The Family Photo Album Dilemma - Maybe It's Solved?

It looks like David Pogue's ridden to my rescue yet again. A few weeks back, I lamented on the fact that my family photo albums were disintegrating, and that the project to repair them looked nearly insurmountable. I had even discarded the thought of scanning the pictures because of the sheer amount to time involved for getting pretty mediocre results.

However, based on the recommendation in David's most recent NY Times column, I am going to carefully dismantle those decaying photo albums and send the pictures into Scanmyphotos.com. For $50, this company will scan up to 1000 pictures, and send you back a DVD with your images in JPEG format. Of course, there are caveats - everything has to be properly organized and labled, there are extra fees for reorienting images, scanning the backs of photos, etc., but frankly - it seems worth every penny. Consider this - a sheet feed scanner that will actually accept photos (most don't) costs about $400. Not only is it expensive (the equivalent of scanning 8000 photos), it will be primarily a uni-tasker in your office, because the sheetfeed mechanism means that the unit won't work comfortably or well as a flatbed scanner (I know this from experience).

So, I am going to give this a shot. My sisters will be in this weekend to celebrate Dad's 82nd birthday, and even though they don't know it yet, they are going to help with those picture albums, like it or not!

Stay tuned, and I'll report on the results.