Digitize Photos Canada

[Charlotta Menchaca]

Ifyou have shoe boxes upon shoe boxes of old photos you want to digitize, you will need to leverage a service that can handle bulk photo scanning and digitizing. ScanMyPhotos.com can definitely help you with your bulk photo digitizing needs. Discover our bulk photo scanning services.

USPS Priority Mail: I would like you to return my entire order via USPS Priority Service and charge my credit card accordingly for shipping and handling. (minimum $19.95 based on size of order, weight and destination. Typically the least expensive way to ship back.)

FedEx Domestic 2-Day Delivery: I would like you to return my entire order via FedEx Domestic, 2-day delivery (P.O. Boxes not accepted) and charge my credit card accordingly for shipping and handling.

The iX1600 is an all-in-one document-management solution that lets you digitize and organize all your documents with one touch. It quickly and easily converts all of your paper files to digital documents so they're easy to find and share, while reducing paper clutter in the process.

ScanSnap Home all-in-one software brings together all your favorite functions to help you power through your scanning in no time. Easily manage, edit, and use scanned data from documents, receipts, business cards, photos, and more.

ScanSnap software provides a wide variety of document management tools while making the scanning process as easy as the push of a button. With the applications below you will be scanning to your preferred destination in no time.

This may seem like a sad story because it begins with a boy with few memories of his father, who died when he was 7 years old. It's why Mitch Goldstone cherishes his only picture with his dad -- a snapshot at Disneyland taken during the late 1960s, when the concept of people reflexively reaching for smartphone cameras in their pockets could only happen in Tomorrowland.

He is pursuing a career focused on the joy of rediscovery. He and his longtime partner, Carl Berman, run ScanMyPhotos, part of a niche industry that specializes in turning the billions of analogue slides, undeveloped negatives and printed pictures taken in the pre-smartphone era into digital treasure chests filled with memories that had been forgotten.

Giving analogue photos new digital life can resurface long-buried memories and make them feel fresh. It can bring back the roar of the water in old vacation snapshots, resurrect long-gone relatives in their prime and rekindle the warmth of a childhood pet's unconditional love. It can remind you of the intricacies of family relationships, summon forgotten moments and -- perhaps best of all -- make them easy to share.

I hadn't been able to look at them -- not from an emotional standpoint, but because I didn't have the proper equipment to peruse analogue slides. Converting them into accessible digital media launched me on a journey back to my own childhood and the pasts of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. That, in turn, is giving me a better understanding of how I became me.

It's a phenomenon shared by other people who have taken the steps to preserve analogue photos that were painstakingly shot in the decades before smartphones enabled people to routinely take pictures of everything.

It's not cheap. But if you have the $200 to $300 that it will likely cost to pay for the process -- and if you can find the time to dig through musty boxes, drawers and garages -- you may find a gateway to experiences like these.

During his award-winning acting career, Ed Asner became famous for playing crusty yet lovable characters, with the most famous being Lou Grant -- the newsroom boss in two popular TV series, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" from 1970 to 1977 and an eponymous spinoff from 1977 to 1982. Asner also provided the voice for the curmudgeonly Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's 2009 animated film, "Up," that included a poignant scene about photography's power to rekindle memories.

"I honestly didn't know what I was going to get back," Matt Asner says. "It's kind of overwhelming. It's like you get this treasure back that opens your eyes to a past that you sort of remember. But a lot of it you don't remember."

Looking at his dad's photos rekindled memories that Matt didn't realize had been buried in his subconscious. One day, Matt was gazing at some photos taken of him when he was 3 or 4 years old at a Southern California beach house that his father would rent for the family during the summer. One picture in particular opened the floodgates.

"There's this picture of me holding a dead fish, and I had this wild memory of finding it on the beach and keeping it with me for four days," the son recalls. "My mom finally threw it away when I was sleeping because it was stinking so much. That was a very strong memory that I had forgot."

The digital conversions of Ed Asner's old pictures also produced troves of other visual baubles, including one of the actor as a young man gazing introspectively at himself in a mirror -- perhaps as he prepared for a role. Matt now shares some of his favorite pictures of his father on his Twitter account, but what he likes best is sending them around to relatives -- something the digital format makes easy.

"Some of these pictures haven't been seen for 40, 50 or even 60 years," Matt Asner marvels. "It's like opening up a strange world for everyone and it draws you closer as a family. My dad and mom were sort of the glue for the whole family. Now, these photos replace some of the glue that has gone away."

After retiring in 2021 from a long career as a U.S. diplomat who worked all over the world, Lyne Paquette returned to her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and retrieved from storage 12,000 images that she had taken from her film camera during her wide-ranging travels. After spending months sorting through them all, Paquette sent about 3,500 to be digitized.

When Paquette got them back, she found herself transported back to so many of the places where she had been assigned or visited -- various countries in Central and South America, Australia, Germany, Bangladesh, Syria and Vietnam. While she loves looking back at all the good times with all the friends she made, some of her favorite images are our her late parents.

Russell Gordon worked in 20 countries as a photographer covering assignments that thrust him into wars, including the one in Bosnia. So yes, he accumulated a lot of analogue pictures, slides and negatives in his career. He had 200 of his favorites digitized, including one-of-a-kind shots such as a photo of a fellow journalist in Afghanistan who was eventually assassinated by the man he was interviewing in the picture.

This photo provided by Russell Gordon shows him in Ama Dablam, Nepal, in 1990. Gordon worked in 20 countries as a photographer covering assignments that thrust him into wars, including the one in Bosnia. He accumulated a lot of analog pictures, slides and negatives in his career and had 200 of his favorites digitized. (Courtesy Russell Gordon via AP)

He wasn't disappointed. The memories embedded in the photos are even more precious to him because he is afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder after years of covering horrific wars. "I have a little bit of quality of life now, but my life is largely formed around nostalgia now," Gordon says. "So this is such a gift."

Those shared traits coalesced into Cuffey finding himself with more than 100,000 photos, including about 70,000 Kodachrome slides that he had taken from 1985 through 2009 using cameras outfitted with manual Olympus and Nikon lenses. Many of the pictures were taken during his trips revolving around his interest in geology -- his chosen profession.

And his dad, a geology professor at Penn State University, had left behind similar pictures taken during summer trips when Cuffey and his brother used to tag along as kids. But there were also other photos devoted to hobbies, such as trains and railroads that don't even exist any longer, old pets and, of course family pictures.

Cuffey, 55, has spent more than $20,000 digitizing the best of his analogue photo collection to help fulfill his goal to set up a website focusing on geology. But the investment is also producing some real sentimental dividends.

With so many pictures, slides and other visual media still limited to an analogue, digitizing has turned into a cottage industry. As with any service or product, it's smart to do some research to determine which service sounds best for your needs. But here are a few places to tip.

I stowed it in the attic, where it was soon joined by boxes of photos and videotapes given to my husband by his parents, plus the prints and negatives we amassed on our own in the days before digital cameras and smartphones were a thing.

In time, I found myself worrying about what would be lost in the event of a house fire or a hurricane. I wanted to digitize the images not only to preserve them but also to share them with friends and family, particularly my teenage daughter, so she could one day look back on them and realize her parents were once young, too.

A digital conversion service can take items in various forms of media and turn them into computer files for more convenient storage and sharing. Most importantly, it helps us preserve cherished memories, perhaps for generations to come.

I looked at 14 options, and the offerings varied widely. Prices ranged from 9 cents to $5 per scanned image, depending on the size and resolution. Estimated turnaround times ranged from five days to six-plus weeks, with video conversion generally taking the longest to complete. Some companies offer extra services, such as cloud hosting, so you can access and share your digital images once the project is finished.

I quickly eliminated 10 services from the running due to poor customer reviews; complaints to the Better Business Bureau; an outdated or insecure website; or a lack of detailed info on pricing, photo resolution, and privacy and security policies.

Once digitized, these photographs will no longer fade over time; they can be automatically repaired with smart software (such as adding back in colour, removing red eye and stitching rips); photos can be organized and easily searched by keyword (on a computer, tablet, phone or online cloud site); and you can easily share them with friends and family over email and social media. Or, create fun projects like scrapbooks, slideshows, fridge magnets and more.

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