Sure, we’d love to scan every photo, slide and negative you care to send our way but you have to be realistic. For many people it’s just too risky putting precious photos in the post. 1Scan is a local scanning service for Essex, north London, Kent and other parts of Greater London.
What if you live elsewhere? What if you just can’t trust the mail? Well you can try Google or maybe a dedicated scanning service directory. Find-a-Scanservice is a directory of scanning services, searchable by type of photo originals to be scanned and location. It covers the UK, Europe and pretty much the rest of the world. Great site and service.
If you want you photos, negatives or slides scanned try us, but if you can’t, now you know where to look.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Photo scanning - tiff or jpg?
We’re often asked by photo scanning clients, which file format should I opt for - tiff or jpg?
Sometimes clients think that one format offers a better quality image than the other. That isn’t the case, scanning quality is determined by the dpi setting. In essence the higher the dpi the better the quality of the scan. So a 4,000 dpi tiff file is the same image quality as a 4,000 dpi jpg.
A tiff file is uncompressed, while a jpg is compressed. The maths behind image file compression is brilliant so for the vast majority of applications the fact that the file is compressed isn’t an issue. In fact jpg files are smaller, easier to email, quicker to open, making life a lot easier for most of us.
If you intend to do a lot of serious image editing a tiff file may be better. You can save without compression until you get to a final image, which you might save as a jpg for distribution. You can edit and save a tiff file many, many times without loss of quality, that’s the advantage.
Professional photographers typically want tiff files although many serious amateurs also opt for tiffs. If you’ve bitten the bullet on the price of Photoshop the extra cost and processing overheads of tiffs are hardly likely to be a barrier.
If you have slides or negatives as a source material tiff files are a viable option. If you’re sending photos (prints) then its unlikely that you’ll get any real advantage from tiffs, which is why we scan prints to jpg files.
Sometimes clients think that one format offers a better quality image than the other. That isn’t the case, scanning quality is determined by the dpi setting. In essence the higher the dpi the better the quality of the scan. So a 4,000 dpi tiff file is the same image quality as a 4,000 dpi jpg.
A tiff file is uncompressed, while a jpg is compressed. The maths behind image file compression is brilliant so for the vast majority of applications the fact that the file is compressed isn’t an issue. In fact jpg files are smaller, easier to email, quicker to open, making life a lot easier for most of us.
If you intend to do a lot of serious image editing a tiff file may be better. You can save without compression until you get to a final image, which you might save as a jpg for distribution. You can edit and save a tiff file many, many times without loss of quality, that’s the advantage.
Professional photographers typically want tiff files although many serious amateurs also opt for tiffs. If you’ve bitten the bullet on the price of Photoshop the extra cost and processing overheads of tiffs are hardly likely to be a barrier.
If you have slides or negatives as a source material tiff files are a viable option. If you’re sending photos (prints) then its unlikely that you’ll get any real advantage from tiffs, which is why we scan prints to jpg files.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Photo Backup
Yesterday I had a surreal experience. I had to drive to three locations in London, returning work to one and collecting from the others. When I got home I saw TV images of damage to police cars at a junction I’d driven past a couple of hours ago. Then substantial fire damage in a block in Clapham where another of our clients work.
I just don’t think I live and work in areas at the mercy of fire raisers and looters, this is London in the 21st century. But it’s clear how people have suffered, and how much distress people suffer when they lose precious possessions. I have ben struck how high up the list the loss of family photos has been for people in Hackney and Tottenham. What we we do to protect our own memories?
First, it helps to get your photos into a digital format. In physical form 4,000 photos fills a good sized box, once scanned these photos (scanned in high quality) would fit onto a DVD. That disc is easier to store and copy, so a duplicate can be held off-site.
If you have a large number of scanned photos you’d be thinking of storing them on a hard drive. As we’ve seen all too vividly, you need to have your digital image files copied onto a backup of that hard drive, and here’s the point, stored safely off-site. Certainly you could make an arrangement with a friend or relative to store your backup and it’s an improvement. You should also give thought to a professional off-site file backup service. We’ve used Apple’s MobileMe service (soon to be replaced) and Dropbox, both have worked well for us. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a remote version of Apple’s Timemachine called DollyDrive. This gives me a complete backup of my machine which is stored “in the cloud” so if I should lose my hard drive, or even my MacBook, there’s a complete copy of my system held out of harms way.
I just don’t think I live and work in areas at the mercy of fire raisers and looters, this is London in the 21st century. But it’s clear how people have suffered, and how much distress people suffer when they lose precious possessions. I have ben struck how high up the list the loss of family photos has been for people in Hackney and Tottenham. What we we do to protect our own memories?
First, it helps to get your photos into a digital format. In physical form 4,000 photos fills a good sized box, once scanned these photos (scanned in high quality) would fit onto a DVD. That disc is easier to store and copy, so a duplicate can be held off-site.
If you have a large number of scanned photos you’d be thinking of storing them on a hard drive. As we’ve seen all too vividly, you need to have your digital image files copied onto a backup of that hard drive, and here’s the point, stored safely off-site. Certainly you could make an arrangement with a friend or relative to store your backup and it’s an improvement. You should also give thought to a professional off-site file backup service. We’ve used Apple’s MobileMe service (soon to be replaced) and Dropbox, both have worked well for us. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a remote version of Apple’s Timemachine called DollyDrive. This gives me a complete backup of my machine which is stored “in the cloud” so if I should lose my hard drive, or even my MacBook, there’s a complete copy of my system held out of harms way.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Photo Scanning & Photo Restore
We scan photos. We restore photos. But ...
Will we turn dull winter shots into sparkling summer days? Replace mouse eaten corners from ancient prints? Lift unsightly buildings from a cluttered background? The answer is no, that’s not what we do. What we’re trying to do when we scan a photo or scan a slide or negative is to get the best digital version of what landed on the camera at the time the shutter was pressed. Time takes its toll, dust and scratches are a problem so we do what we can with those.
We want to give you the best scan of the images as it was. To do anything more is not just very expensive but also potentially ruinous, as we don’t know what you want to see until the digital photo scan is in your view. We know how much colour restore to apply through a thorough digital analysis of the data in the scanned image. That’s the best we can do. And we think it’s the most you should want from a photo scanning service.
Will we turn dull winter shots into sparkling summer days? Replace mouse eaten corners from ancient prints? Lift unsightly buildings from a cluttered background? The answer is no, that’s not what we do. What we’re trying to do when we scan a photo or scan a slide or negative is to get the best digital version of what landed on the camera at the time the shutter was pressed. Time takes its toll, dust and scratches are a problem so we do what we can with those.
We want to give you the best scan of the images as it was. To do anything more is not just very expensive but also potentially ruinous, as we don’t know what you want to see until the digital photo scan is in your view. We know how much colour restore to apply through a thorough digital analysis of the data in the scanned image. That’s the best we can do. And we think it’s the most you should want from a photo scanning service.
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