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Services
Digitize (Scan) · Record to
CD · Reasons for Digitizing
Digitize (scan)
Old photographs (Photographs more than 50 years old)
- Black and white, sepia tone, etc.
- Retouch minor scratched and distressed images
- Enhancement of contrast, brightness, and sharpness
Color and B/W photographs
- Up to 8" x 10"
- Enhance as above
Slides
- 35mm color or b/w
- Second best medium for scanning
Negatives
- 35mm b/w or color
- This is the best medium for scanning (highest image data content)
Oil Painting, Drawings, and Prints
- Personal oil paintings, oil portraits, drawing, and prints for personal use and
insurance purposes
- Can scan up to 8" x 10" images
- This medium produces excellent images for personal web sites
Documents
- Birth and death certificates
- Marriage licenses and certificates
- Deeds and mortgages
- Wills and land grants
- Insurance and other important documents
- Newspaper clippings
Digital Photo Restoration/Repair
- Remove tears, large scratches and major defects and unwanted objects from a scanned
photograph.
- FamilySpheres will perform enhancement of image contrast, brightness, and sharpness.
- FamilySpheres can supply a quality full color or b/w print.
- The original photograph will be unchanged and will be returned.
Note: Digital repairs can be done
only on a scan of the original photograph, 35mm slide or negative. For a repair time
estimate, you may supply a photocopy of the photograph by email.
 Audio
- Recorded "audio biography" on
cassette or DAT tape transferred to CD.
- Transfer your personally recorded music from LPs, 45s and cassettes.
- Band demo from DAT (digital audio tape) or cassette tape transferred to CDs.
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Record to Compact Disc
Scanning Specifications
- No photos are scanned at less than 144dpi (computer monitor display
requires only 72 dpi).
- Maximum color photo scans at 720dpi (this is a HUGE file) unless higher dpi requested (capable of
up to 9600dpi).
- Black and white photos are scanned at 512 gray scale.
- Documents, newspaper clippings, and text scanned as line art at 144 lpi.
Image Formats
JPG/GIF - If you are planning on placing photos on a web site or want
to send them to friends and family by e-mail, FamilySpheres supplies them as JPG (Jpeg)
for photos or
GIF for line art. These formats are the standard formats for Web Page use. For sending your
photos to friends and family we especially recommend using JPG, since they are compressed, making file sizes
significantly smaller and much faster to send/receive.
TIF - If you are having images scanned for other purposes (such as
archiving or printing) FamilySpheres recommends using TIF (TIFF) format which is a very
common format that most desktop publishing and graphics applications can use. All images
recorded on CDs will be in the TIFF format unless otherwise requested.
Other - Some of the other formats that can be requested are PSD, PDD
(Adobe PhotoShop), BMP (Windows Bit map), EPS, PCX, and PIC. (If there is a particular
format which you are interested in please e-mail FamilySpheres).
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Practical Reasons for Digitizing
to Compact Discs
Family Record Keeping - The Velcro of Life
Life's mile stones: Births,
graduations, weddings, church missions, marriages, memorable vacations, reunions, military
service, and funerals. These are occasions that, because of their understandable
importance, are recorded on film or slides as photographs, on documents such as
licenses or certificates, and in journals. These become unique family histories which are
precious to each of us and our posterity.
These histories are the glue that bonds one generation to the previous generation . . .
and to the next generation. They are what gives the newest generation traction. The
ability to store this material in an organized way on a compact disk and preserve that
material virtually forever is a blessing and responsibility that no previous generation
has enjoyed.
Precaution Against Disaster
Replace
with printed copy from
CD after loss due to fire, flood, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, or just plain
negligence.
- Reprint any photo or document from CD
- Images scanned at 600dpi are suitable for printing - large Mb files
- Keep a copy of the FamilyFoto, AudioBiography, or DigitalDocument CD in a separate
location (other family member or friend's
home, office, or safe deposit box)
Archiving
- The storage space of 650Mb per Compact Disc is equal to about 400
3.5" floppy disks or 6 zip disks
- Averaging about 2Mb per uncompressed image file, 325 TIF image files can be stored on a
single compact disc
- Compressed files, such as JPEG, average less than 30Kb and are very good for display on
computer screens. However, they produce poor quality prints
- Scans made of photos to be printed should be made at the dpi of the
printer and recorded as uncompressed files
- Compatible for all formats (uncompressed TIFF and BMP formats are standard. However,
FamilySpheres will do format conversions and compressions as requested)
- Cross platform format support (all files can be read on either a Mac or PC).
- Standard compression formats are JPEG, GIF, LZW compressed TIF.
Organization
Preservation
- Kodak scientifically measured CD lifetime, with minimal environmental care and normal
handling, and found it to be in excess of 350 years.
- Never again worry about deterioration and difficult, tedious, or messy preservation methods.
Storage
- Hundreds of photos, slides, or documents per CD (dependent primarily upon
image format).
- Multi-session recording capability - able to add image or document files to
an existing
FamilySpheres recorded CD-R.
Back up hard drives
- Long term storage to free up precious hard drive space
- Fast search and retrieval (which tape backups cannot do)
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