Tips for Selecting a Negative Scanning Service

ScanCafe: Quality, Service, and Expertise

You have realized that high quality scans take up a great deal of your precious time, and that high-end film scanners can be expensive – so you have decided to look for a professional scanning service. To get you started, ScanCafe is providing a short list of attributes you should consider when picking your negative scanning services company. The list includes: ease of use; quality; price; integrity; customer service; and post-scan services. With that in mind, your first step should be to define your objectives and determine what you need in a scanning partner.

Define Your Objectives

There is a tremendous amount of value in getting your negative film scanned. First and foremost, it is much easier to locate and manage a digital image on a computer than it is to manage your negatives in sleeves or binders. Secondly, scanning your negatives allows you to keep your paper photos displayed in your home or office. Lastly, once in digital format, you can manipulate your scanned images on your computer, share the images with a friend, or use the scanned images to create cool products like DVD slideshows.

Ease of Use

The most difficult task of managing negatives is the review process. The 99.5% of us who don’t have professional light tables are forced to hold a strip of negatives up to a light source to review the images – even then it can be difficult to see what is on the image. Unfortunately, this was a necessary step to scanning your images because you had to pay for every image sent to a scanning service. Invariably, most people in this position simply sigh and place their negatives back into a box. Well, the revolution is here.

Fortunately, for you, ScanCafe has developed a revolutionary idea: the "Smart Choice" that makes it easier than previously thought possible for you to get your negative filmed scanned. Simply put, we let you select the images you want to keep after they have been scanned. This means no more pre-sorting requirement! Once scanned, you then review the images from the comfort of your home computer and simply delete the images you do not want - this saves you tons of time upfront from having to look at each negative under a light source and trying to determine which negative you actually want to get scanned. Our only requirement is that you buy at least 50% of the images you send us. To summarize – collect your negatives; place an order at www.scancafe.com; print out the shipping label we generate for you; and drop the box at any UPS location. NO SINGLE OTHER scanning service in the market allows you such freedom and flexibility – join the ScanCafe revolution.

Negative Scan Quality

Your first consideration should be whether or not you can trust your scanning partner to provide the highest quality scans. If a picture truly does tell a thousand words, then your scans need to be generated at the optimal resolution. ScanCafe has successfully converted over 2,000,000 images in its first year of operation – and this extensive experience has convinced us that the best quality for scanning slides and negatives is found at the setting of 3000 dpi. If you go higher, say 4000 dpi, the scan starts to show the grain in the film. At lower dpi levels, say less than 2000 dpi, you simply aren't getting the quality and resolution that both you and your image deserve. Again, a picture speaks louder than words so check out our quality comparisons for negative scanning, slide scanning, and photo scanning . Finally, ScanCafe goes the extra mile by providing free services such as color correction, red eye removal, cropping, and dust/scratch removal.

Negative Scan Prices

Price does matter, and you definitely need to look at your bottom line. This is especially true when you consider how many wonderful images you have that are ready to be scanned. Since its inception, ScanCafe has been determined to provide the lowest prices for high quality scans. As it turns out, our best value for customers is 3000 dpi negatives at 24 cents per scan.

Service Integrity

It takes a giant leap of faith to hand your precious negatives to an outside party and this decision should be based not just on the quality of the service – but also on the integrity and experience of the company’s management team. ScanCafe is proud of the team it has pulled together, from our first line excellent technicians all the way to the CEO - you should take the time when selecting a scanning service to ensure that the ethics of the company match those of your own. Take a look at the management teams and see if they have thought through how to make the process as easy for you as possible, while ensuring that your images will be cared for properly. At ScanCafe, our management team has an enormous amount of internet experience which they have efficiently and smoothly combined with world-class manufacturing and logistics expertise. A great way to evaluate our integrity and commitment to customer service is to evaluate our customer testimonials.

Customer Service

Chances are you don’t know a lot about negative scanning – which is why you visited ScanCafe in the first place. We aim to be the partner in your scanning and digitization efforts. We firmly believe that efficient and responsive Customer Service is critical to success. At ScanCafe, our California based customer support team can walk you through the entire service and answer any questions you have about the scanning or ordering process. We believe that we have made it easy for you to place an order on your own, but sometimes it is nice to hear a voice on the other end of the line so feel free to call us if you need to. You can also refer to our testimonials which speak about our stellar Customer Support team. So, if you have any questions or comments you can email us at admin@scancafe.com or call us at 1-866-745-0392. If you miss us live, we'll get back to you with a clear and concise answer, usually within hours of receipt of the message.

Post-Scan Services

Once the scanning process is complete, you should find out if your scanning service provider has additional value-added services such as photo restoration, photo sharing, DVD slideshows, or photo book creation tools. If they do not, you need to check to see if they allow you to use your scanned images on other sites. Since ScanCafe gives you all of your files on a DVD, you will be able to upload your images to your other photo sites, create photo-books, or print photos online. We provided this solution early on and at no cost to make it easy and fun for you to use your newly scanned images.