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I have about 700-800 standard sized photos sitting up in my room that i want to get scanned in before something happens to them (flood fire lost).

I know there are services out there but the best one i could find so far is Scancafe.com and they charge like $0.29 per photo so that's not going to be in my budget.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for the best way to scan in a few hundred photos

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  • 1
    Do you still have the negatives?
    – innaM
    Oct 22, 2009 at 16:20
  • some yes some no
    – Crash893
    Oct 23, 2009 at 16:24

6 Answers 6

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This link explain more about this.

For example:

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You can scan photos using the above method and use a good photo editor like Photoshop with feature like Crop and Straighten.

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29 cents is a good price! I'm going to check them out now. I can't imagine it being significantly cheaper than that-- especially if you're talking about irreplaceable photos that are effectively priceless.

The only other alternative is to buy a decent scanner and do it yourself. I've done that, but there are serious issues with it. One, it takes time-- a LOT of time. Two, there are quality/photography snags that keep it from being as good as you think it should be. My problem was dust. I had to wipe down each photo and the scanner bed everytime I scanned, then I spent a long time finding the optimal resolution and fussed endlessly with white balance.

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Use Canon's LIDE scanner - the device driver software for scanning can scan multiple photos at one go and separate them out and save them as individual files - i have used it to scan very old family photos with amazing results .. definitely something worth trying out !!

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  • the Canon LIDE is great, I have one too and we use it quite a bit. All powered by USB, too! Oct 23, 2009 at 6:23
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What about purchasing a cheap-ish scanner, say $50 or maybe less.

Feed them all through (or at least batches of 50 or so), then find a utility to split the multipage images into separate image files?

Once you're done you could sell the scanner on eBay, or keep it incase you need to use it again.

Not the best method, but could be most cost effective in the long run

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  • Do you know a good scanner with a 4x6 loader?
    – Crash893
    Oct 24, 2009 at 2:54
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I saw this article today, in case you do end up doing the 3rd party scanning route. Which I'd recommend cause it's a pain otherwise :)

http://www.macworld.com/article/143504/2009/10/outsourcescanning.html

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For the negatives you have use a negative scanner. These come with a cassette into which you load the negative strip and you can then feed these through the scanner to process many images at a time. The image of this one on Amazon shows the cassette.

I won't recommend any particular one as

a) I've never used one myself

and

b) a colleague of mine tried to use one and had problems.

So if you choose to go this route check them out first to find one your happy with.

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