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Quality, Retouched Scans
Get a digital copy so the entire family can enjoy shared memories! For over 15 years, The Digital Convert has preserved memories locally, utilizing the best scanning equipment and restoring aged and tinted photos in Photoshop. After all, you bought a nice camera to take the photo, paid to develop them and put in an album all these years. Let us preserve them the way you originally intended to see them!
Looking for an affordable way to digitize your old photos? The Digital Convert is the answer! Let's face it. You have thousands of photos at home. Few people ever see them. Your grandkids likely can't tell a cousin from a tadpole.
The Digital Convert scans photos AND albums fast and cost-effectively. We'll put everything on a flash drive for easy home viewing or for uploading to the web to share with family and friends. Now your entire family can have access to your photos, family tree, family history, recipes and more!
| Photos NEVER sent to a remote site | |
| Got Albums? No Prep Required. | |
| Expert touch-up of faded and tinted photos available | |
Unlike many competitors using basic, one-size-fits-all tools like Kodak Perfect Touch, where requested, we personally determine the best correction settings for your photos. While many automated solutions can offer great results for some images, they harm others with excessive contrast- blowing out the light areas, and over-darkening others.
We use advanced tools in Adobe Photoshop to achieve amazing results - correcting color, removing dust particles and sharpening your images. Click to view our gallery to see for yourself!
What do you think of this anniversary present? One customer had us place all these photo albums on an iPad for his wife! Or cycle your photos on a large screen in the living room and remember family and friends every day.
Submit our order form online and enclose your email confirmation in your shipping box. Or swing by during walk-in hours. For custom organization, place an index card within your stack of photos with the desired title before each grouping.
It is not necessary to organize your photos by size, however they should be neatly stacked (all photos face up) and clean - no moldy boxes please! Polaroid photos and wallet-size or smaller pictures should preferably be separate from other photos.
DO NOT stick Post-Its or any loose items to the backs of photos or on documents. Write on the back with a pencil.
DO NOT write notes on photos with anything but permanent ink or pencil! It WILL transfer onto other photos in your stack.
DO NOT attempt to pull sticky photos from albums. Leave them in place to be scanned with a flatbed and cropped digitally.
Loose Photo (Shoebox) Scanning
| 1 - 49 photos | 300 DPI: 45¢/each | 600 DPI: 55¢/each |
| 50 - 199 photos | 300 DPI: 35¢/each | 600 DPI: 45¢/each |
| 200 - 1,499 photos | 300 DPI: 25¢/each | 600 DPI: 35¢/each |
| 1,500 - 2,999 photos (10% off) | 300 DPI: 22¢/each | 600 DPI: 32¢/each |
| 3,000+ photos (15% off) | 300 DPI: 21¢/each | 600 DPI: 30¢/each |
Photoshop Batch Retouching
| Estimated 15 - 30¢ | additional per photo (depending on complexity) |
| Includes faded/tinted photo correction, dust removal, and sharpening. | |
Advanced Photoshop Editing
| Estimated 25¢ - 35¢ | additional per photo |
| Advanced editing means we'll spend extra time (up to an hour per batch of 500 photos) making custom corrections on selected photos that would not otherwise be fixed using our batch retouching service - for example manual color correction and fixing tears or blemishes etc | |
Additional Information
- Minimum Order: $20 (applies to all transfer orders unless another minimum is specified)
- Nonstandard Items: Contact for pricing
- Discounts: Apply only to sheetfed scanning. Discounts will not be applied to nonfeedable exception items (fragile, rigid, very curled etc) that require a flatbed scanner.
Slides were always a great way to enjoy the richness of film, but you had to sacrifice the convenience of prints. You probably haven't pulled out that projector in years! Once digitized, you'll have the best of both worlds - great images that are easy for all to enjoy.
Each slide will be cleaned physically and digitally, and optionally color corrected as needed. Those family legends will no longer be mere hazy tales of a time far gone, but vivid memories that will capture your grandkids' imaginations and interest. So clear out those closets of carousels! Get some more clothes, toys for the kids or just enjoy a little more space. We'll create custom folders for each roll/carousel, scan them all in order and return them on USB or via a download link.
Just as there are many different formats of negatives, there are similarly a wide spectrum of mounted positive films known as slides. There are small 1" slides with mounted 110 format film and mounted medium format slide film. There's cool stereoscopic slides you view in 3D with fun binocular looking viewers and disc film viewed with a Viewmaster. We can scan them all at the best quality.
As far as pricing, standard cardboard and plastic mounts can be scanned at the most economical price. The resolution on 35mm slides is over 3000dpi which is far more than most will need for digital viewing or the occasional enlargement. Non 35mm slides in standard 2" mounts can usually be scanned at the same price. However, other formats are more manual a process for scanning and are priced higher. Just ask!
If your slides are in glass mounts, it is recommended we remove them from the glass mounts for the best results as the glass gets very dirty over the years on the outside and on the inside. Airquipt slides are removed from the metal casings. Unless requested otherwise, we generally scan one side of a stereoscopic slide; the two images are only very slightly different perspectives to obtain a 3D effect using their viewer.
| 35mm Slide Scanning | |
| Price | 0.55/ea |
While you'll get great images from scanned prints, they'll be even sharper and more vibrant from the original film itself. Not to mention, you won't have to worry about duplicates since there's only one original. No matter the project, we have a scanning solution for you - from standard family-size 1200x1800 images to 8000DPI Hasselblad scans for the most discerning professional. Call your local Chicago scanning experts!
Note: Some people ask, but when we scan a negative, the image you receive will be the actual photo like you see in a printed photo - just better - and not the inverted colors on the negative itself.
If your negatives were preserved well in plastic sleeving, they're definitely the way to go. Images from film will be more crisp and provide more detail for editing such as lightening up a dark photo. If your negatives were very scratched up or discolored, go with the prints if they're in better shape. If all your prints and negatives are mixed up, it may also be a better idea to go with the prints to ensure you don't miss anything important. You probably kept the prints you cared most about. Or of course you can do both to be on the safe side.
Negatives come in all different shapes and sizes. The most common format and the most economical to scan are 35mm negatives. More vintage and professional formats cost more as they are more time consuming to scan. We can scan just about any format of negative or positive film- whether 110, 116, 120, 240 APS, 4x5, 8x10 and more. Just ask!
| Positive / Negative Film Scanning | |
| 35mm or APS | |
| 1,200 DPI (4x6 reprints) | 39¢/ea |
| 2,000 DPI (8x10 reprints) | 55¢/ea |
| Includes Digital ICE Scratch and Dust Correction! | |
| Professional 35mm Options | |
| 5,000 DPI (Noritsu HS-1800) | $1.25/ea |
| Max Quality (Hasselblad X5) | $18/ea |
| Medium/Large Format Options | |
| 1200x1800 pixels (Epson V700) | $1.25/$2.00 |
| 2000x3000 pixels (Epson V700) | $1.75/$3.50 |
| Pro 120mm (Cut/Roll) (Noritsu) | $4.00/ea |
| Max Quality (Hasselblad X5) | $18/ea |
Whether pasted to construction paper, mounted with decorative corners, behind cellophane or in neat pockets, we'll get your albums digitized and ready for sharing. If the photos cannot be removed, we'll flatbed the full page. Optionally, we can separate the images digitally in Photoshop. You'll received both versions - the full page with all your notes, and the cropped and edited images for your montages and photobooks. If the photos can be removed, they'll be slipped out and [optionally] replaced all while keeping their original order.
If the backs of your photos are really sticky, it's best to keep them in the album rather than risk tearing them by pulling them out and getting them stuck to one another. Also, if your pictures all stick together, they'll be more difficult to scan safely and efficiently.
Albums can vary significantly in terms of time required for scanning. Variables such as size of the album pages, whether plastic is to be removed, whether the pages are shedding fibers and require cleaning, whether the photos adhere well or are falling out, if and how the album is bound all affect the time required for scanning. Where conditions present such that additional labor is required, the pricing may revert to our current hourly rate. We have scanners to accomodate any size album at the highest quality.
As mentioned on the details tab we can either scan the full page in your album or remove the photos from the album page. Sometimes there's notes or scrapbooking elements that make it extra beneficial to retain the original layout of the album even if the photos can be easily removed. These are all choices we can choose together.
| 8.5x11 Unbound | ||
| 300DPI | 1.50¢/pg | |
| 600DPI | $2.00¢/pg | |
| 11x17 Unbound | ||
| 300DPI | $2.00¢/pg | |
| 600DPI | $3.00/pg | |
| Pages may be slightly larger as long as the photo area easily fits these constraints | ||
| Digital Crop from Album Page | ||
| Additional 29¢/ea (optional) | ||
| Crooked or oddly shaped images (cut with scissors) may increase cost for cropping |