Re: Bulk scanning service for thousand of photos and slides

"Z1Z" <> wrote in message news: ...
>I spent a few days going through my boxes full of photos spanning the period
> 1970-2006. I have about two thousand photos to be scanned. In many cases, I
> have the negatives. I haven't counted my slides but I probably have around
> 400-500. Many of the photos and slides would benefit from basic automated
> enhancement using Digital Ice, dust removal, color restoration. I would like
> to digitize my entire collection, but it is too large a job for me to handle
> on my own.
>
> I would like to hire a service to convert my material to digital photo
> files, preferably TIFF's. I would like the photos scanned at 600DPI and the
> slides scanned at 4,000DPI.
>
> Could anyone recommend a photo-processing firm to do the conversion work for
> me? I have looked at the web sites for ScanCafe and DigMyPics, as well as
> various others. It is important to me that the work be done on the US and
> not sent overseas. Anytime anything is transported, the chance of loss or
> damage is increased, and I'd rather pay more than increase the chance I will
> lose thirty years of photos. I am very interested in a quality, automated
> job, meaning that I don't expect a technician to individually inspect and
> color-correct each photo, but some equipment can automatically correct
> imperfections.
>
> Can anyone recommend a company that can capably handle this assignment?
>


Really good folks here, been around a LONG time too: http://www.colorservices.com/
(California, in a town of 7 campuses of Brooks Intitute of Photography). Some important
stipulations need be designated for scanning is printing dimensions and pixels per inch,
downsampled after the scan to 300 PPI is all that is necassary. If 35mm, then both
positives and negatives can and should be scanned at the same initial resolution. The
general top dimension printing size for 35mm is 11-12x16-18 inches or so, not quite
poster size, and pretty much the same dimension as a 6 megpixel digital file from a
digital camera.

35mm is a 3:2 aspect ratio which is more rectangular than 4:3 (equal sized sections by
equal sized sections), for whatever point.

However as well, files can be software-interpolated to larger by up to 300% so that a print
can be bigger, and still look perfectly fine. You wouldn't keep a file that is literally totally
4,000 PPI! Much less 2,000 of them. That would take up some massive area on any kind
of disc! Just the 300 PPI and the dimension is all that's needed for the perfect print whether
Frontier machine (bathed photo paper from digital projection exposure) or Giclee (ink jet).

....hope this helps with your decisions, and good luck.

--
Giant_Alex }<)))*>
not my site: http://www.e-sword.net/