My kids want to do a travelog website, but want to add old photos taken before we had a digital camera. Does anyone know if you can convert old photos to digital so they can be put on the computer? Are there services that will do this for you? Thanks, I'm clueless in this area.

Buy a scanner - many available for under $100, maybe less than $50. You can scan your snapshots and save them as digital images for use on the web, etc., using software that comes with the scanner. They're very easy to set up and use - if you can navigate Fodors you shouldn't have any difficulty.

You can pay to have them scanned but it gets expensive. A decent hoem style flat bed scanner should be about $80-120. HP is a good brand. I had an Acer and liked it but when they spun off that division of the company and I needed service they wanted to charge me $40 (it was a three year old unit and I was trying to make it work with Windows 2000). The scanner will come wiht some software such as Adobe's "lite" version of Photoshop. The software will allow you to do some basic cropping, resizing and adjustment of color and contrast. Keep in mind that if you only want to post them on the web (rather than make prints from the digital files), you should read up on how to save the files in appropriate file formats and resolutions that will result in small file sizes. If you're using free on-line space this will ensure that you can get more photos into the available space and also allow them to be viewed more quickly by those visiting the site. I find the scannign and editing to be a bit time-consuming but fun and relaxing. I even got a bit of practice on retouching the digital image of old damaged photos when I scanned some in for a family website. We had family pics from the late 1800's that were in tough shape and I was able to get some of them looking like new.

Great advice! Thanks. If I do want to compare the cost of having them scanned, who does this, the same places that develop film?

Novice,

If you don't want to invest in a scanner, most photo shops will create a photoCD for you.

Go to the Kodak website...there should be a directory of service providers for your area in there somewhere.

Owen, do you have any good resources/websites that talk about the different types of files? I assume you mean a jpg as tif's are usually over a meg and difficult to upload/email.

If you want to get an idea what the high end is on price, check wiht your local Kinko's for the price of their scanning services. Many quickprint photo places that offer digital printing may also offer scanning. Also - check your yellow pages for digital printing or service bureaus. It's worth repeating that it's a very expensive proposition if you're having more than a few images scanned. If you really don't want to do it yourself (trust me - your kids can learn how to do it in no time at all and they may enjoy it), try to find a neighborhood high school or college kid with a scanner who knows how to use it. You could probably cut a deal with them to do it for a fraction of what any professional service will charge.

Yes, I do mean a jpeg rather than a tiff or bitmap file. Also.... there are different compression ratios ytou can choose in a jpeg. When you're scanning you also have the option to scan at lower resolution (dpi or dots per inch) - this allows the file to be smaller and scanning is faster - sometimes an acceptable loss if the photos are for viewing on-screen only.

www.steves-digicams.com has lots of great free content on digital cameras and photography in general. One of the links on his site is to a free online tutorial on image editing and manipulation - it includes a dictionary of terms for things including output file formats - it will answer your questions and then some!

http://www.shortcourses.com/editing/index.htm

You can get a CD made with scans from your 35mm film during development at most "regular" photo places now. However, not all scans are created equal. I'm a photographer and shoot mostly digital now, but I still do some 35mm and don't even get 35mm prints anymore - I get all the negatives scanned during development (I keep the negatives) into 6.0Megapixel (equivalent) files. Then I get prints from those of whatever I want. But I can also get large prints from these. I think most of the photo development places don't scan their negatives at such high resolution.

The original poster is probably best off buying a cheap scanner for web-quality photos. Professional scanning is expensive, and getting 35mm negatives scanned now is probably not worth it for a web log.

For lots of info about digital photography, visit the Usenet newsgroup rec.photo.digital. If you don't do newsgroups, you can read the newsgroup with Google groups - see (if this link works):

http://groups.google.com/groups?safe=off&ie=ISO-8859-1&as_ugroup=rec.photo.digital&lr=&num=100&hl=en

or start with

http://groups.google.com and type "rec.photo.digital" in for the newsgroup name under "Advanced Groups Search".

Andrew

Novice:

I just made a wonderful family album of all my old pictures. I just took a digital picture of the picture! It came out great! Just have the picture near a good source of light, like a window, and cut out the flash on the camera. It looks great!
JOHN

A friend of mine gave me the name of someone who nomally does commercial digtal work. I e-mailed them and they were nice enough to take the order.

They will do it for .75 cents a picture from the hardcopy.

They will e-mail it back to you, or burn it to CD.

They also convert VHS to CD, I had an old VHS burned to CD.

I think the minimum charge is $ 10.00 though. The good thing is that because it is commercial grade, you end up with a superhigh resolution, and not the averge mid grade crap.

Their website is www.usgmac.com, go their and e-mail them as the exact service is not on the website pages.

Dave

I just got a new scanner ($200). It is an HP that will scan negatives and slides! I'm sure there are other scanners that will do the same. If you have quite a few photos you want to convert a scanner would be well worth the investment. For software I begin with whatever the scanner came with and then transfer into Image Expert and/or Paint Shop Pro. I use this software with my digital camera and find it easy to use.

Novice,

If you don't want to invest in a scanner, most photo shops will create a photoCD for you.

Go to the Kodak website...there should be a directory of service providers for your area in there somewhere.