A critical investment and an important choice
Choosing a partner to scan your family heirlooms is not a decision to be taken lightly. Your slides, negatives and prints are the most valuable items in your home. But there are three attributes you must consider when making this decision: quality, price, and trust.
Quality is critical. Make sure your memories receive the attention to detail they deserve. Also, you only want to go through this process once so you need it to be done well. Give your memories the gift of life and choose a service with the quality in craftsmanship that will make them whole again.
There are over 5,000 analog images in the average American household. Most, if not all, of these images deserve to be digitized. So an affordable price is a critical enabler. But make sure you know what you are getting. You can review our price comparison table to see how we stack up.
Trust is crucial. You must have confidence that your photo, slide and negative scanning partner will treat your images as if they were their very own. Please make sure you conduct the appropriate due diligence and invest in this decision. Your memories deserve the highest level of professionalism and skill.
| PHOTOS | SLIDES | NEGATIVES | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality | We scan paper photos at a resolution of 600dpi. Many scanning services scan at 150 dpi because of speed, but the output is poor in quality if you want to make reprints, gifts, or for display on your HDTV. With a resolution of 600dpi you can enlarge the image to make poster sized re-prints. | We scan slides at 3000dpi using Nikon 5000ED and Nikon 9000ED scanners. Most scanning services default to 2000 dpi. For high quality media we offer 4000dpi as part of our Pro Options. We of course scan just about every type of media including: medium format, 110, 126 and 127. | We scan slides at 3000dpi using Nikon 5000ED and Nikon 9000ED scanners as well. Unlike other photo scanning services we also scan black and white negatives. Because black and white negatives require special care, we developed a patent pending technology that provides high quality at a low price. |
| Price | At 600 dpi, ScanCafe provides the highest quality at the best price | Our best value for customers is 3000 dpi negatives at 37 cents per scan. | Our best value for customers is 3000 dpi negatives at 37 cents per scan. |
| Free Services | Color correction, Red-eye removal, cropping, and dust-scratch removal | Color correction, Red-eye removal, cropping, and dust-scratch removal | Color correction, Red-eye removal, cropping, and dust-scratch removal |
Our highly trained technicians spend 4-5 minutes on each image to make sure we are providing the highest quality. Finally, if your photos are damaged, ScanCafe provides first-class photo restoration services.
Trust
You need to trust your precious images with a reliable and reputed company with an excellent service. A critical step in selecting a photo scanning service is to review the management team and feel comfortable with their ethics, business sense and overall vision and mission. ScanCafe's management team is the most experienced in the industry, and our primary goal is to provide superior quality, service, safety and value to our customers. You should also review the testimonials of other individuals who have had their photos scanned. At ScanCafe, we have successfully scanned over 2,000,000 images and our commitment to first class service is unmatched. Your order can be securely tracked from door to door, and even shelf to shelf until it arrives safely back at your doorstep.
ScanCafe scans 35mm, 126, 127, and 120 slides.
Ease of Use
It’s that same old problem: you have a ton of pictures stored in shoe boxes and you want to bring those pictures back to life through scanning technologies. You don't have the time to do it yourself. The rub has been that you still need to invest a large amount of time sifting through the photos, slides and negatives to determine which ones you want to get scanned - lots of people in your shoes just shove the box back in the closet. Well – the ScanCafe Revolution has a simple answer to this problem: "Smart Choice" that makes it easier than previously thought possible for you to get your photographs, slides or 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 and slide under a light source and trying to determine which one you actually want to get scanned. Our only requirement is that you buy at least 20% 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.
Customer Service
Negatives can be extremely tough to select, which is why we let you choose what you like, after we scan them.
Chances are you don’t know a lot about scanning – which is why you visited ScanCafe in the first place. We want 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 Indianapolis 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 [email protected] or call us at 1-866-234-3909. 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.
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.
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, album replication 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
Effortless - Do it Now!
0
No. of minutes you have to spend organizing your order before you send it to us. You can organize it later, online, and pay for the scans you want to keep.
Recommended by the Pros
We count hundreds of working photographers among our customers, including the legendary Peter Guttman ,Travel Journalist, who has joined our Advisory Board..
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Pay for What You Keep
With ScanCafe, you get to review your scans before you settle your bill. You can delete up to 20% of your scans if you don't want them--no questions asked!
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Guaranteed. For Real.
The only real guarantee in the business. If something happens to your originals while we have them, we’ll pay you up to $1,000.
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Quick Facts
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Our shipping partner, UPS, handles nearly 16 million packages and documents per day.
source: UPS
Customers & Our Order Handling
"I just received the DVD and slides. I was impressed by two things. First, my slides came back in the same banded groups and in the same Ziploc bags, and with the same Post-It labels I had put on each, just as I sent them to you. Second, the DVD was organized the same way, the scans were very good, and each JPG was titled and numbered in the same sequence, even across groups, which made it very easy for me to transfer to my PC and rename groups as I needed to. Thank you for a very nice job. I will be readying my next set of slides for you to scan shortly."
- Michael W., Plano TX (February 2008)
"ScanCafe delivers on everything it promises! Great system all the way through - very easy to send everything in...the DVD was organized into folders just as I had requested, and you easily saved me 20-30 hours of work scanning these in myself...Thanks guys, and best wishes for all the success you deserve for putting together such a great service!!"
- Kevin H., Yardley PA (February 2008)
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