WHY should I convert slides to digital images to preserve them?

WHAT does a professional slide scanning service do for me?

WHO am I trusting with my precious slides, photos and negatives?

Chose Quality Photo Restoration Services


A perfect gift for your parents this Christmas

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PAY only for the scans you choose to keep!





Convert VHS To DVD – Video Editing Requirements

If you are about to convert your old home movies to DVD and you also want to digitally edit your home movies, then read this article before you start. It could save you a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted.

It may sound crazy but if you want to transfer VHS to DVD you don’t really want to transfer VHS to DVD.  Instead, you want to transfer VHS to a digital file format that can best preserve the details of your originals.

If you want to digitally edit your movies, add music, add audio and video transitions, etc., then you need to transfer your analog video to a digital file format such as MP4 or AVI. These file formats are known as being the most reliable for video editing. They are uncompressed digital file formats that preserve a very high level image quality. DVD image quality is at a lower resolution than these ‘raw’ MP4 and AVI file formats.

So, if you want to edit your home videos, you will need to first convert them to MP4 or AVI files that are then copied to a data DVD or a portable drive. Then you can import the files into a video editing software program such as Apple’s ‘Final Cut’ or Adobe’s ‘Premiere’ to do the video editing. After you are done editing, then you can author the DVD and burn your home movie editing projects to the DVD.

If you are hiring a digital transfer company to do the transfer from Super 8mm film or VHS tape, then you need to request uncompressed high resolution digital files for the final delivery. It will probably cost more but I think it is worth it and you probably do too or you would not have read this far into this article. Correct?

So never convert VHS tapes to DVD – as crazy as that statement sounds. Instead, convert your home movies to MP4 or AVI first. Do this – and do it well – and you can preserve your home movies for generations to come. Good luck.

Digital Photo Frame

There is an attractive way to bank your photograph recollections and that is to make use of a digital photo frame. It is comparable to the photo frames at Hogwarts School of witch craft and wizardry. Still you will not discover the people and objects in the photo in motion with your digital photo frame. Nevertheless you will locate the images being shown one after the other in a set gap for the coolest result.
You ought to obtain a digital photo frame if you desire to save printer ink and document production. It is also cost effective in the time interval as you do not need to misuse the printer ink and paper. It is in addition the ideal means to keep all the photos protected in one appliance and view it one by one without having to turn over the pages of a photo album. It can definitely be an enormous souvenir for any event as it preserves and stores people’s memoirs out in the open. As there are numerous varieties of digital photo frame that is offered in the market it is advisable to look at a digital photo frame buying guide prior to settling on the appliance. Some of these advices may help you come across the optimum digital frame for yourself or as a present:
What is the utilization: It is good to consider what you are using the photo frame for; you will uncover other features like audio, blue tooth, video, etc. in addition to photo slides in a digital photo frame. Depending on what you crave you ought to buy the frame.
Brand name: It is equally central to think about the brand, like HP when purchasing the digital photo frame; if you acquire from a reliable brand then you can also be certain about its assurance. Conversely brand name must not be of the main concern.
Image quality: It should be your main concern as that is what the digital frame’s major purpose is to convey good class pictures and images which are gratifying to watch. It is consequently valuable to get a high decree frame that can display the particulars of the images and the pictures.

The cost: You will find frames that can range more than two hundred dollars and you can certainly get a less than fifty dollar frame. According to your needs you should get the most practicable digital photo frame.

12 January 2011, No comments
Categories: Information
Memories matter

Should You Choose a Photo Scanning Service or Self-Scanning?

You have scores of your old photos, some printed and even negative films of different kinds. You don’t want to lose your fond moments and are looking for some way to preserve them. Today, the best way to do this is to scan your pictures either yourself or make use of a photo scanning service which will do the job for a fee.

Doing the job yourself

Now, you might be thinking whether doing the job yourself would turn out to be cheaper than delegating the job to a scanning service. Of course, if you have a flatbed scanner, you would like to do the job yourself and save some money. Let us look at what goes into scanning all of your photos using a scanner at home.

The first thing that you have to do is take out the photos and see if they have faded in any way. If they are so faded that you can’t recognize anything, the scanner won’t be able to magically bring everything back. You should also wipe off any kind of dust that has accumulated on the photos over the years.

If some dirt particles are too stubborn, use a wet cloth and rub it on the dirt by pressing gently so that no part of the photo is damaged. The next thing that you have to do is to sort out your photos and organize them into groups so that you can scan them in a particular order. This is not necessary, but will make your job easier when you are placing photos in different folders.

A Professional scanning service

Of course, doing all the scanning work yourself is a big hassle and is a very time consuming job if you are a working professional. This is where a professional photo scanning service is the most useful. They take care of all the mess related and give you digital versions of all those photos.

Since they do the job in bulk the cost is usually not very high. It could be about 30-40 cents per photo scan in most cases. Also, since they are most used to be the job, they will be able to do the job more efficiently. Once you hand the job over to service, they will do all the work such as organizing your photos according to your preference.

Most of the professional scanning services use scanners with higher dpi which means greater clarity. The printer you use at home might not be able to get you the best scanned pictures since they are means for normal use and not for high resolution images.

Also a professional photo scanning service will be able to resize all the digital images of your photos into similar sizes. This will make the whole album on the PC or Mac look much better. If you are not sure whether you should do the job yourself or give it to a scanning service, it is always wiser to choose the second option and not take any chances with your precious photos.

Some Information about Photo Restoration Services

Pictures of you way of preserving your memories for ever and remembering people who are and have been very close to you. You value them so much that you always want to carry around some of the most cherished ones with you in frames or use them in decoration. However, there are chances that the photos have deteriorated over the years.

However, you do not need to worry since photo restoration services can help you bring those photos back to life and even enhance them ways that you might not imagine. Here, we will take a look at some of the tools and techniques used by the photo restorers so that you can choose an appropriate one for restoring your old photos.

Traditional Techniques

The people restoring your photos are skilled people who can make you photo look the way they looked when you first took them. Many of the photo restoration techniques are decades old, but are still somewhat effective. They use tools such as dyes, brushes, fixers, chemicals, and other equipment such as fixers and toners to do their job.

These kinds of photo restoration methods are mostly done manually i.e., by hand and do take quite a bit of time and hard work to complete. However, for very old photos which are very damages, these methods work very well and can produce very desirable results.

Modern Techniques

As is human natures, there are new ways to do everything in the world. Photo restoration services are not any different for that matter. Today, much of the photo restoration work is done using digital techniques. They use specialized software in order to do the job. Digital photo restoration is a bit quicker than the traditional methods and has many other advantages too.

Digital photo restoration is done by using scanners and a computer. The scanner first scans the old damaged photos and converts into a digital format. This is then stored into the computer so that it can be manipulated and restored. Once all the editing has been done and the restorer has done all he can to restore the photo, he will either mail it to you or stored them in a CD or DVD for storage.

The photo restorer uses specialized photo editing software. Popular examples of such software are Adobe Photoshop and GIMP. These kinds of software have many automated functions for jobs such as tonal correction or red eye correction. Such automated tools are very useful to correct any blemishes that might have occurred when the photos were taken.

Other more difficult tasks such as erasing the folds or bringing back the parts of the photos that have faded over the years is done manually. These tasks are usually very time consuming for the photo restoration services and also somewhat difficult to do.

Now that you know quite a bit about both the photo restoration methods, you can choose services which are best suited for your purpose. If your photos have deteriorated only somewhat, you can even do the job at home by using software. Otherwise, you would be wise to hand the job over to an expert.

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About Me

My name is Jennifer. Loving daughter to my 83 year old mother. Last year as a Mother's Day gift, I sent away to have all of her slides converted to digital images and have some photo restoration applied to them. Now she has all of her old slides digitized, so that she can view them when ever she likes in her digital photoframe, or as a photo book we printed for her.