ScanMyPhotos review

ScanMyPhotos is a decent scanning service, hidden behind quite a dated website.

ScanMyPhotos review
(Image: © ScanMyPhotos)

Top Ten Reviews Verdict

As a service, we like ScanMyPhotos as it offers everything you need to get your physical media digitized. It has a poor website, and it often hides its better services behind harder sells, which is a real shame.

Pros

  • +

    Good range of services

  • +

    Reasonable value

  • +

    Quick turnaround

Cons

  • -

    Poor website

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ScanMyPhotos offers a range of services for protecting and preserving your old-format pictures. While it primarily deals with regular photographs, it can happily digitize slides, VHS tapes, and 8mm film. It sits in the middle of the pack when it comes to our list of the best photo scanning services - offering little to elevate it above other sites. It sits among the cheaper providers, and it can turn digital conversions around relatively quickly, so is a safe option.

ScanMyPhotos produces high-quality digital copies of your photographs in either 300 or 600 dots per inch (dpi) JPEG files, which it then copies to a DVD. If you have old photographic slides, you can have them scanned into digital copies with ScanMyPhotos' scanning services. It has two types of services available, and the standard service doesn't include color adjustments. If your slides are faded and need color correction, you have to upgrade to the premium service. ScanMyPhotos offers video transfer as part of its scanning services. This service lets you send in your VHS, VHS-C and Hi8 home video tapes to have them converted DVD. 

Many old family photographs end up with scratches and fading over the years. When you send them to ScanMyPhotos, a team of professionals work on your photos to get rid of flaws like tears, fading and other types of damage. Be prepared to pay a premium for this service, though, as it takes time to perfect the photographs. The turnaround time for a single restoration project is ten days, so expect to wait a while for this service, too. You could always try to right the images yourself by using some of the best photo editing software, but bear in mind that it takes a while to learn how to use these programs properly.

Overall, we thought the quality of ScanMyPhotos' digitizations were good, but not exceptional. That's fine, because they worked out a little cheaper than some other providers, like GoPhoto, so you do save a little money if you don't want the absolute best results with your final images.

ScanMyPhotos review

(Image credit: ScanMyPhotos)

In terms of care and postage, ScanMyPhotos does offer an all-round package, where they send you a pre-paid box for packing up your photos or slides. You'll get about 1500-1800 photos into one of these boxes. This works out around $145 for the cheapest packages (with low resolution images) and goes all the way up to $329 for professionally edited images at 600 dpi. We think the 300 dpi images are the best compromise between price and resolution.

You can opt to have your images returned on an 8GB USB drive (absolutely do this, because most DVD players and computers have USB ports, whereas new computers do not have DVD drives), and you can even subscribe for cloud storage which allows you to see your images online. Most scanning companies offer 15-30 days free, but you pay $15 for 15 days here, and up to $60 for six months. This isn't great value for money, especially as you get free online storage for Google and OneDrive accounts, which can easily store most of your photos.

The ScanMyPhotos website itself isn't the worst we've seen, but nor is it the best. It gives you the hard sell by making you fearful about losing your photos in natural disasters, which is never a good sign. The interface is relatively easy to navigate, and prices are reasonably upfront, but there's a spammy feel to the design, which is dated by about a decade. We would love to see a refresh, as the service offered here deserves more, and it lags behind rivals like ScanDigital.

Should you use ScanMyPhotos?

At first glance, ScanMyPhotos seems very middle of the road, and the website itself isn't very inviting. However, there's a decent service here, and it's pretty good value too, covering a wide range of physical media and digitizing services. While we can't recommend you go for the online storage options, we think that if you have a large number of photos and slides to convert, and you'd like them done quickly and professionally, then ScanMyPhotos will do the job well. Remember to ask for the results on a USB drive, and we would very much suggest you get your images at 300 dpi if you intend to display them on anything larger than a tablet screen.

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.