My 13-year-old recently completed a project scanning many boxes full of photographs for a family member. After looking at the pricing for these services from Walmart, Costco, and various online photo scanning outfits, he realized he can provide this service locally in a way that provides great value for you, and a great job for him. He can scan your photos that are part of a roll of film for $0.10 each ($2.40 for 24 or $3.60 for 36).

He will scan your photos at a resolution of 600 dpi (dots per inch), which seems to be ideal for most photos, but 300dpi or 1200dpi are also available with some pricing modification. The Epson FF-680W that he uses includes photo enhancement software that can be used to improve the appearance of red-eye or to restore faded colors (some of his experience is with photos from the early days of color photography and B&W photos). He can give you a copy of the enhanced photo, the unmodified photo, or both.

If you have photos that require flatbed scanning, please describe the nature of your project and he can include a time-based quote for those photos as well.

He will return your original photos to you and provide you with a digital copy of all photos scanned on a USB flash drive.

Our original impetus for him starting this project was because we didn’t want to store boxes and boxes of photos indefinitely. Although many of these photos ended up not being very important, almost every roll contained some photos preserving valuable memories. Having these memories in a box in the garage or the basement is a waste. Clicking through photos on your computer is a much, much easier process for you to identify these valuable memories than personally sorting through boxes of photos. Once these photos are scanned they are easy to share and enjoy with family members and friends, as the original photographer intended.

Whether you have a single shoebox or many apple boxes full of photos, he is ready to help you with your project.