Photo Scanning

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helpmeplease1994

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

Topic # 115320 21-Mar-2013 17:02

Hi Everyone

This is my first time using this website so if i have put this in the wrong place sorry and could some please direct me to the right place lol

I am after some advice we have around about 1000-2000 6X4 photos in photo albums and for saftey reasons would like to gets these scanned into a computer and put them in a safe on a external harddrive. We did try this around a year ago but was scanning every photo one by one and then having to crop them as the scanner didnt crop them . this became very boring and long . so long story short .

Does anyone know of a scanner than can multi feed the photos and auto crop them ? and if so has anyone on here tried it ?

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

KennyM

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Master Geek
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Reply # 785115 21-Mar-2013 17:34

I have also been looking at this.

Our photocopier at work does a 'scan to file' option, so im going to take a heap in and give it a go.

they go in the 'auto feed' thing on the top, so im going to try it with some of my digital ones that ive had printed as it does bend them around the feeding roller thing...But i dont really see it being a huge problem. But dont want it damaging them either.
Quality should be fine (it is a color copier)

Plan: put about 50 in the feeder....normal A4 pages take about 1 second per page for the scanning part...dont see this taking any longer.

SCUBADOO

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Reply # 785120 21-Mar-2013 17:45

My method would be to simply set up a digital camera on a tripod.
Place each photo onto a fixed prefabricated holder and snap.
Pretty easy in good daylight. Over time you would have your collection perfectly archived.

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da5id

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Reply # 785122 21-Mar-2013 17:47

Both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have a command to crop and straighten photographs.
You whack as many photos as you can onto the scanner bed with space between them, scan them in and (in Photoshop) use the Crop and Straighten command. It senses the photographs, straightens them, crops them, and opens them as separate images.

http://www.infiniteskills.com/blog/2011/03/adobe-photoshop-cs5-tutorial-crop-and-straighten-scanned-photos/

http://www.tipsquirrel.com/speed-your-scanning-workflow-in-photoshop/

It's similar in Photoshop Elements -

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=412912&seqNum=5

timmmay

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Reply # 785176 21-Mar-2013 20:30

Outsource it to someone who already worked it out. There are plenty of places in the states, not sure about NZ.

I'd be wary having a work photocopier/MFD at them. The bending probably won't be good for them.

Photographing them would be fine, but beware of reflections.

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Reply # 785211 21-Mar-2013 21:37

timmmay: Outsource it to someone who already worked it out.

+1

i've tried it myself, and without the right scanner or software its a drag.

by the time you've paid for a good scanner and photoshop, you might have spent enough money for someone else to do it....

quick google search returns these and more:

http://www.snapshot.co.nz/save/shoebox-photo-scans "$1 each"
http://www.filmscan.co.nz/order-scanning.html "as little as $1 each"
http://www.photowarehouse.co.nz/print-and-film-scans/ "$99 up to 1000 prints"
http://www.photofresh.co.nz/pages/22/photo-scanning.htm "$1.30 for 5x7, $2.50 8x10"
http://www.photoscanningnz.com/ "0.85 each"

need to check the scan resolution and post processing of each of the services. more expensive services might be delivering larger files (higher resolution scans) or retouch/repair.

in any case, if you have 1000 photos and it cost you $1000 to get them done, then why would you buy a $300-$1000 scanner, a $200-$2000 software program and invest hundreds of your own hours..... its only "fun" for the first few scans!

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bfginger

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Reply # 785245 21-Mar-2013 22:47

Did you lose the negatives? Scanning the negatives will give a better picture quality if a professional grade scanner is used. But they're rare and expensive.

lchiu7

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Reply # 785252 21-Mar-2013 23:02

That's what I did. I used one of these

Canon FS2710 film scanner

2,720 dpi optical resolution
36-bit color depth, supporting 68.7 billion colors
Up to 13 seconds-per-frame scanning speed
SCSI-2 interface (adapter included), compatible with PC and Macintosh
Supports APS and 35mm film

Not the highest resolution but since it was scanning negatives, slides and APS film cartridges, the quality was way better than scanning the prints. That is really the recommended option if you still have the negatives.

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rayonline

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Reply # 794228 6-Apr-2013 11:47

Obviously a film scanner will be the best way not only in quality but in speed and ease of use. You can load a flatbed scanner with 4 strips of film depending on how the lab cut them, most minilabs would have cut them into 4 frames per strip so you can load 4x 4 = 16 shots per scan set the reso and walk away. It will scan each automatically for you and save the file, provide sharpening, provide auto color correction if you want, auto crop the frame of each, and do dust reduction as well. So basically a film scanner can do a roll of film in two goes while you go away and watch tv or eat/drink or muck around ....

Someone mentioned a auto feeder, that's a new one but for prints the usual way is really scan one by one or scan 4 of them on the scanner glass at a time and just crop/cut on the photo software at least you can scan 4x at one go. Or yeah outsource.

Edit - if you look on photo.net there might been a software people talked about that would do auto crop/rotate for you but yeah you still then have to do the scanning yourself of the 1000s you mentioned.