Digital Memories offers a scanning service for several types of customer. You can get your old media - photos, slides, negatives, VHS etc - transferred to a digital format, you can get slideshows created, and you can back-up and share your photos with friends and family. It's a broad range, and Digital Memories will also enhance and restore your images where possible too. There's an impressive array of options, but this service is pretty expensive, and you only get 60 days free once your images have been uploaded (before you start paying a subscription fee). Digital Memories is one of the best photo scanning services available, but it's not for everyone.
Once you send your traditional photos to Digital Memories, they’re scanned and digitized using state of the art equipment. The photo scanning service's team of technicians checks each of your photographs to make sure they’re up to par, and they touch them up and repair them when necessary. You do have to actually ship your photographs to the company, though, and if they’re lost in transit, you may lose them permanently.
The Digital Memories photo scanning service partners with MiMedia to provide an online backup process for your photographs. This allows you to access your photos from any internet-connected device, including iPhones, iPads and other tablets. There is a cost for the MiMedia service, but the first 60 days are included with the cost of the photo transfer service. After the 60 days, if you wish to continue using the service you have to pay a subscription fee. You can also store your personal media in the cloud as well, like your music collection. Doing this allows you to stream your music and photographs anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
Digital Memories also has the technology to save slides and negatives by using special equipment to enlarge and digitize them. This not only allows you to have a backup copy but also use them without needing to find old, obsolete equipment. Of course, you could also invest in your own slide to digital image converter, if you want to do the job yourself. If you have Advantix camera film, Digital Memories handles that as well.
Traditional photographs and entire photo albums can be digitized all at once, and care is taken when scanning albums to ensure that they don’t get damaged and that every photograph is placed back in its proper position before being shipped back to you.
The quality of digital images you get will largely depend on the original format you send, but we did find that Digital Memories processes images to a high standard, which justifies the extra money you'll likely pay for them.
As with some other scanning services, the website feels outdated and a little untrustworthy. We like the customer profiles, which indicate what kind of service you might need from Digital Memories, but there are a number of elements on the page that try a little too hard to convince you that they can be trusted. It's hard to navigate to what you actually need on the site too, and the number of elements and testimonials will confuse many users. The ScanDigital site is far more easy to use.
The pricing structures are a little complicated, and there are three tiers of service - Bronze, Silver, and Gold - that get you different types of scanning. Price varies between these, and there are discounts for bulk orders. The ScanMyPhotos pricing is far cleaner than this one. On the whole, though, we found Digital Memories to be more expensive than many other scanning services. The end result is worth it, as is the service you receive.
Should you choose Digital Memories?
Digital Memories does a good job with the images it scans, and it does support a wide range of formats. The ability to host your images online is a good one, although you only get 60 days for free before you need to start paying for a subscription. The website is poor, and it's tough to work out exactly how much you'll end up paying, so keep this in mind before you sign up.
