Hi,

Here we are with the official summer kick-off only a couple of days away! I love summer and I'm so excited that our weather is warming up. It's going to be a beautiful Memorial Day Weekend here, and I hope it will be where you live, too. I don't know about you, but I will be off to the beach!

Scanning Old Photos & 35mm Slides Can Save Them from
Fading, Color-shift & Damage

Recently a friend of mine put together a photo book to give to her mother for her 70th birthday. She included a bunch of old photos going back to her mother's childhood. She sent a stack of old pictures and 35mm slides to a scanning service to scan them and digitize them and put them on a DVD. From those digital photos she was able to create a photo book and and she also made a digital slide show. What a great idea for all kinds of occasions, from birthdays to family reunions, documenting your family tree, graduations, etc. Most importantly, scanning and digitizing old photos and slides is the best way to preserve them from damage and loss.

Did you know that it only takes 12 years for color photos to start deteriorating -- fading and color shifting? I have a framed 4x6 snapshot from my wedding 17 years ago and the colors have shifted to a bluish haze. Fortunately, that can be fixed by scanning it to digital and correcting the color. However, I've tried scanning pictures myself and it is a huge pain because it is hard to get all the little specs of dust off the scanner and the photo, and those little specks really show up on the scanned pictures. I also don't have a scanner that does slides. And frankly, having to color correct more than one or two scans is not how I want to spend my time.

My friend used a photo scanning service. She shipped them her pictures, then they scanned each photo and 35mm slide and manually corrected them individually for color shift, fading, red-eye, minor damage, and removed dust and minor scratches. While it sounds like this could be very expensive, it was actually quite reasonable, about 35 cents per photo or slide, and they came out great - very sharp, with excellent color and contrast (it worked well with old b&w photos too). She used ScanCafe.

Photos can fade or color shift over time (see first photo above). Luckily, a scanning service can color-correct them (see 2nd photo) during the scanning process and afterward using Photoshop.

I researched scanning services and found that ScanCafe has extremely reasonable prices and produced excellent quality scans, plus you can preview them online and only buy the ones you want (you can discard up to 50%). The only downside is because they scan by hand, the average turnaround is 30 days. ScanDigital also did a very good job and has a 7-day turnaround, but they are more expensive. Both services have excellent track records for keeping your originals safe and secure. You can even send entire photo albums and slide carousels. Read my full review and comparison of photo and slide scanning services here.

If you sign up for SmileBooks photo books free newsletter, you'll get a coupon for a free 8x8 softcover photo book. Sign up here. It's free. And their software is also free to download.

Super Memorial Day Sales at Photo Printing Services

I've found some really great photo sales and discounts. You'll want to take advantage of these. Some expire May 31, others are good until around mid-June. Check them out below.

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Have a safe and fun Memorial Day Weekend!

Valerie
www.digitalphotos101.com
How to get the best from your digital camera

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