Although digital photography has made it easy to capture all our favourite memories, without having to worry about developing photos and storing them, many of us still have stacks of old photographs. It’s important to preserve all these old memories and leaving them in albums and boxes is risky. A fire or flood can easily wipe out or damage decades of valuable photos.
The best way to protect these treasured memories is to digitize them and store them in several places, such as your computer, an external hard drive and the cloud. However, getting them into a digital format can be time consuming or expensive. Until now, your options were to manually scan them using a flatbed scanner or to send them to a photo scanning service. However, the new Epson FastFoto makes the process of digitizing photos faster and easier. In fact, through Staples, you have a couple of options for digitizing photos using the FastFoto technology.
Option 1: Take Home an Epson FastFoto Scanner
If you have a lot of photos that you’d like to digitize and organize yourself, taking home an Epson FastFoto Scanner might be the right option for you. The scanner quickly scans up to 30 photos at a time, both front and back. That means you can preserve all the written notes and dates on the backs of your photos. It also automatically detects the dimensions of photographs, so you can load photographs of all shapes and sizes.
The software that comes with FastFoto scanners allows you to quickly sort and organize photos as you scan them. You can create searchable metadata for your photos so you can easily find them later. It also gives you a host of useful photo editing tools like red eye removal and colour correction.
Once you’re done scanning your photos, you can help other family members digitize their memories as well. You can also use the scanner to scan other items, such as receipts and bills. Since the scanner easily detects dimensions, you won’t have to babysit receipt with odd dimensions as they go through the scanner.
Option 2: Use the FastFoto Service at Staples Stores
Staples stores also offer FastFoto services exclusively at their Print & Marketing Services centres. Basically, all you need to do is drop off your old photos and the staff at the Print & Marketing Services centre will use FastFoto technology to digitize them and return them to you. While photos are being scanned, they’ll be restored using the FastFoto technology. Of course, both sides of the photo will be scanned to help you preserve all your precious memories.
You’ll find FastFoto service at Staples stores to be a cost effective and convenient solution if you have fewer than 1,500 photos.
Overall, I find Epson FastFoto to be the perfect solution to preserving memories and protecting them from being damaged or lost. Whether you opt for the service offered exclusively at Staples, or you prefer to take home a scanner, you can’t go wrong. Both options will provide you with a way to digitize and preserve your photos in a high-resolution format. When making the decision between purchasing a scanner and simply using the service, I recommend considering how many photos you and other family members might need to scan. Provided that you need to scan more than 1,500 photos and use a scanner for other things, such as receipts, purchasing the scanner is your best bet. If you only need to scan a couple hundred photos, I recommend using the FastFoto service instead.
