Treasure Your Photos

Those of you who know me know I am an advocate of photobooks.  I am passionate about this method of preserving memories because they are 1) affordable 2) easy to create 3) fade resistant and 4) neat and tidy to store.

Photobooks are easy for those who take and store digital pictures on their computers. But what about those folks who rely on (gasp) those cameras with film in them? Or old pictures that don't have a digital counterpart? Or pictures passed to you by a friend ? Or school pictures, sports pictures, and pictures purchased on a cruise or at a theme park?  

Scanning is a great solution. Many families own a scanner/printer/fax machine/copier contraption that is perfect for scanning a few pictures here and there. But what if we are talking decades worth of photos?

Through research, I have come up with a few (local and not-so-local) companies that provide a photo scanning service for a fee.  

• www.dvdyourmemories.com is located in Kearny Mesa.  They take their photo scanning seriously, and will turn stacks and stacks of pictures into a simple DVD.  They even retain your organization style, i.e. each DVD will have subfolders by year, by vacation, or however you prefer.  They also back up your pictures on their server, so you are covered in case of fire, theft or water damage.  Their pricing depends on the volume of photos turned in, but for a large batch of 300 5x7 pictures, you could expect to pay about 59cents per pictures and receive your DVD in about a week.  You can mail in photos or send in photos.
• Ritz Photo in Rancho Bernardo - use their high speed scanner to scan 200 pictures for about $50.  Advantages? It is quick and cheap at about 25cents a pic. Disadvantages? You are potentially trusting your memories to a teenager! 
• www.Scancafe.com is an online company that is located in Northern CA.  You mail them your pictures (risky?) and within 4 weeks you have an online view of all your pictures.  You can review the pictures one by one and either decline or accept the pics (only pay for what you keep).  The pictures you purchase cost 27cents for 5x7 and under, and 99cents for 8x10 and above.  Once you order your pics, you will receive a disk in 10-14 days, or opt to use their Shutterfly affiliation and directly order a photobook.  This company sounds professional and reasonably priced and I love that you can link to Shutterfly from their site.  I am not a big fan of their time delays and the fact that you have to mail your pictures to them.

Happy Photo Processing!