DigMyPics Review From Oakland - slide scanning

Digmypics did a great job on my family's old slides, and I am a photographer so I am very picky. They also did not damage any slides, kept everything in order, etc. None of the typical artifacts of bad scanning, such as softness from de-dusting, etc. occurred. When they "color corrected" images, they did not lose information in the darks or lights, so feel confident about letting them do that. (They actually don't do too much as part of their free color correction.) Staff is readily available by phone, is knowledgeable, and follows instructions (although this doesn't preclude some misunderstandings). All in all, an excellent service. However, there are some things to know: 1. If you let them crop, you will lose about 1/8" on each edge, which is too much in many cases. However, you can request no cropping. In this case, they will not color-correct. This doesn't matter much if you have Photoshop, because you can easily make the minor corrections they would do on your own. You should probably separate out a batch you don't want cropped, and let them do their normal procedure, which yields good results, for the rest. 2. After you add the price of the return disk and shipping, you will pay about 50 cents per slide. Digmypics is prompt and keeps you well informed of their progress. 3. They appear to have remarkably good dust-and-scratches capability, which does not seem to damage the image detail. If you are scanning old slides, you will be much more conscious of grain and other film problems than anything digmypics might do. 3. Digmypics will label each batch of slides with whatever happens to be on the outside of the container they arrive in, so be careful! It takes a surprising amount of time to label images, so if you can get the job half done by digmypics by careful aforethought, do so. even a good general label can be helpful for finding images before you have a chance to relabel. 4. For most 35 mm slides that are not going to be blown up beyond 11 x 14, there is little point in using anything over their basic `25-mb/35mm slide resolution, unless you just want more detail about the film grain, or your ancestors' bad focusing techniques or bad lenses. For a really good slide, you will of course get a better scan at 50mb if you need one, but most old family photos aren't that good. 5. If you are pretty good with Photoshop and have some very difficult slides, like underexposed Kodachromes or very badly faded images, Digmypics will improve them modestly with their basic service, but of course they can't spend a lot of time. You should expect to fix these yourself.