Outsource the Scanning of Your Old Photos

At the beginning of the summer, I decided that one of my big projects would be digitizing all of the photos I took in high school and college before I shot everything digitally (see examples here and here). I got out the old flatbed scanner, searched all over the internet for updated device drivers, determined which software programs I would use for my workflow, and started into it. After scanning literally two photos, I realized that this wasn't going to work. The speed of the scanner, handling the photos without proper gloves, and the amount of dust in my apartment (don't judge me - I get my place cleaned every other week) made this nearly impossible. When I determined that, at the very least it would've taken all summer, I decided to outsource it to ScanMyPhotos International.

At first, the idea of sending my only copy (except for the negatives) of photos I had taken traveling abroad or with friends and family to some scanning center in California was a bit terrifying. I mean, the mail must go through, right? But there's a reason the guy behind the counter in the Post Office always asks if you want insurance for your package. After reading through the details on the site - and the review posted by David Pogue (of NYTimes fame) - I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. With a decent number of packed albums and stacks of wrapped photos in shoeboxes, I chose the pre-paid option which is basically all-you-can-fit-in-the-box for $150. This ended up being the best deal for me, as I was able to fit 1,559 photos in the box. That's less than 10 cents per photo. Sure, it's taken me a few hours to do some basic deskew, despeckle, and color correction work in Aperture and iPhoto, but ScanMyPhotos completed all of the scanning on the day they received the box, and mailed it back to me the next day. A little quicker than the workflow I had designed.

Granted, quickly generated 300dpi JPEGs will not give you photographer-grade scans by any means, but for archival purposes or just to get the process moving, this is a great place to start. The longest time and most effort I had to put in throughout the entire process was in removing all of the photos from the albums and then putting them back in afterwards. A bit tedious, but a walk down memory lane and something you can do over the course of one rainy afternoon in front of the television. ScanMyPhotos worked out very well. I was able to get a seemingly huge project off of my to-do list and didn't sacrifice any time spent improving my tan or golf game this summer.