Blog

Why Fall Is the Perfect Time to Start Your Photo and Video Digitization Project Written by: Brandon Harris, Smooth Photo Scanning Services

The holidays have a way of making us pull out the boxes. Suddenly, you are looking through old family photos, finding forgotten VHS tapes, or discovering a stack of slides from a trip you barely remember.  With Thanksgiving and the...

Creating a Family Media Inventory: How to Catalog What You Have Before You Digitize Written by: Brandon Harris, Smooth Photo Scanning Services

You can’t digitize what you can’t find. Before you send a box of old photos or tapes to a scanning service, take one simple step: make a family photo inventory. You do not need to identify every picture perfectly. You...

How to Digitize Church, Synagogue, and Community Organization Archives Written by: Brandon Harris, Smooth Photo Scanning Services

Decades of community history can sit quietly in filing cabinets, closets, storage rooms, and old boxes.  A congregation may have photographs from its first building, printed bulletins from major milestones, directories filled with names, and videos of dedication ceremonies.  Community...

Grandparents’ Day Gift Guide: Digitize Their Photo Collection and Preserve Their Legacy Written by: Brandon Harris, Smooth Photo Scanning Services

The best Grandparents' Day gift may already be sitting in a closet. Old albums, loose prints, slides, negatives, and home videos can hold decades of family stories, but physical media can fade, tear, get lost, or become difficult to play....

Digitizing Photos Damaged by Mold, Mildew, and Insect Damage: What Can Be Saved? Written by: Brandon Harris, Smooth Photo Scanning Services

Biological damage is one of the most common threats to stored photos, more common than fire, more common than flooding, and often more destructive than simple aging. Mold, mildew, and insects just need a damp closet, a cardboard box, and...

APS Film Cartridges: How to Digitize the Forgotten Camera Format of the 1990s? Written by: Brandon Harris, Smooth Photo Scanning Services

Millions of APS cartridges are sitting forgotten in drawers, closets, attics, and old camera bags right now.  If you grew up in the 1990s, there's a good chance your family owned one of those compact point-and-shoot cameras that used the...