I’m not a professional photographer or a CR lab technician with specialized equipment and decades of experience evaluating photo quality. (Most also include film and audio transfer services, which we didn’t test.) To compare the results on an apples-to-apples basis, I sent duplicate prints to each company. (I placed the orders under my maiden name and from my personal email address to mask the fact that I’m a CR reporter.)įor each service, I sent approximately 100 slides, 100 photo prints, a dozen negatives, and one VHS tape. In short, I was a secret shopper, considering the overall experience. (As a general rule, there are about 100 photos in a 1-inch stack.) Once the company receives your package, it will do the precise count for you and adjust the final cost accordingly.Īlong the way, I made notes on the ordering process, customer support, how quickly the projects were finished, and even how well the originals were packaged when they were returned to me. You can instead estimate how many items you’re sending. Like any customer, I gathered up photo prints, negatives, slides, and VHS tapes and placed the orders online.īut you don’t need to count every last photo or slide. That left me with four services for a trial run: DigMyPics, EverPresent, Memories Renewed, and ScanMyPhotos. I quickly eliminated 10 services from the running due to poor customer reviews complaints to the Better Business Bureau an outdated or insecure website or a lack of detailed info on pricing, photo resolution, and privacy and security policies. Some companies offer extra services, such as cloud hosting, so you can access and share your digital images once the project is finished. Estimated turnaround times ranged from five days to six-plus weeks, with video conversion generally taking the longest to complete. Prices ranged from 9 cents to $5 per scanned image, depending on the size and resolution. I looked at 14 options, and the offerings varied widely. You might think these services are all the same, more or less, but that’s not what I discovered. Most importantly, it helps us preserve cherished memories, perhaps for generations to come. Imagine being responsible for not only your priceless family memorabilia but your boss’s, too.Ī digital conversion service can take items in various forms of media and turn them into computer files for more convenient storage and sharing. But believe me, dear reader, when I say I was now twice as scared to get this project underway. When Jerry Beilinson, who oversees CR’s technology coverage, offered up boxes of his family’s slides from the 1960s and ’70s, I got even more motivated. For many years I was unsure of how to deal with the items-overwhelmed, really, by the sheer volume of material-and, more to the point, hesitant to hand over my irreplaceable photos and videos to some unknown entity. It wasn’t until I decided to test photo scanning services for Consumer Reports that I found the energy to complete the project. I wanted to digitize the images not only to preserve them but also to share them with friends and family, particularly my teenage daughter, so she could one day look back on them and realize her parents were once young, too. In time, I found myself worrying about what would be lost in the event of a house fire or a hurricane. I stowed it in the attic, where it was soon joined by boxes of photos and videotapes given to my husband by his parents, plus the prints and negatives we amassed on our own in the days before digital cameras and smartphones were a thing. The most precious item I received was a box full of photos documenting me and my siblings as we grew up. Before my parents moved from New York to Arizona in 2006, they left me with many of their belongings-a dinnerware set, an upright piano, a giant fig tree.
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