Take a Peek into Our Process: Photo Scanning

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!”

Tags: scanning photos

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am and is filed under Photo Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.