Scanning photos in bulk?

I recommend giving ScanCafe a try: http://www.scancafe.com/

I used them for a slide scanning project based on a Cool Tools recommendation and had a good experience – got all of my originals back to me w/good-quality scans at a reasonable price.

Scancafe is good but takes time. You can go to most Target stores and do it yourself…just feed a stack of pictures into their scanner and it scans all the photographs and creates a CD.  Not all stories have this scanner in their Photo department so call and check with the ones near your location. 

I just got a snapscan iX500; it’s not very cheap ($400 range), but it’s so useful. I’ve scanned several photos at high res, and they look pretty nice. You can also put quite a stack of items in at the same time, and it will just buzz through them.
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/index.html

I got it primarily to turning thousands of old paper files into searchable items; it does OCR PDFs so nicely (scans both sides at once), I can’t believe it’s as cheap as it is. Also scans little receipts, business cards, etc just as well.

I’ve also used Scan Cafe, but am a little torn on the results. For one, you’re risking your photos in the mail, and for another, their custom repair service is more than a little arbitrary. Also not that cheap for a huge pile of photos.

I have had a box of 640 slides scanned by ScanCafe. I’m satisfied with the results but the reason they are so slow is they ship everything to India for processing. Unless you shell out for more to have it done in the U.S. I am presently trying another box of 640 slides to be scanned by Larsen Digital who is located in Utah. They say all the work is done there and nothing is shipped overseas. Then I’ll make the decision on the remaining 6,000 plus slides (a lifetime of family history that is worthless to anyone else but invaluable to me).

Do a Google Map search for a local photo shop that will do it. I found one close to me that would do a bulk rate 1000 photos for something like $70. I considered buying a scanner and doing it myself, but you’d quickly burn through the equivalent value of your time, in addition to the cost of a scanner that would do items in bulk.

I used scan cafe to do my grandparents photo books, slides, negatives, and prints. They did take a while as they ship your photos I think to India but they did a great job. I was able to pick photo’s that I did not want a copy of on the CD and not pay for them, if you signup for their newsletter or look for coupon codes they almost always have a promotion running. I think we did 600 photos which would have taken me a long time on my own, remember your time is worth something as well.

I was in exactly your situation about 3 years ago.  I had about 8,000 photos in boxes, envelopes, albums and cookie tins from my wife’s family that I had (foolishly?) agreed to digitize.  I had a Fujitsu document scanner, but it wasn’t ideal for photos, and an Epson flatbed that is great for photos but would have taken months to use for a project of this size. 

I ended up renting an autofeed Kodak photo scanner from ezphotoscan.com for a week for somewhere north of $300.  Prices may be a bit higher now.  The company was extremely easy to work with.  I picked a week where I had some time off, and they overnighted me a box with a laptop and scanner in it.  I was able to get through 95% of what I had to scan in just 4 days.  The rest was glued into albums and not easy to remove.  All the loose photos scanned in beautifully and I was able to burn several DVDs to send to family members with all the photos they were wanting.  I then returned the scanner/laptop/box back to the rental company. 

It’s cheaper than buying one of these scanners yourself, and safer as well as more secure and private than sending all your photos to someone else to scan.  I highly recommend their service and if I had to repeat the process would definitely use them again.

Good luck with your pictures!

If you have loose photos and don’t mind the cost, use a scanning service. To avoid risk of loss or damage in shipping, use a local service like Target or CVS.

To DIY, get ANY scanner that batch-scans and auto-crops. Another great option is to use a digital, smartphone or tablet camera: Take photos of photos (Make sure flash is turned off), then crop. This may be the only option when photos are in albums or frames – scanning services or desktop scanners won’t handle these.

If you use iPhone or iPad, Pic Scanner app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pic-scanner-scan-photos-fast/id644278663?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4. $2.99 after free trial) is a real cool tool: You just keep scanning, and the app automatically keeps cropping and saving in the background. You can even scan 3-4 photos together – the app will separate and save them.

Final suggestion: Don’t discard the originals. Even if you are constrained for space, sift through the boxes, discard duplicates or mediocre photos, but do keep 15-20% of the best photos. You may not think so now, but one day your descendents may thank you for it!

I’ll add my voice to the recommendations for Scan Cafe. When I scanned a few hundred negatives and slides a while back, they had the best prices, the best policies, and they did a terrific job. At one pricing tier, you can review the scans online and reject (and not pay for) up to 20% of the scans. That plan is especially handy for those working with negatives and slides, since it’s hard to eliminate unwanted photos before they’re scanned. As warned in comments above, it does take time — it looks like 2-3 months from what I see on the Web site.

I’ve used ScanCafe a number of times with success. In looking for a cheaper solution, I found ScanMyPhotos (http://www.scanmyphotos.com/photo-scanning/prepaid-photo-scanning-box.html). I’ll probably send a batch to them today. I’ll try to remember to update this post, once I get the results.

Also, I noticed you said you were going to discard the originals. I\'ve heard experts recommend that we don\'t do that since the original copy is the best copy. I just store mine in a giant box \"just in case\".

When my Mom passed away 7 years ago, I was faced with the monumental task of doing something with endless boxes of photos – many, many of which I’d never previously even known existed. (http://www.2dolphins.com/2008/09/photographic-memory/)

I opted to use DigMyPics (http://www.digmypics.com), a home-grown company in Arizona that, for less than $0.20 apiece, scanned our photos and sent the high-resolution uncompressed image files back on DVDs in just about 2 weeks via FedEx. From my experience and all accounts, their imaging professionals handle your pictures with the greatest care.

The only real downside that I discovered to this is that they only scan the fronts – as expected – but you’ll probably find that lots and lots of your ancient family photos have invaluable, if sometimes indecipherable, notes written on the backs.

The other issue is that a great many of the photos you discover that have been passed down from parents or grandparents lose all meaning without context. Please make the time to sit down with an elderly relative to pore over those old photos and ask questions. Once your parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are gone, so too are the opportunities to discover why some of those photos were taken and of whom.

NeatDesk

 

I scanned my stack of photos with a photo scanning software AutoSplitter. It was making fairly accurate splits, proceeded to finish ~150 photos in one afternoon.

For bulk scanning, I’ve found the best overall option is Memory Fortress in Georgia.  I had several thousand old photos, mostly loose, some in albums, and a whole mess of slides and negatives and VHS tapes.  Basically I handed them a mess because I was tired of it clogging up the garage and the attic.  They took a couple of weeks to get it all done, but it was way better than I thought.  They had organized everything the way I had asked, all the photos were 14 cents apiece, and the slides and negatives looked really sharp.  I had never even seen the images before!  Stuff from the 60s and early 70s.  The videos came back on DVDs, everything else was on a couple of flash drives.

And they are big fans of the US, very patriotic too.  I will use them again.  https://memoryfortress.com