Archival Photo and Slide Scanning Services

In January of 2008, Money Magazine wrote an article comparing 6 of the most popular scanning services. They sent 40 prints to the six different companies and rated them on cost, turnaround time and scan quality.

The top rated company was ScanCafe. ScanCafe operates out of Bangalore India so when you send photos to them, they are shipped over to India to be scanned. The images are then posted online and you are allowed to reject up to 50% of your order. After you have chosen the images you want to keep, they create a CD or DVD and mail that back to you with your original photos. They will scan photos, negatives and slides. All the companies reviewed had a minimum order and the price range was between .29¢ to .75¢ per photo.

I did a bit of research online and found several articles and blog posts discussing the use of ScanCafe’s services. One man said his photos took one month to arrive in India. He ended up rejecting several of the scans for being poor quality images and had no idea how long his photos would take to get back to him.

There’s an old adage in the design business that goes, “high quality, fast turnaround, low price; pick two of the three.” I think this adage certainly applies when it comes to the topic of scanning and archiving your family photos. You just can’t have all three so you are going to have to choose which is most important to you.

Read the complete article here...>