Frequently Asked Questions...
Question about this forum site?
So I recently heard about this site extremesurfs.com, Where you get paid to post in forums. I read that you get 2 cents per post which is unlimited, 3 cents per thread post which is 5 times a day. The person who posted that also put photo images of their payment proofs. But there's gotta be a catch. Can this site be trusted? Any advice?
Answer:
just by going to the site, it seems crappy, bloated with ads and hard to find information, i never encountered a site so difficult to navigate, i will never pay any subscription or anything in that site if i were you, they will say anything in order for you to pay a fee
Photo Image Cent
What's in the Learning Center - Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate
Photo Scanning Service vs. Self Scanning
You may have old pictures of family vacations or events that you either put in albums or possibly boxes. Over time, you forget all about the pictures - therefore, the memories are lost as well. Then one day you stumble across the pictures and see how much damage the pictures are in. You may get excited and want to show some friends or family that may live out of state, and then you find yourself wondering how you can send pictures to them. A thought pops into your mind that your should digitize photos to CD or DVD by doing it yourself or take it to a PHOTO SCANNING SERVICE that would help you put your pictures on a CD.
When you want to scan or digitize photos into your computer by yourself, you will have to plan ahead. If you don’t have a scanner, the first order of business is pretty obvious – buy a scanner. Which one though? Well, there are two types of scanners. One is a flatbed scanner that scans pictures and documents. This is for most people. The second kind is film scanners. These are usually for a person that wants to scan either negatives or slides – and they are more expensive.
The assumption here is that your are going to be scanning family pictures – or at least any kind of prints. A flatbed scanner will do as mentioned previously. Before you start scanning, you will have to go through all your pictures, one by one, and make sure there isn’t dirt or finger smudges on them. Have a lint-free cloth on hand and wipe off anything you see, but not to hard – you don’t want to damage the photo. Also, make sure you handle the pictures by the corners.
Now it is time to fire up your scanner. Make sure the glass is clean and if it isn’t – wipe them with the lint-free cloth as well. Now place your picture face down on the scanner. If you want to scan more than one picture, put them side by side and make sure they all fit properly within the glass of the scanner.
Now start scanning. Depending what dpi (dots per inch) you chose, it will scan at different speeds. For an example, if you chose 300 dpi, you’ll get a lower quality of picture but it will scan faster. However, at 600 dpi, a higher quality picture but will scan slower. All in all though, if you are just doing it for your friends and family to see, 300 dpi would be just fine.
When you scan them in, the software should give you a choice to view the scanned pictures to see if you like it or not. If not, you can edit the scan by resizing the image or adjusting the resolution among other editing actions. Once that is done, you can allow the final scan to be digitized into your computer system.
Even after the photo is digitized and saved as a file onto your hard drive, you can use an editing tool to adjust the brightness and alter the color of your pictures. You can utilize Photoshop which is probably the best editing software on the market today, but that will cost you around $600. If you don’t want to spend that much money, you could put out $100 for Photoshop Element that can do the basics of photo editing. GIMP is another editing software that can help you out and it is totally free.
Once you are done editing, you can then put your scanned pictures into different folders and back them up onto a flash drive or CD. Always make sure you backup right away. You never know when your hard-drive will crash or your computer will get attacked by a virus. Now you are officially done with "self-scanning".
The flip side of the coin is to send your pictures to a PHOTO SCANNING SERVICE. There are many companies out there, but one is really breaking away from the rest of the pack. They are Digital Memories Online and it is a photo, slide, and negative scanning company based in Grove City, Ohio. The prices are competitive and their work is top of the line.
No matter what company you go with, they all should have a website that allows you to download an order form and fill out how many photos you want scanned. Before you ship them, make sure you have the pictures organized. For an example, let's say you want pictures from three different vacations scanned. You don't want them mixed up, because the scanning company will scan these in the order they get them in. So be sure to separate all your pictures in the group you want them to be in.
The prices vary - usually though, they cost around 39 cents to digitize the photos to images that is placed on CD or DVD. To digitize larger pictures - it will cost a little more, and to repair old photos, it will be pretty expensive. Again, prices will vary.
All you need to do next is ship your pictures to the scanning company and just sit back and wait for them to be shipped back. You can probably put in a "rush order" if you need your pictures back by a certain date, but if you are not in a big hurry, it will probably take a week or two to get them done.
If you ask me what I would do personally, whether to scan the photos myself or send them to a Photo Scanning Service, it would depend on how many pictures I have. If I just have a few, I might as well scan them myself. However, if I have a hundreds and have extra money to spend, I would ship it to a scanning service.
About the Author
My name is Mark Shrigley and I am a supervisor at a major auto manufacture. I work in the IT field. My experience is scanning old photos into my computer system.
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