ScanDigital review

ScanDigital is a slick scanning service that offers safe shipping options, and high-quality digital scans.

ScanDigital review
(Image: © ScanDigital)

Top Ten Reviews Verdict

ScanDigital is a professional operation with a great website and some simple pricing options. The results you get are good, and the send and return services gives you piece of mind throughout.

Pros

  • +

    Good image quality

  • +

    Excellent service

  • +

    Great website

Cons

  • -

    No online hosting

  • -

    Limited format support

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ScanDigital has several services to help you restore, digitize, and future-proof your precious memories. It's a slick operation, and one that provides you with a pre-prepped postage box to send all your photos and slides with as little fuss as possible. It has a great website, simple pricing options, and a number of details on the process by which your images will be digitized. The results you get are also very good, making this one of the best photo scanning services you can choose.

ScanDigital also accepts complete photo albums for scanning. It has the ability to carefully remove your photographs from the album, scan them into high-quality 300 dots per inch (dpi) or 600 dpi digital images, and return your album and scanned photographs to you. If you have 35mm slides or negatives, ScanDigital is able to convert those to digital files as well. Files from these sources are generally larger format than standard scans and result in images between 2,000 dpi and 4,000 dpi. 

ScanDigital manually processes all photographs by hand to ensure the resulting scans are of the highest quality possible and edits the scans to make sure the coloring and quality are correct before sending them back to you. In order to ensure quality, your photographs are viewed by three different technicians. Once your photographs are prepared by the photo scanning service, you have access to them in an online gallery where you can view and share them with friends and family. If you're unhappy with any of the scans or processing, you can have them redone at no extra charge.

ScanDigital is also capable of transferring a variety of formats, including VHS, MiniDV and BetaMax tapes. As part of the service, your video is transferred with scene detection, which means your resulting video has separate navigation chapter points, which is a nice touch.

ScanDigital review

(Image credit: ScanDigital)

We love that ScanDigital will actually send you a box with shipping instructions included, so there's no worry about whether or not you've packaged your photos, albums, and home videos correctly. The service you get from ScanDigital is probably the best of all the scanning companies we found.

The website is also excellent. It's modern, easy to use, and doesn't feel the need to give you a hard sell - it simply explains the process to you, includes information on how your media will be handled, and gives you easy-to-understand options for payment. The pricing here is a little different to other services, as you simply pay for a batch - it's $69 for up to 100 photos, for example. Obviously, the more images you send, the lower the 'price per photo'. You could potentially save money by buying one of the best slide to digital image converters instead, but scanning negatives yourself is a fairly time-consuming process. 

You can select two levels of restoration - premium and expert - which offers a different kind of restoration for your images. We think both are great, and premium will be enough for anyone other than photographers who want to enhance the images they took years ago.

All images are returned to you - along with your physical media - on a thumbdrive or external hard drive, which you can easily plug into any PC or Mac. A surprising number of rival companies copy to DVD or charge extra for hosting online, like Digital Memories, so this is a great option here. One of the few problems is that scans take a little longer than something like GoPhoto, which is quicker.

Should you choose ScanDigital?

Overall, we're impressed with ScanDigital. Every aspect of the service you get is professional and easy to understand. The website is effective and simple to navigate, and the pricing is also very user-friendly. Sure, this isn't the cheapest service you'll find, but it's by far one of the slickest, and you'll feel reassured that your precious memories are in good hands.

Danny Chadwick

Danny Chadwick is a former Top Ten Reviews Multimedia Editor with a wealth of experience in Video Editing and Production. He specializes in all things multimedia editing, and his written on subjects ranging from video and audio editors right through to photo scanning and lawn mowers. There are few subjects Danny won't write about.