Review: scanmyphotos.com

DavidTO

I've decided to get about 3000 of my old family snapshots scanned for posterity, and I'm going to try scanmyphotos.com. My mom had sent me this article from the New York Times (free registration required) about the service.

Basically, for prints they charge $50 per thousand prints (in your own box). You need to double that price to get their automated color correction, which looks to be something you need to get.

You can also buy a box that will hold about 1600 4x6 prints for $125 and an extra $100 for the color correction. That works out to $.14 per image with the correction. Or about $.08 without the correction. They also have a buy 2 get 3 deal, so you could scan 4800 4x6 prints for $$250, which would bring the cost to less than 5 cents per scan.

They scan them just how you send them. If you want them rotated, that's extra. If you want them in a particular order, that's extra. There's a whole bunch of caveats and things you need to do in order to prep the prints for scanning, and you should read the site for more details.

It's done domestically and very quickly. They promise to ship the completed order out within 24 hours of their having received it.

I'll be posting back here with my experience with them. So far, all I've done is prep my photos and order the box to fill.

Here's my prints, all prepped and ready to go!:

Nikolai

DavidTO wrote:

I've decided to get about 3000 of my old family snapshots scanned for posterity, and I'm going to try scanmyphotos.com. My mom had sent me this article from the New York Times (free registration required) about the service.

Interesting... Thanks for sharing!

DavidTO

I ordered the box on saturday of the labor day weekend, it shipped tuesday, I had it wednesday. I live within a hundred miles of them, so I got it next day (shipped via USPS priority).

The box is shipped flat. I opened it and filled it with about 2/3 of my photos, I'm not sure how many (but I'll find out when they scan). I can tell you the box weighs 17.4 lbs. Having the pre-paid box is nice, since I don't have to pay to ship it. Just drop it off.

Andy

Would like to know how they compare to britepix, in our ClubSmug: http://www.smugmug.com/ClubSmug/ where you get 15% off if you are a SmugMug subscriber.

DavidTO

Andy wrote:

Would like to know how they compare to britepix, in our ClubSmug: http://www.smugmug.com/ClubSmug/ where you get 15% off if you are a SmugMug subscriber.

At $50 per thousand as the starting price, they're a lot cheaper. I will let you know (and I will post samples) about the quality.

DavidTO

Update:

I got my photos back, and a little drama to go with it. You'll have to decide for yourself, as I have mixed feelings about it.

First, the good:

Speedy, low-cost service. I got 2,192 images scanned for $253. I got the pre-paid box for $125, added $100 for the automagic color correction, $10 for signature delivery, and there was $18 in sales tax. That's $0.12 per print. They advertise the box as holding over 1600 4x6 prints. Some of mine, maybe 1/5th, were 3.5x5.

They came back looking just as I would expect. Good prints look good, bad prints look...bad. But accurate to what I sent.

A couple of samples (click on them for larger image):






The bad:


OK, the worst thing is I got a few of someone else's images back with my order. I let them know, and their initial response was:

If you would like to ship the photos that are not yours back to us, we will be glad to refund you a portion of your order to cover the cost. I'm not sure how that happened but it does not happen often, if ever. Of course there is the lone exception. We will contact other people that had order shipped out around the same time as yours to see if they have a similar problem. If we do not hear anything negative back, we can assume all of your photos are there and that you got a small batch of someone else's in with yours. How many photos are not yours?

I thought the whole "If you would like to ship..." business was BS, I mean, they sounded so cavalier about it. I hounded the customer service a bit, and we had a bit of a back and forth, and in the end I get that they're honest people doing the best they can, and I would send them more of my pictures. I may be cautious about that one unique photo that can never be replaced, but heck, I guess I should be scanning those kinds of images myself, anyway.

The other thing I found annoying was that a lot of my images were upside down, in huge blocks. I had a bit of a back and forth with them on this one. Yes, I didn't pay for the service to make sure they're all right-side-up, but I did expect them to be put in the feeder the right way to begin with. They think it was my error, I think it was theirs, and in the end I don't much care. If I had I would have paid the extra $38 to have it done for me. I figure I have to go through and keyword, anyway, and rotating is not that big a deal while I'm already in there.

There was one other minor miscommunication that isn't really worth mentioning, and was more about me changing my mind at the last minute than anything else.

Overall the quality is just what I would expect for speed-scanned images. The turnaround is AMAZING. They received my photos on a Monday, scanned them all on a Tuesday, shipped them out to me on Wednesday. I had them the next day, but I live less than 100 miles from them.

So, bottom line is I'm concerned that I would get someone else's prints back with mine. Assuming that was an unusual error on their part, the service could well be worth it. You can't judge from this one incident. But for me, I'll be sending out another box of 2k prints.

Nikolai

David, thank you very much for sharing, very interesting!

Zanotti

DavidTO wrote:

I always wanted to do this. Why does the box look so beat up? This is the before picture, right?

Z

DavidTO

Zanotti wrote:

I always wanted to do this. Why does the box look so beat up? This is the before picture, right?

Z

This is before I received their box. It's just the one I had lying around. I'm also pretty sure that's more pictures than I fit in their box.
( I found a guesstimate of 100 per inch was pretty good.)

DavidTO

I'm starting to go through these, and I'm noticing that some of them have horrible chromatic aberration, which I can't seem to get rid of in LR2.

Example:



It's not on all images, and the one above is among the worst.

DavidTO

Two of those prints slipped in. The other one is better.

DavidTO

DavidTO wrote:

Two of those prints slipped in. This other one is better.

EDIT: after looking closer, and A/B'ing them, I think it has to do with how flatly it lays on the platen. There is a bit of distortion in the bad one that indicates to me that it wasn't lying flat.

Dee

Curious, what dimension and resolution are they scanning them in at? Looks pretty good.

DavidTO

Dee wrote:

Curious, what dimension and resolution are they scanning them in at? Looks pretty good.

300dpi. Dimension's based on the original, I guess?

Jane B.

Did you have any slides done? That is what my aunt and then myself took the most of over the years before digital.
Thanks
Jane B.

DavidTO

Jane B. wrote:

Did you have any slides done? That is what my aunt and then myself took the most of over the years before digital.
Thanks
Jane B.

No.

Dee

DavidTO wrote:

300dpi. Dimension's based on the original, I guess?

Thanks...

Are you planning to do anything special with the scans, or is it just to have a digital record?

I just scanned in a bunch of slides and prints for my son-in-law, but it was only 200 slides and around 50 prints.

Trying to get consistent color was a trial indeed.

DavidTO

Dee wrote:

Thanks...

Are you planning to do anything special with the scans, or is it just to have a digital record?

I just scanned in a bunch of slides and prints for my son-in-law, but it was only 200 slides and around 50 prints.

Trying to get consistent color was a trial indeed.

Digital record, they'll go up on my smugmug, share with family...

migosurf

300DPI Scans
DavidTO I read your scan comments with great interest! Do you feel that 300dpi is enough? I used Scancafe and they two weeks to get back to me but they were beautiful and scanned at 600dpi. I am only novice with this stuff.

All of mine were perfect orientation and cleaned up. I was very nervous as they send them to India by air express i think. I look forward to any thoughts on this.

DavidTO

migosurf wrote:

DavidTO I read your scan comments with great interest! Do you feel that 300dpi is enough? I used Scancafe and they two weeks to get back to me but they were beautiful and scanned at 600dpi. I am only novice with this stuff.

All of mine were perfect orientation and cleaned up. I was very nervous as they send them to India by air express i think. I look forward to any thoughts on this.

I do feel that 300dpi is enough for my needs. Glad yours worked out well! Your turn-around was 2 weeks door to door?

ac2010

Poor scanning quality
I just got my order back. All the photos are scanned with visible dust on the surfaces, blown out, and pixellated. I don't know if this is the exception or if the quality of this service has declined. I wish I had spent the $83 toward a photo scanner instead. Sigh. I guess they'll do for a digital back-up.

grandmaR

photos and slides
I have used scanmyphotos.com for many types of scanning. I've had photos (on my fourth pre-paid box), slides (four different orders - probably over 10,000 slides), 8 mm movies and video tapes. I have always been satisfied with the general quality. Photos that aren't good come back not so good, but can be edited digitally to make them reasonably good. If the color registration isn't right, I can always correct in the computer. If they have stuff on the photo (like mold on slides), it will show up on the scan. If I send them dusty, the dust will be there on the scan. I don't care whether they are upside down or sideways - really easy to correct. Bad 8 mm movies will be bad on the DVD - these were the least successful of all the scanning I have had done.

I have found some slides that were done backwards (that is the lettering on the image is reversed). Also there were two that were stuck together and scanned together. They are going to fix that. It probably isn't a problem with photos unless they were originally printed backwards. The biggest problem is that many of the pictures were done crooked or slightly off-center so there is a black edge. I have to cut the black edge off in order for the color to come out right. But again - this is a minor problem as I am going to be editing the photos anyway.

I have put my pictures (once they are identified) up on Picasa

This is one of the first slide albums I had done - photos my dad took in Germany in 1950
https://picasaweb.google.com/106980008852702705641/F18001908GermanyAustria19500035?authuser=0&feat=directlink

I don't have quite so many of the prints up on Picasa, but this is an album of photos of my mother-in-law https://picasaweb.google.com/106980008852702705641/BettyJohnstonBeasleyAndRelatives?authuser=0&feat=directlink
All the black and white ones were scanned photos and the rest were scanned slides.

grandmaR

ac2010 wrote: »

I just got my order back. All the photos are scanned with visible dust on the surfaces, blown out, and pixellated. I don't know if this is the exception or if the quality of this service has declined. I wish I had spent the $83 toward a photo scanner instead. Sigh. I guess they'll do for a digital back-up.

I wrote this once and it disappeared. So this is the executive summary.

I have had quite a few things done by scanmyphoto. If the photos are bad, the scans will show that. Most of the problems (upside down or sideways, crooked, wrong colors) can be fixed in the computer at least for what I'm doing. I'm going through slides and photos taken by my parents and organizing them and putting them on Picasa. My parents stopped numbering and listing their slides when they got to 10,000 and that was in about 1964. This is a link to one of the albums which is from 1963 - the photos were scanned in 2011 - some are slides and some are prints.

https://picasaweb.google.com/106980008852702705641/F72007360May1963DCFLAndStart1963GermanTrip?authuser=0&feat=directlink

DavidTO

The second time I did this I used digmypics.com, and was much happier with the results. More expensive, but still well worth it.

grandmaR

DavidTO wrote: »

The second time I did this I used digmypics.com, and was much happier with the results. More expensive, but still well worth it.

Expensive is a concern for me because I have so many pictures to do and for my purpose scanmyphoto does OK

EmmaJaneToo

Hello, all. I was wondering whether anybody has any additional experience to add on photo scanning services. I am interested in sending for scanning mostly photographs just of family memories. I have some, but not many, negatives, as well.
I am relatively new to these message boards.
Thanks!