Photo Scanning Service - 2013 version

July 16, 2013 6:44 PM

It's been asked before, but what's the current best recommendation for a service that can scan several thousand family photos?

Right now I'm leaning toward using Scan Cafe but I'm hearing so many pros and cons for every service out there I don't know what to do. What's the current best option?

Bonus question: Once everything has been scanned, what software/service/??? do I use to add metadata so these photos are actually useful?

posted by Coffeemate to Shopping (6 answers total)

Best answer: I've had a couple thousand family negatives, slides and paper photos scanned by scancafe and I've been very pleased with the quality and price*. I've even had a couple of photos restored with good results. I've always chosen the cheaper, slower, scanning-in-india option and have never worried about it.

*They run many discounts - so I usually wait for at least a 15% discount before sending in a big order.
posted by nightwood at 7:09 PM on July 16, 2013

Best answer: My wife and I have successfully used ScanMyPhotos.com, which was recommended by David Pogue many years ago. We were pleased with the results. I believe we did their prepaid box. There are various upgrade options (some of which Pogue recommends, and which I think we used), though they may have changed somewhat over the years.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:28 PM on July 16, 2013

(I just checked our records, and it turns out we last used ScanMyPhotos in 2009, so that may not be recent enough for you to feel comfortable judging the service by.)
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:33 PM on July 16, 2013

Best answer: I've used scancafe and digmypics within the last 6 months and would recommend both. Digmypics produces scans of a slightly better quality and has top class customer service while scancafe has a better price.
posted by Nickel at 9:54 PM on July 16, 2013

Best answer: I just had slightly over 600 photos scanned by digmypics about a month ago, and was pleased with the results. The price was higher than quoted originally, but that was entirely my fault for miscounting the number of photos I had (estimating by weight didn't really work). The image quality was great, they did some good color correction for a batch of mid-80s film that had faded to reddish, and I really loved being able to see almost-realtime results of what they were scanning. I've put mine onto Flickr, mostly for ease of use in sharing with relatives of varying technical abilities.
posted by nonane at 5:03 AM on July 17, 2013

And to answer your other question - it's not the quickest thing to do, but i just use iPhoto to tag my photos and then I can organize them using smart albums.
posted by nightwood at 11:12 AM on July 17, 2013