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What scanner equipment do you use for prints? |
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Scanning prints is more challenging than it sounds.
The design of all flatbed scanners makes producing high
quality images quickly very challenging. They are not
only slow, but because you place each photo on a piece of
glass and move it around to get it into position the glass
gets dirty and even scratched. |
If
you don't clean the glass between each scan, the dirt and dust left
behind by the previous photos will appear on all subsequent photos
and scratches never go away so they also appear on all photos
scanned by that scanner even if you clean the glass. Clearly you
can't do any kind of high quality, large volume work on a flatbed
unless you're willing to work for mere pennies per hour.When selecting the equipment necessary to scan
prints, we needed speed to keep the costs down but we also needed to
produce a clean, crisp, high quality image. We ultimately
decided that we needed a special piece of equipment designed
specifically for the task of scanning prints. Our solution
wouldn't be found at OfficeMax or CompUSA. Our proprietary
solution involves custom hardware and software that is unique to
DigMyPics! and it solves all of the problems of a flatbed scanner
while producing a quality image unmatched by any other scanning
solution we've seen.
Some oversized and delicate photos can not be scanned by these
devices and will need to be scanned on a flatbed scanner. That
means we dispose of, or find new homes for, quite a few flatbeds
that get a scratch on their glass surface.
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I've seen some photo feeding scanners at the
store. How well do they work? |
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There have been some attempts by scanner manufacturers to mass
market photo scanners that can feed a batch of standard prints.
We test these products whenever they come out. We've found
them to have the following problems:
- They drag your photos across the glass as they feed them.
This causes pieces of dust to scratch both the prints and the
glass.
- They still scan through glass so dust and scratches are
still a problem
- They leaves scratches on the prints they process
- The scratches on the glass begin to show up on every scan.
The first few batches won't have the scratches but once the
glass is scratched, every subsequent photo will show the
scratches
- They jam or double feed often and the problem worsens over
time.
- The images still need to be cropped, rotated and color
enhanced so just scanning them isn't enough. They require a lot
of work afterwards, too. They usually include software
that will do the color enhancement automatically, but we've
found it to produce an image with poor contrast and washed out
colors. It looks like a print that was scanned and not a
crisp clean digital image.
Those scanners may save you a little time but at the expense a
quality image.
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What
about high speed color document scanners?
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We've tried a variety of
these, too. Some costing thousands of dollars. They are fast!
And they offer some incredible automation capabilities but they
suffer from some serious flaws with respect to scanning photos.
They still scan through a piece of glass so dust and scratches are a
constant problem. They are also designed for scanning
documents, not photos. We worked with Kodak to try and modify
one of their high speed scanners for our purposes but ultimately we
could never get their high-end, high-speed color scanners to produce
an image even close to something we considered acceptable.
We've noticed that some of our competitors have taken this route in
order to match our pricing. We think scanning prints using this
strategy is a waste of time and money.
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| Do
you rotate and crop the images? |
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We will manually rotate
images to the correct orientation for no additional charge. We
also will crop your images to remove any border left by the
scanning equipment.
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| How
long will it take for you to scan my prints? |
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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 rushed; just
contact us to arrange to have your order expedited.
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| How
many photos can you transfer to a CD? |
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A CD holds 650MB. Check out our
resolutions page. It has
details about how many photos of different type fit on a CD or DVD
data disk.
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| Can
you put my photos in different directories? |
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Yes! If you group
your prints and name and label the group, we'll put that group in
its own directory. We'll also name the files so that they
start with that name, too. We want your files to be easy to work
with and we do what we can to facilitate that. We just ask
that you try to put no fewer than 40 or so photos in a group.
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| Can I
see some samples of your work? |
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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 link below to have
a look. If you have any questions or concerns,
contact us!
Samples of our print scans
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| My
prints are in albums. Is that a problem? |
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No Problem. We can still scan your
prints but additional charges may apply. There are an
assortment of album types so please
contact us about the costs.
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I
have some more questions or special requirements. What should
I do?
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Call or write! We're here to help. Don't wait.
Transfer your old photos to CD or DVD today. |
