Postcards from a Dog

I’m the shoe box variety when it comes to storing photos. Started an album once, but didn’t get past page ten or so. It’s just not my thing.

Going digital was as far as I’m concerned the invention of a life time. Now I can just load the photos onto the computer and ignore them there. Takes up so much less room.

None the less, I have accumulated a fair amount of pictures over the years. Getting set to move without utilizing a giant moving truck, space and weight are a concern.

So I decided to get my photos scanned and then I only have a CD to worry about.
Like all my endeavors, it starts with a Google search.
Up come the paid ads and the organic results. Plenty of companies want to scan your photos and archive them for you.

Getting a CD/DVD in the end is pretty much standard. Also available is online storage of your files.

My criteria where:

1. CD/DVD
2. Ability to sort photos into files by subject
3. Need to have color, black & white and slides scanned
4. Reasonable price

I don’t care about:

1. Speed
2. Online Storage (got that elsewhere)
3. Web ready duplicates of my photos

I settled on ScanCafe, who provided the services I wanted and were the cheapest. They allowed me to sort my pictures by subject rather than bunch them all together. I also liked that I would be able to review the scans online, delete photos I did not want after all, and only pay for what I end up keeping. (You have to keep 50% of what you send in)

When I set about sorting my pictures I realized, I had way more than I thought! Even with the keep 1 and ditch 9 routine I still had over 1000 photos left.

It took almost 2 weeks to sort them by subject, ziplock each batch and label the baggies.
That done I set up an account online, paid the obligatory 50% down, printed the shipping label they provide and sent the whole thing off.

As mentioned, time was not important. If you are in hurry, ScanCafe might not be for you. ScanCafe acknowledged receipt of my package on July 28. On August 21 I got the email that my pictures are now ready for online review.

This was a remarkable easy process. It was easy to delete photos, move pictures to other files, and rename files.

Deleting was a choice of mine. The few photos I moved to another file where due to my packaging them into the wrong bag. I only renamed one file and that was due to my miserable hand writing which noone can read too well. – What I’m getting at here is that ScanCafe did a flawless job.

After editing, the final sum due was computed, accounting for the photos I deleted and the fact that I only had an estimate to start with rather than an exact count. I paid up and went about awaiting my package.

It arrive today, September 10.

Here’s the sum of it all:

Door to Door (mine that is) it took 7 weeks.
1113 paper photos, 87 slides for a total of 1200 pictures – $268. That comes to 22.3 cents each.
Hand scanned, color adjusted where needed.

I am very pleased with the scanned photos, the service and the price I got from ScanCafe!

Now for the hard part – tossing out the photos themselves. I’ll leave that for another day.