When looking at stacks and stacks of boxes of photos it can be overwhelming, and turning them over to someone else to digitize can be stressful – afterall, these arent just images on paper, they are your memories!
Hopefully, the FAQs below will help you understand the process. Our goal is to help you get these precious memories archived and ready to share with friends and family now, and with future generations.
If your question isn’t answered below, feel free to contact us.
If you are in Sonoma County, we will coordinate a pick up/drop off of your photographs. Once the scanning process is done, we will again coordinate a day/time/place to get them back to you. If you are outside of Sonoma County, we can provide shipping options to our partner vendor for digitization of your photos and media.
We won’t know, unless you tell us. If you sort your photos before you give them to us and bundle them by time frame, by event, or by category (i.e. “Italy Vacation Summer 2022” or “Emily’s 5th Birthday”) then we will use these descriptions in the file names so you can more easily find the images you want. We can enter year, month, and event in the file name if you would like (i.e. 2022_July_Italy_Vacation.jpg). If no information is provided to name the image files we will give them a basic name (i.e. john_smith.jpg). We recommend you break them down into large groups of images rather than invividual image names since it’s impossible for us to name each one separately.
For each scanned image, you will receive two or three JPEG image files. The first is the original scanned image, just as it looks in the print. The second is the auto enhanced version. The third is a scan of the back side of the photo if there happens to be writing or information on the back.
Because each scanning project is different, we cannot guarantee a specific timeframe but we do our best to have yours complete in less than two weeks. We will discuss the timing with you based on our current workload and the scope of your project.
By default, your images will be uploaded to our web based gallery system in a password protected folder. You will have 60 days to download your images from this gallery at full resolution onto your computer. We highly recommend considering permanent cloud storage, which we offer through FOREVER Storage. We can upload your images directly to your permanent storage account.
If you would prefer, we can deliver files on a flash drive (additional $30), or external hard drive (starting at an additional $100 depending on size of drive). Either of these options require sales tax to be charge to the total cost of the service and device according to California tax code.
If you submit any torn or damaged photos for scanning, there is a risk of further damage during our bulk scanning process. For these types of photos, special care is needed to digitize them, therefore, an additional charge per photo will apply. This will be discussed with you before we do anything that would increase the cost of your project. Note: we do offer a DIGITAL PHOTO RESTORATION service to help preserve those precious images. Contact us with a description of your project.
In our process, we will perform a general color correction, make adjustments to contrast, saturation, and, when possible, correct for red-eye. You will have the original and enhanced file for each and every scan so you can choose which you like best.
We scan all images at 600dpi, as opposed to 300dpi that many other compaies do. In general, a print can be enlarged 300-350% when scanned at 600dpi. So, a 4×6 print can be enlarged to 12×18 and an 8×10 print could be enlarge to 24×30.
We will hold your files for 60 days in archive and then purge them from our file system. We highly recommend our partner offer of lifetime +100 years, permanent, guaranteed storage & sharing of your files. Please see our FOREVER Storage page for more information.
Bulk Photo Scanning
Large Format Digital Reproduction
Permanent Digital Storage
Photo Restoration