Impress Your Someone Special With A Photo Gift

Give Your Valentine A Gift With A Personal Touch

Finding the perfect Valentines Day gift for your someone special can be really tough. The pressure is on, and expectations can run high. What’s the best way to show that you really care? Classic options like flowers and chocolates are always welcome, but the best gifts are more memorable. If you don’t have the budget for a grand gesture such as a piece of fine jewelry or a romantic getaway to the Caribbean, you should think about putting together a homemade gift. When you make a gift for someone, you demonstrate that you care enough to give of yourself – your time, your effort, and your talents.

For a great handmade Valentines Day gift with a personal touch, consider making a photo gift of some kind. You can make a scrapbook full of photos and mementos, or you can scan old photos to digital and make a video slideshow. Scanning your photos to digital is a great first step because digital photos can be quickly sorted and organized. For example, if you have a large collection of old unorganized photos, you can have them scanned to digital and then sort them into various categories such as events and parties, location, vacations, or sort by year. This approach allows you to make a photo timeline, which you can print or share online. Scanning old photos also allows you to touch up and resize photos to be re-printed and included in a scrap book or photo album. Your more recent photos may already be on your computer or digital camera. By mixing and matching recent photos with older memories, you can create a gift that will be sure to have a winning reaction from your Valentine.

Everyone loves to reminisce, and Valentines Day is a great time to look back and appreciate the good times you and your someone special have shared together. But what if you and your sweetheart are in a new relationship, without years of history to call on? A photo gift can still be a great idea – you just need a different approach. For example, you can choose a photo of you and your Valentine, and get a high-quality print made. Then, you can have the photo custom framed, and even personalized with engraving. This type of gift shows that you put some thought and care into Valentines Day, and is sure to make anyone a happy Valentine.

Professional Organizers Say Scanning Documents And Photos

To Digital Is Key To Beating Clutter

For 2012, Resolve To Go Paperless

Many people start the year with New Year’s resolutions – a chance to start anew. Each year, “getting organized” is listed among the top 5 resolutions made by Americans, as they strive to sort through the clutter and the mess that clog up both their workspaces, cars, homes, and even their wallets or purses. Resolving to get organized is such a popular choice largely because being disorganized is a sure recipe for stress. If you want to beat anxiety and make your life run more smoothly, maintaining a clean and organized environment is a must. And to emphasize this important fact, January is designated as National Get Organized Month. Get Organized Month (also called GO Month) is a national event sponsored by the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and dedicated to raising awareness about the benefits of getting organized. Although unknown to many, there is a large and thriving professional organizing industry in the United States. If you’re up to your eyeballs in papers, junk, or clutter, you might consider hiring a professional organizer to help solve your problems.

The National Association of Professional Organizers comprises about 4,200 professional organizers who make their livings by helping individuals and businesses create order and efficiency where there has been only chaos. Professional organizers design customized systems and processes for their clients, using specific organizing principles. An organizer also works with his or her client, teaching valuable organizing skills to ensure that the client will keep everything running smoothly in the long run. It may seem like anyone with a knack for managing time or coordinating details could be a professional organizer, but there’s some specialized knowledge and skill involved. The pros study organizational theory, small-business concepts, and methods for establishing working relationships with their clients.

One secret that the pros like to pass along might sound obvious, but its effect can be dramatic: get rid of paper. Whether it’s bank statements, bills, receipts, or even old photographs, paper takes up space, easily gets jumbled together, and quickly becomes clutter. Scan all of your important documents and photos to digital, and you won’t have to deal with the stacks of paper, the file cabinets, the boxes full of old photos, or the closets full of old photo albums. There are professional services that can handle digitizing documents in bulk, and can even create text-searchable files from ordinary printed papers. The IRS now accepts digitized receipts and other financial documents, so don’t worry about being audited. Moving forward, you can sign up to receive most bills and bank statements online, and do Mother Nature a favor while keeping your desk free from clutter. And when it comes to all those photo albums, scanning your photos to digital has never been easier. A professional photo scanning service like ScanDigital can make the process totally painless, and your precious pictures will be preserved and organized on your computer, where they can easily be flipped through and shared. Take it from the pros, and lose the paper!

I’d love to share another idea with you for clutter-free and meaningful gift giving. A digital photo frame is a wonderful gift for a grandparent, a sibling, or even as a holiday tradition in your home. While a scrapbook makes a lovely gift, I’ve found that the digital frame is appreciated because it is easily viewed and shared. I’ve used ScanDigital (http://www.scandigital.com/) as a resource for scanning in my old photographs, but there are certainly some budget-friendly solutions such as using your home scanner.

Here are some suggestions on themes for your digital photo frame:

• For a grandparent – the obvious choice would be photos of the grandkids. What about something unexpected? Create a storyline with your digital photo frame. Begin the story with photos of great or even great-great grandparents and work your way through the present. This would be a wonderful way for a grandparent to begin a history lesson with the grandkids.

• Do you have a cherished family recipe? What about a photo shoot of the family matriarch, patriarch or master chef preparing the food? You can send out the completed photo frame to family members along with written instructions.

• For a brother or sister who may live far away, you can create a photo gallery of special memories you’ve shared or past holidays together.

• For your own home, you can assemble a gallery of images from all your holiday moments. Include one or two photos from each year and you will have created a wonderful trip down memory lane for the entire family.

The possibilities are endless, creative, and inspiring. Whatever holiday you celebrate, it should be about family, tradition, and memories. A digital photo frame is a wonderful way to express the true meaning of the season.

By Kristin Lindstrom, originally posted on The Imperfect Home

About Kristin

Kristin Lindstrom is a professional organizer who specializes in creative solutions for small spaces and offices. To contact Kristin, visit Savvy Spaces by Kristin. Her blog is The Imperfect Home and she can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

As a reminder, ScanDigital offers a pre-loaded Digital Photo Frame that makes for a super sentimental (and as Kristin proves, clutter-free) Holiday gift idea! If you have any questions, call ScanDigital’s customer service team at 888.333.2808 or email info@scandigital.com . Always happy to help!

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As one of ScanDigital’s longest standing employees, I’m a good person to share insight into just how we scan your photos. I’ve seen just about everything while working here- from faded, stuck together photos to ones neatly organized in albums. However, they’re all processed with the same care and respect and in the end, all orders are preserved in a better condition than they arrived. There are many steps that need to be taken in order to capture the best and cleanest scan and I’m happy to share my expertise.

But first, take a look at this video where Matt gives a great demo on how we scan photos:

Let me remind you that we take our job seriously. All scanning is done by hand with the help of the best equipment available right here in our Los Angeles headquarters. Scanning your old photos is a great way to preserve and share old memories and we here at ScanDigital are determined to make sure you receive the best quality. The whole process is done by the hands of our highly skilled professionals, from counting the pictures to scanning them individually, that way we leave no room for “machine errors” that you’d occur with fast feeding machines. In addition, we use the most up-to-date and reliable scanners in the market so that our employees can get the best out of their hard work.

Let me make a quick side note in regards to the organization of your material. This is a valid concern, so I’d like assure you that we keep all of the customer’s organization intact and mimic whatever system is in place. If the customer has their images arranged in a particular order, or has certain envelops labeled, we will keep that organization in place by digitally copying their system. Everything starts with creating folders and sub-folders the same way our customers have. For example, if the customer placed 25 images inside a bag or envelope named “Europe 1990,” we would have a folder under their order folder named exactly the same way. Not only that keeps the folders organized the way our customers want, but makes it easy to located and enjoy these images with the click of a mouse.

The next step is digitizing the images into JPEG or TIFF format files, depending on your choice. First I take out a few images at a time, being careful to keep everything in order. Then I lay out the photos by hand and scan them. After scanning, I preview them to make sure I’ve captured a sharp image. I will re-scan where needed to assure I get a great scan.

In order to get the best scan possible, we use scanners that have a technology called “dust removal” which optimizes the image by removing small particles of dust that might still be left on the scanners glass. This automatically takes all the minor scratches off the image and gives the editor a cleaner image to edit.

After everything has been digitized, our editors give your images their final touch, by cropping, rotating, and fixing exposure, shadow, color, and removing red eyes so that your photos look good as new, even if they are from past decades. We love being responsible for great smiles, and memories, or as we like to call it, making “Your Life, Digital!”

Many people with iPhone will snap a picture here and there when they see a pretty sunset or something funny they want to capture. But when the pictures are in your phone it’s easy to forget about them. I’ve noticed that not many people upload the pictures they take on their phones onto their computers. Many people don’t realize how good of a camera the iPhone has. It really takes amazing pictures for a phone camera. When you view a photo on the screen of an iPhone you don’t get the full idea, but when you view it on your computer screen, you can really notice the quality of the images.

These are two of my favorite photos my boyfriend took with his iPhone at sunset in Santa Barbara. They were taken on a 2G iPhone while traveling over 60mph on the Amtrak… and they look just as good as if they were taken on an actual digital camera.

This is a close-up of some flowers behind the office, where you can see how much detail there is. It looks just like a photo that any expensive digital camera would take.

It’s crazy how far camera phones have come.  After seeing a ton of really good photos my boyfriend took on his iPhone and then uploading some of my own, I was curious to see the difference between these photos and the photos from my very first camera phone, which I bought in 2001. It’s crazy how much better the quality of the images have become. Even compared to the photos I took with my Motorola Razr a year or so ago, the iPhone takes really good pictures. This image was taken on my Sony Ericsson T 86 camera phone in 2001:

The difference between these photos is drastic. Whereas the iPhone takes photos that are 1600 X 1200 pixels, this image is only 640 X 480 pixels. Not only is the resolution low, the coloring is really off. It’s weird to think that only a few years ago people thought a camera like this was amazing.  The iPhone pictures are sooo much better… I can only imagine how they are going to look on the new iPhone 3G S.

My boyfriend’s recent obsession with photography has inspired me to inform other iPhone owners that they should be taking full advantage of their cameras. Camera phones have come a long way and more people should upload their images to enjoy them on their computer, instead of letting them sit in their phones where they’re never viewed. Even though it doesn’t take good pictures in low light, this camera is a very good alternative for people who have an iPhone and can’t afford to spend another few hundred dollars on a digital camera. And what’s so great is that it is so easy to upload onto a computer. All you need to do is plug your phone into your computer with the USB cord and the computer will immediately ask you if you want to import the images. With a few clicks of the mouse you can enjoy the photos on your computer.

Vacations are always filled with great experiences that create long-lasting memories. The best way to preserve these memories is to take photos to document your activities, meals and surroundings. A simple photo can help you remember your vacation forever.

Here are some tips for the next time you go on vacation:

Always carry your camera.

Don’t ever go anywhere without your camera. You never know when there is going to be a chance to snap a photo. Even if you are just going to lunch, grab your camera because you might see something interesting. You never know when you will have the urge to snap a photo!

 Take a LOT of photos.

Never take just one photo. Digital cameras allow us to see the outcome of the photo instantly, but you never know how the print will come out. You can always delete pictures so there is no such thing as taking too many! With 35 mm or non-digital cameras, you never know how the picture will come out until you get them developed so it is important to at least take two to be safe. So, snap away- there’s no going back!

Be creative. 

Taking ever picture from the same angle could get boring. Try bending down or standing on something to get a better look. Take a variety of pictures; ranging from scenic shots to pictures of people. Try zooming in, playing with your camera’s settings, and moving the main image from the middle. Just have fun with it!

Prepare your camera beforehand.

Always make sure your camera is charged enough for the whole day. If your camera dies mid-excursion, it will cost you capturing those fun times! If your camera runs on batteries carrying an extra set never hurts. If you are planning on bringing a new camera on your vacation, play around with it before you leave so you know how to work it comfortably. Also, make sure to bring plenty of available storage space or film, so you don’t feel limited while on vacation. Always better to be overly-prepared.

Capturing photos is the best way to remember your fun times. For your upcoming summer vacations, make sure you bring a camera and follow these tips so you can share your vacation with friends and family and remember it forever.

If you have any questions about this post, feel free to contact me at 888.333.2808, on Twitter at @MelissaSD1, or by email at Melissa@scandigital.com. Thanks!

Traditionally, negatives have served as an imaging safety net in case anything was to happen to the actual printed photograph. However, negatives run the identical risks as printed photos and deteriorate at the same rate. The only way to guarantee the safety of your memories is to preserve them digitally. That’s why I’m happy to share our process for scanning negatives.

First, check out this video for a quick demonstration:

How To Scan Negatives from Pamela Weiss on Vimeo.

There are many steps in our negative scanning process. First, I have to take negatives and clean them with compressed air and when necessary, carefully clean them with non-abrasive, lint free wipes to remove any dust or dirt off of them. I then take one negative strip and feed it into the Nikon scanner and preview each image. Previewing is done to make sure the negatives are cropped correctly and not placed into the machine backwards. Then I select the the resolution and press the scan button. After the scan is complete, I go into the image folder and carefully examine each image to make sure I have captured a clean and balanced scan.

To begin our editing process for negatives, we use a special setting within the scanner that is called Digital Ice. Digital Ice uses infrared cleaning to detect scratches and dust during the transparent film scan. This removes a lot of those minor scratches that deter from your image. After all the images are scanned and had Digital Ice used to clean them up digitally, they are passed along to our editors who then further enhance each individual image by hand.

When a photo and negative are both available, we usually suggest scanning the negative because it is the purest form of the image. A photo is essentially a copy of a negative so when scanning a photo it’s like making a copy of a copy. Our top of the line editing equipment and our focused editors can enhance and repair a photo either way but it is recommended to start with the raw image.

Converting your negatives to digital format is one of the best ways to ensure the safekeeping of your images for a lifetime because let’s face it- sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances, like a fire or flooding. And who wants to take a chance of losing irreplaceable memories?

If you have any questions about scanning negatives, you can reach me at 888.333.2808 or on Twitter at @AshelyMillerSD Hope to hear from you soon!

Hi, I’m Kiley. One of the many hats I wear at work is that of the inventory/check-in person. I’m actually the first person to see your cherished memories when they arrive here. Thousands of ScanDigital orders arrive at our facility in El Segundo, California each year and it’s my job to make sure everything in these boxes are inventoried and accounted for. See below for a detailed peek into our check-in process.

First, check out the video of me checking in an order here:

Step 1- UPS delivers your order to our facility.

Before we get to the actual inventory process, let me explain our shipping process. It starts with our ScanDigital website, which is fully integrated with UPS. When you place your order, a UPS shipping label is generated. You can then print out and use the label when you’re ready to ship. This provides you with a tracking number for the package, which is also cataloged in our system to fully track your package while on route to our facility.

Step 2- Open each package and put in separate sealed containers.

Similarly, the first thing I do when packages arrive is to grab plenty of plastic containers. When I open a package, I instantly empty the contents into a separate container, which ensures each order is properly inventoried separately.

The packages we receive at ScanDigital come in different shapes and sizes. Whether it is a large box, a round tube, or a padded envelope, I always make sure to open it very carefully. I’ve seen photos get stuck in the corner of large manila envelopes and slides jammed under the box flap, so it’s very important to take great care in ensuring the materials remain unharmed and nothing is left behind. Also, if a customer has arranged their photos in a certain way, I am careful to keep that organization when lifting the entire package into the container.

Step 3- Put a name tag on the container for easy tracking.

Then, I put a name tag on the container, allowing for easier tracking within our facility. The name tag includes all the order information including the customer name, the order ID, the date received and the date due.

Once checked in, is trackable on our site. To view the current status of an order, customers can login to their ScanDigital account at anytime. Our EssentialTracker System allows you to see exactly what stage your order is in through all of our 13 steps including check-in, scanning, editing, finalizing, and shipping stages.

Step 4- Inventory the material in each package and enter information into our system.

Once I complete double-checking the box the materials arrived in, I begin the process of entering the order’s details in our system. First, I search by the customer’s last name on the box, or by the order ID provided in the order confirmation sheet included inside the package. Then I fill out the form with the exact count and format of the materials, as well as enter any additional instructions written by the customer. An accurate form is most important, as everyone from the scanners to the editors will use it as a reference while they work.

While customers don’t have to include notes or a set of instructions, they are welcome to in order to make sure we process the order exactly how the customer intended. While checking in each order, I also copy any specific instructions in our system to assure every request is noted.

Step 5- Print order details to include within the container.

The very last step of the process is to print out a hard copy of the form. This will be included in the container with the materials for the scanners to fill out and refer to. As soon as the container is properly inventoried and tagged, all that’s left is to deposit the container into the backroom, ready for the scanners to start work.

If you have any questions, you can contact me personally at 310.773.3970 or find me on Twitter at @KileySD. Hope you hear from you soon!

We all have them somewhere…boxes and boxes full of old photos and home movies…simply sitting in a dark closet or attic, gathering dust, cluttering the room and, perhaps worst of all, not being enjoyed by everyone.  The beauty of the digital age is that old memories no longer need to be relegated to some messy box.  Converting the materials to digital is not only a space saver, but also ensures that those precious moments will be preserved for future generations!

Here are five reasons why you need help preserving those memories:

1. Goodbye Color, Hello Faded Memories – The longer photographic materials and home movies are sitting, the more the color is fading.  Unfortunately, the materials in their original state do not last forever, it is simply a natural part of the aging process- the color is bound to fade and shift with time.  Storing the materials in a dark place at a moderate temperature may slow this process, but won’t stop it.  Add some sunlight in the mix and the fading can occur even more dramatically. Your photos and home movies are deteriorating for a number of reasons and there’s only one thing you can do about it.  To guarantee your family’s archived memories are preserved, they need to be converted to a digital format.

2. Mother Nature Takes No Pity on Precious Memories – Your archive of photos and home movies may be seemingly safe in the shoeboxes in a closet or basement, but chances are they won’t be for long.  Accidents and unforeseeable things, such as floods, fires and other uncontrollable forces of Mother Nature, pose a threat to photos and home movies.  The originals of can never be replaced.  Once the original captured memory is lost, it’s gone forever.  I also encourage a duplicate backup of all digital photos and home movies. Unlike the physical material, digital copies do last forever.

3. Who Said Memories Need to Be So Bulky? – Digital photos and video take up no extra space or require any extra room. Their analog counterparts on the other hand create quite a cluttered mess.  All those old camcorder tapes occupy valuable closet space.  Stacks of photo albums can occupy entire shelves.  Old slides, negatives and film reels can be messy.  Compare that to digital images and movies which easily fit on discs or on compact hard drives – an instant space saver!

4. VCR? Slide Projector? – Unfortunately terms that were once part of our everyday language have gone to the technology graveyard.  Even if your materials are in pristine condition, there is a good chance that the machine used to view them is either already obsolete or will be in the next five years.  Digital conversion unlocks these memories and brings them into a format where they can easily be viewed.

5. Send, Share, Create! – Digital technologies have opened up so many new possibilities for our prized memories.  Digital photos can be turned into a canvas print or a photobook in a snap.  We can edit and upload our videos to YouTube in minutes.  Relatives from all over the world can access and share their favorite photos with friends.  Gone are the days of those photo albums with sticky plastic pages or the evening slideshow in the living room.  In this new digital age things are far more accessible.  There is no reason those old memories shouldn’t be enjoyed the same way!

With Spring Cleaning season upon us, we asked friend Chantale Bordonaro for some tips on how to best organize your photos and home movies.  Chantale, Certified Professional Organizer, founder of Simplicity Source and LA’s Incoming Chapter President of the National Association of Professional Organizers knows her stuff – see what she suggests below.

But first, let me remind you about ScanDigital’s Spring Cleaning Special that gives you 15% off all orders placed before April 14^th. Let us help you organize your photos, slides, negatives and home movies effortlessly! Use the coupon code : SpringClean09

Easy Ways to Organize Your Photos and Home Movies

By Chantale Bordonaro

Organizing digital photos and movies can rapidly become a very daunting task if you are like many of my clients and just keep them on the memory card forever! Off course, you can click away and just purchase a new memory card once the first one is full…. But remember that the idea is to enjoy those memories and to share them, right?

Here are some easy tips on how to start organizing your digital special moments:

First Step:

1-   Temporary holding folder:

Every couple of weeks, download your memory card onto your computer in a temporary holding folder name “photos to sort “ on your desktop.  If you have time now, start picking your favorites. 

2-     Keep the best ones!

Eliminate the clutter; delete the ones too dark, the ones where mom is missing her smile; be tough just like you were when you delete the papers ones. Even though digital does not take as much space, you still want to control the flow.

3-     Rename your photos and movies:

Be descriptive and consistent!

4-     Tag your photos with key words (or names of people in them)

Second Step:

Initial purge done! Now you want to move the photos and videos to their permanent home in My Pictures.  But wait!  That’s where the system really becomes important for future retrieval.

1-     Create detailed subfolders:

The easiest way is to create subfolders under My Pictures.  Decide on the structure based on how you would usually look for them. Would you try to look by year, by event, by location, etc? For me, I like to create names like 2009-11 Luca 3^rd birthday party or 2009-01 New Year Celebrations

2-     Use numbers to replace actual month

Notice the number after the month? It makes it easier then actually writing January or November, as now the folders will actually be sorted chronologically.

3-     Moving time!

Once the folders are created, just moved the pictures or movies in the right one. Voila!

Couple more top tips:

1-     Use Tags to mark photos that will need some touch-ups (those can be done later)

2-     Don’t be afraid of using software to help you stay organize. You have plenty of free options out there from Adobe Photoshop Album, Picasa from Google, IPhoto, or IView.

3-     Archive, archive, active!

Burn CD or DVD of your photos and video once you downloaded them. Schedule weekly back-up of your files on an external hard-drive. Also, you can back up your photos online on websites such as ScanDigital.com.

With couple of easy steps, you will be able to go back down memory lane with only couple of keys to push and a lot less frustration! Who knows, next, you might even start creating albums online to share with friends and family!