Photo Scanning - San Diego

Photo Scanning Process

Photos are first cleaned with compressed air. This removes any extra dust from the photos. All images are scanned numerically by folder marking (ie: FarmHouse_001.jpg).

When scanning we only use the highest grade flat-bed photo scanners. We absolutely do not scan your memories using document scanners as many companies will do. Document scanners are the super-cheap method of scanning photos, but the quality is lacking in many ways.

After all the scanning is finished we go through each image one-by-one and make sure that it is oriented properly (people are standing upright) and not flipped (words appearing mirrored).

Once all the photos have been scanned and inspected, they will be burned to our special 100 year archival DVDs (unless otherwise specified by the customer). These disks are regarded as the best medium for long-term storage.

Finally, the entire order, no matter what the total size, is backed up onto our company servers. This is referred to as our Lifetime Data Backup plan. At any point a customer can call in and ask for individual images or their whole family history on photo to be burned onto a brand new DVD.

Manual Color Correction Service vs. Image Restoration Service

Manual color correction is described in the Pricing and Basic Info section and mainly is used to fix problems with color. For example if the photo has a red cast to it, in many cases we can neutralize that color and bring back the original colors. We will check for the whitest pixel in the important viewable area of the image and reset that to the 100% white value, and do the same for black. No software program can do this because we are evaluating the image based on the important data and disregarding things like backlighting from windows and such. If your images has a color cast to them or are too dark, just ask our image scanning technician to employ the manual color correction service. We can even enhance one or two images so that you can see how beautiful your photos can be.

The Image Restoration Service will digitally repair photos. If your photos have, folds, scratches, color blots, fungus or any number of imperfections, ask our image scanning technician for a quote for your photo(s). Even if the image has a piece missing it may be possible to reproduce this missing section based on another photo or other data inside the same photo. It is amazing what can be done with Adobe Photoshop, some extra plug-ins, know-how and experience. And don’t worry, all the original data will be saved.

Why We Don't Use Document Scanners To Scan Photos

The quick answer is: because the quality is not to our standards. But this is the geek corner so we’ll explain further.

History of Document Scanners To Scan Photos: Document scanners have only recently been used for scanning photos. Documents scanners were originally intended for scanning documents for offices. Someone had the bright idea to use them for photo scanning and the era of “shoebox” photo scanning had begun.

DVD Your Memories thought this was a good idea too because we could scan so many more images in the same amount of time. It would be so profitable! But that was until we bought our first machine (Kodak Photo Scanning System s1220), tested it out, and realized that the image quality was not up to our standards and could not be considered archival quality at all.

For the average user, who is not viewing the images on a high-end monitor, may not see the many flaws in the image quality. The most noticeable is the red, green and blue (RGB) streaking that happens with all document scanning. What happens is, the glass in which the document is moved across will pick up tiny dust particles. This happens on flatbed scanners as well, but since the photos are stationary while the image sensor moves, there is no streaking. However, with document scanners there will be a big red line going up and down your grandmother’s body. Not what we consider archiving.

The second problem lies in the darker colored areas of photos. On a better monitor, and of course when printing, you will see a crisscross pattern of white all throughout the dark areas. What do you expect when the image sensor only has 1/3 of a second to scan 24 square inches of a photo.

So if you want 5¢ photo scanning and you found a company that will do it, then they are either using a document scanner or they are sending your precious memories out of the country. Make sure to ask them.