Posts Tagged ‘scanning service’

Posted on October 17, 2009 - by Pete Fontaine

Finding Low Cost Scanning For Digital Scrapbooking

The art of digital scrapping is soaring in popularity. A quick online search will give you an idea of how many free or low cost tools, templates, and tutorials there are for the taking. It’s easy to find design concepts, creation software, and personalized help. Online scrapbooking chat rooms and communities help with technical information and ideas. It’s never been easier to produce gorgeous custom creations.

Don’t limit yourself to just using just your digital photos. All of your old photos can be sent to a low cost scanning service to be digitized. For as little as a nickel apiece you can add hundreds of your favorite memories to your scrapbook.

Perhaps an even greater benefit of scanning your photos than making them available for your digital scrapbook is protecting them from possible destruction or damage. When a scanning service saves your photos to a DVD it makes it possible to store a duplicate in two or three different locations. This insures their permanent survival, protecting your photographs from natural deterioration and damage from mold and moisture. Scanning to a DVD also allows you to share a set of your pictures with others.

Once you’ve gotten your photos scanned for scrapping you can use them to build photobooks online and upload them to a free photo sharing site to share with your friends. Online businesses that sell photo novelties like cards, calendars, and T-shirts are easy to find and use. With a few services you can even build a slideshow with music that you can view on a TV or on a digital picture frame.

The optimum resolution for scanning your photo prints is 300 dpi. Don’t accept lower and don’t pay for higher. Nothing is gained by scanning at a higher resolution than 300 dpi, and you’ll be handling much larger files. That means any use of the scans will be slower. Do make sure your scans are saved as high quality jpeg files. This means that the scans are saved with very low compression and thus higher quality. You will be able to use free photo editing software to reduce the file size for copy to use on the web, if needed.

Find a photo scanner who offers an inexpensive photo enhancement service. These services can make descent improvements to most of your photos. Don’t pay a lot for this because it won’t perform miracles, and it won’t fix all of the problems. But beware; always enhance a copy of your original scans. Don’t let a photo scanner send just the enhanced scans. Photo enhancement as well as any manipulation or rotation of your scans means they will be recompressed. Repeated recompression means loss of image quality.

The web is loaded with digital scrapbooking accessories, communities, and educational materials. You can find e-books and embellishments of every kind. Put these tools together with scans from an economical photo scanning service and you’re on your way!

Scanning photos for digital scrapbooking permanently protects them from destruction and deterioration. Photo Scanning makes it easy and inexpensive to share a complete copy of your family’s photographic history with each family member. Find out more about photo scanning at Pete’s website www.nickelscan.com

Posted on October 16, 2009 - by Pete Fontaine

Scanning Photos for The Motor Home Owner

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a million dollar motor coach or a tiny weekender you can still take a complete set of you photographs anywhere you go. There is never enough room in a motor home for photo albums or boxes of photographs, and you probably wouldn’t want to expose your photos to the additional risks associated with traveling anyway, but you don’t have to go without.

Wouldn’t it be great to take a complete set of all of your photos with you, neatly stored away on a DVD or two? Digitizing your ordinary photos is the way to make this possible. Whether you decide to purchase an inexpensive photo scanner and do it yourself or send your photos to a low cost scanning service. You can find excellent scanning services for as little as a nickel per scan.

Scanning your photos puts an end to their natural aging and deterioration. Your images are permanently preserved and because they are now easy to copy, you can put complete sets of your images in different locations. This will prevent you from losing your photos to natural disaster. You’ll also be able to share complete sets of your photos with each family member.

One great way to view your photos once you have them scanned is to create a slideshow that you can watch on TV. This is the perfect project for those evenings “on the trail”. Slideshow software makes it easy to add captions to your photographs and also include your favorite music. If you’re not feeling that creative, you can easily find companies that will build a slideshow just the way you want it.

Digital picture frames are a great way to view your newly scanned photos. And the good news is that they are getting to be relatively affordable. Some of the more expensive frames allow you to play a slideshow, add captions to your images, and add music. The low cost of high capacity memory cards now makes it possible to store all of your digital images right in the frame. Having your photos organized in a digital picture frame when you are visiting family or making new friends on the road is definitely worth the effort.

If you have large numbers of photos then doing them yourself could be an incredibly boring task. You could consider using one of the photo scanning services found online. But, shop carefully as prices and services vary greatly. Make sure you understand what your requirements are. For example you shouldn’t be paying to scan ordinary photos at a higher resolution than 300 dpi. You can find other articles online by this author that discuss some of these money saving topics. You can find great photo scanning services for as little as a nickel.

So now you’re in business. You’re rolling down the highway, your family’s precious memories are not only protected from damage and destruction, but wherever you go you have that little piece of home with you. You can add new digital pictures you are taking to your collection, but now they won’t be in two different forms. They will all be digitized, easy to store, easy to duplicate, and easy to view and enjoy. Happy Motoring!

Are you considering photo scanning for your recreational vehicle or to permanently protect your family’s precious memories from damage and deterioration? Pete Fontaine talks more about scanning photos at his website www.nickelscan.com