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Entries in scanning pictures (1)

Tuesday
Jun292010

Bad hair day

And apparently a bad head day, too.  Oh boy/nasty nose day for the boys in the back.

 

Like many of you, I have tons of photos.  Albums never really worked for me.  Boxes were better/they provided easy access for school projects/did they ever go back?  Nope.  But really, what could beat digital storage and retrieval?  And creating Shutterfly-style books? 

So how does one deal with the enormous number of pictures printed?  Dumping them on my kids doorstep didn't seem quite fair.  Though that definitely was the easiest solution.

Should I spend the $$$ to have pictures professionally scanned?  What if they got lost in the mail?  Or in India?  Much as I loved that country, it would be tough to track down my treasures.

Greg suggested that I try the automatic paper feed on my HP Officejet to process a stack of same-size photos.  One setting of the parameters (I used 600 dpi) and the copier/scanner could potentially do the rest.  That is, if you have a carriage that will accommodate your pictures.  Luckily, I did.  And you may have, too.

Odd sizes like those on the left would still require individual attention.

Was the process and the end product perfect? Well, it was definitely fast and most pictures were just fine as opposed to the top pict.  Pict below is a better indication of quality one might expect.

Now that I have several stacks saved on my computer, I might feel safer sending a batch to one of the online operations like Scancafe.  WHOA!  Just looked at their price list.  $.25 per picture!!!  Yes, they do have sales but...

I'm sticking with my newfound, relatively trouble-free technique.  The few glitches make viewing much more entertaining, don't you think?  

I mean, how many perfect pictures does one really need?