods, it hasn't worked so well with
services. Irrespective of the clear risks involved with sending your
photos to a third world country, it's quite clear that dealing with the company's employees
who are working on your project in your language and culture
produces a much more efficient and gratifying end user experience as
well as a superior final product.
Rest assured that
DigMyPics never ships your photos anywhere else and that all work is
done right here in the USA by professional American photographers
and artists.
See our Shopping Tips FAQ for other
things to look out for when choosing a company to scan your photos.
|
How
many scanned photos fit on one CD or DVD?
|
|
The answer is, it
depends... It depends on the file format, the disc type, and
the compression ratio. Click here
to see a chart that can give you some answers.
|
| I'm
not really comfortable sending my photos by mail or courier. Don't
you have a local place where I can drop them off? |
|
By operating out of a single facility and serving a worldwide
customer base we can offer experience and expertise that just
wouldn't be attainable or sustainable at a local market level.
The broad market we serve allows us to hire top notch talent and
acquire state of the art equipment while keeping our prices low.
(Read about our management team)
You just can't find that same level of quality and affordability at
a local photo processor. Even if you find a local shop that
can do the work, they will likely ship your photos to a centralized
service for you. In fact, many local shops use us to provide our
service to their customers. By shipping the photos yourself,
you have more control over how and when they are shipped and where
they are at any given time.
We recommend that you use FedEx Air
or Ground or USPS
Priority Mail with tracking. In Fact, we can provide you
with a FedEx shipping label or have FedEx pick up your photos and
deliver them to us. You can do it all right from our website
after you enter your order. Customers in
or near Gilbert, AZ can, of course, drop off their packages at our
retail location.
|
| How
should I package my photos for shipment? |
|
You can ship your photos to
us in their carousels, in the boxes they are in, or even in zip lock
bags. We've seen some people get really creative with their
packaging. One of the best ideas we've seen was the use of an empty
aluminum foil box used to hold a group of slides. However you decide to package your photos,
please do the following:
- make sure they are secured and won't shift during shipment.
Rubber bands work well to secure boxes or loose slides in a zip
lock bag. If they are in a box, stuff the box with tissue
paper or paper towels to fill the empty voids
- wrap them in plastic, even if it's a garbage bag, to protect
them against moisture and dust
- try to avoid using packing materials that generate dust or
debris. Some padded envelopes use crushed newspaper and if they
tear that dust gets on everything
- Use a sturdy box that won't crush easily. Your local
post office provides priority mail cardboard boxes free of
charge and they work very well. FedEx also provides boxes
free of charge at any local Kinko's or FedEx shipping retailer
When you enter your order you'll get a shipping label with our
ship-to address, your return address, and a bar coded order id or we
can provide you with a FedEx shipping label or even schedule a FedEx
pickup at your home or office, all right from the comfort of our
website.
If you have any
questions, please don't hesitate to
contact us.
|
| Can I
see some samples of your work? |
|
Of course! We have a
few customers who were kind enough to allow us to use their photos on
our site as examples of our work. Use the links below to have
a look. If you have any questions or concerns, contact us!
Samples of our Negative and Film Scans
Samples of our print scans
Samples of our slide scans
|
| Do
you offer a free scanning trial? |
|
We don't offer a free
scanning trial and here's why; It's waste of your time. If you
take advantage of the free trial, do you think the scanning company
will run that sample through their normal process or will they give
it special attention knowing that a bigger order depends on the
outcome? Likely it will get special attention and you'll learn
little from the experience. What we recommend doing instead is
sending in a small regular order without mentioning that there is
more to come if the job is done well. Only then can you learn
how the company will handle your larger job.
|
|
Want to learn more? |
|
Call or write! We're here to help and you're welcome to check out our complete list of FAQ's:
|
