The Photo Workshop, Philadelphia

Everything is going along fine with your computer until one day… your hard drive starts making funny noises … or the monitor starts to flicker and then dies altogether due to a bad motherboard. Both of these scenarios have happened to me personally and at work. If it hasn’t happened to you, I bet you’ve heard the horror stories. A dead computer means lost data and lost memories.

Do you have a back-up plan? And are you sticking to it regularly? I admit I don’t have all the answers and I can probably do a much better job both at work and at home. But it all comes down to making sure your precious memories are saved in at least 2 places and probably on different types of media.

When my internal hard drive failed, I didn’t have it all backed up onto CDs or DVDs. The research I did at that point pretty much said that “hard drives are designed to fail.” That doesn’t sound very promising. But the truth of the matter is that with moving parts, they won’t last forever. Do yourself a favor and get in the habit of saving your digital photos periodically onto CD or DVD. Do it monthly if you take a lot of pictures – makes it easier to remember.

Some people like the online back-up solutions. I’ve never looked into these services but there’s a monthly or yearly charge. It’s more likely to happen automatically, however, so it may be worth investigating. The other nice thing about this kind of back-up is that you’d be able to access your data elsewhere. So if something catastrophic happened to your house or apartment, you’ll be able to retrieve your data later if you have to replace your computer.

I know some people like to save a second copy of their data at an offsite storage facility like a safety deposit box. I’m paranoid about stuff but not that paranoid. Still, it’s not a bad idea. Maybe a relative wouldn’t mind putting a box of CDs in their closet for you.

The point here is to save your images in a few different places: internal hard drive, external hard drive, CD/DVD, online, and even as prints. We can always scan a print and make copies that way, although it is more expensive than printing directly from a CD or DVD.

Be sure to label your CDs/DVDs with a Sharpie-type pen and never use a pencil or ball point pen to write on your media. You will damage the information on the CD and render it useless. You’ll also want to keep the bottom scratch-free so make sure to keep it in a hard case.

Happy shooting and save your photos!

Shoebox Full of Old Photos

Recently I’ve been encountering little news snippets encouraging people to get their photos scanned to CD. I couldn’t agree more. Since the advent of digital photography, people have recent pictures on their hard drives, camera’s media cards, iPods, phones, and digital frames. They may not be printing as many photos but their photos are everywhere. Meanwhile, prints from film just a few years ago sit in albums or boxes, ignored and neglected.

Scanning to CD brings these photos back into your digital world. Now you can add them to your other photos on hard drives, iPods, and digital frames. Give the CD as a gift to other family members. Or store it in a safe deposit box “just in case.” And my favorite – creating collages or scrapbooking. Just because you scan your photos to your hard drive or CD/DVD doesn’t mean you should toss out the photos. Your originals are still the best thing to have available. (Yes, I know that the print isn’t actually the “original” – that honor belongs to the negative. But did you really save them after all these years?)

Certainly you can buy a flatbed scanner and start the process at home. Besides the fact that I manage a photo lab, I don’t really recommend this route. It all has to do with time and quality. Learning how to get a good scan from your equipment takes some getting used to even with software that tries to do it all for you. Next, the scanner does not read the entire glass surface so if you put your photo in the corner to keep it straight, you won’t be able to scan to the edge. So then you’ll start putting the photos in the middle of the glass. And invariably, the picture will be a little askew and you’ll have to straighten it afterwards. Finally, unless your flatbed has a document feeder, be prepared to spend at least an hour scanning what amounts to only a few dozen photos. Most people don’t have this kind of patience and if you have boxes and boxes of photos, you have better things to do than sit in front of the computer and scan all day long. We’d all rather be out there shooting!

At The Photo Workshop, we have a high speed scanner that does a great job of scanning bunches of photos in quick succession. There is a document feeder so we can stack 20-30 photos at a time. If a photo goes in a little crooked, the software is able to adjust it right away without the operator doing a thing. In a matter of an hour, we can scan hundreds of photos.

This does assume that the prints are in good condition, not mounted onto thicker stock, and are at least wallet size up to 8×10. Unfortunately, fragile, mounted, or photos smaller than wallet size need to be scanned using the flatbed scanner and cost more to include with the rest. But it’s still worth it.

Shoebox of photos saved to CD

What you get as a finished product are all the images saved to CD in a clear case with index prints showing you each image. Files are named numerically (i.e., 001, 002, 003, etc.). What you do with that CD is up to you. We can make additional copies for you or you could copy the CD on your own CD burner at home.

Bear in mind, this is a scanning service only. If your prints are in less than ideal condition with tears, rips, scratches, pen marks, etc., we are not fixing any of these issues. The Premium service will remove red eye and try to improve color if there’s been a shift, but that’s the extent of our Photoshop work for the Digital Shoebox. Pictures that require restoration are handled separately from those that just need to be digitized.

To find out more about the Digital Shoebox, please visit www.thephotoworkshop.net/shoebox.html

For more information about Restorations, please visit www.thephotoworkshop.net/01_services/restoration.html