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Digitizing photo prints

D

Dave Merrill

Axe-Master
My wife has physical prints of a bunch of pictures taken on a cross country trip 30-something years ago. She'd like to get them into digital form.

She took pictures of the prints with her iPhone, and is trying to adjust the color settings to match the prints. It's super time consuming, and not coming out that great.

Is there a better way?

For instance, is there some place we could bring them to that's local to us (Arlington MA) that could do a good job for not too much money?

Or a piece of software that could look at the prints and the pics and auto-magically color and contrast correct the pics (don't it)?

Or even better, a place to take the prints to that could do a good job of digitizing them, being super careful of the prints themselves? I'm not sure my wife would go for that, she's real protective of them, both as a photographer herself, and as her history.

I'm completely fishing here, not my wheelhouse. Which is why I'm asking the crew.

Thoughts?
 
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reclavea

reclavea

Power User
Try a scanning app on her iPhone instead.

Seems to work differently when taking pics or scanning as it self aligns to the photo or document and automatically takes the scan when it is aligned properly.

Be careful with reflective lights bouncing off of the photo.

I position myself with the iPhone camera for the best non-reflective position with the object photo or document being scanned.

You can edit the photos using the editing features for brightness, color saturation, sharpness, hues….etc

I use Genius Scan a free app and works great imho!

There are other scanning apps that will do the job with additional features!
 
jlynnb1

jlynnb1

Axe-Master
Photomyne for the iPhone Is actually pretty great. you can even scan multiple pics at once and it will separate and crop them.
 
bleujazz3

bleujazz3

Fractal Fanatic
I've done a little of what you've set out to do, though I use a copier/printer/scanner and add them to my computer. It might take a longer time to scan all of what I'd like, but iPhone apps are somewhat pointless (more accurately, limited) unless they are used in conjunction with your computer, where greater flexibility is possible.
 
H

Henry Zelma

New Member
Hello. We have many old photos to scan and have been thinking about the Epson FastFoto FF-680W. I don't have any experience with it though.
 
mr_fender

mr_fender

Axe-Master
If want to do it right and if you ever plan on printing the photos later, get a proper flatbed scanner and scan them at at least 600 dpi, higher if you want to do enlargements.

Self feeding scanners like the Epson FastFoto mentioned above are convenient and fast for larger numbers of smaller prints, but fairly expensive.

There are also a number of photo scanning services out there if you don't want to do all the work yourself. Many print and camera shops offer the service. Some will even do restoration and/or color correction as well for a fee.
 
Rock Chalk

Rock Chalk

Fractal Fanatic
Too many other things on the list right now, but I will be getting one of those Epson FastFoto's in the future. That thing is awesome!!! icon_biggrin.gif
 
PincoTech

PincoTech

Experienced
mr_fender said:
If want to do it right and if you ever plan on printing the photos later, get a proper flatbed scanner and scan them at at least 600 dpi, higher if you want to do enlargements.

Self feeding scanners like the Epson FastFoto mentioned above are convenient and fast for larger numbers of smaller prints, but fairly expensive.

There are also a number of photo scanning services out there if you don't want to do all the work yourself. Many print and camera shops offer the service. Some will even do restoration and/or color correction as well for a fee.
Click to expand...
This ⬆️
Scan, then you have a high res, color accurate file to work with.
 
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