FAQ

There is a saying “There are few things money can’t buy” and ‘memories’ is one of those few things. We should scan photos to cherish the sweet memories of the past. When was the last time your entire family sat together and went through the old photos that were stacked in the shoeboxes and shoved underneath the bed? Through scanning you can

1. Preserve all the photos onto your laptop or home server

2. Create multiple copies of the pictures and share with your near and dear ones

3. Create photo albums and gift those to loved ones on special occasions

4. Get rid of the stacks of photos stored in various corners of the house

5. Label them, organize them, put notes on them.

You have to outsource to a service company because a service company does the job at a much lower cost than the cost incurred in doing it by yourself. Below are the reasons for that

         1. Equipment cost to do scanning is too high to justify purchasing one for home use.
         2. Scanning is a labor intensive work. It requires a dedicated resource to perform the job
         3. It requires expertise in photoshop, image properties, color enhancement techniques

Using ScanCorner’s service, you not save your valuable time and money incurred, if you were to do it by yourself; but also get a better quality scanning output. Don’t you think your childhood memories deserve that much?

Please fill in your requirements under Get Quote section of Photo Restoration or send email to memories (at) scancorner (dot) in for placing an order. Once we go through your requirement, we will send you an email confirmation along with the quotation. Once you do the payment, we start the restoration work. We do restoration over 3 level iteration process. i.e. Once we finish the restoration, we send you the restored photo. If you are expecting some more changes, you can communicate with us and we incorporate those changes. This can be done a maximum of 3 items after which the output is considered final. So, make sure you communicate all your changes within an email or two.

It is possible to scan images yourself. However, to obtain a good quality scan, you would need long hours of intense engagement with a good quality scanner, besides skillful working with photo restoration tools. We have invested in the best quality and costly scanning equipment with a highly trained crew of media technicians to give you the best possible output; saving you valuable time and effort. Further, our gallery allows you to share your photos with your friends and relatives and also facilitates upload to photo sharing sites such as picasso and flickr. We also store your scanned images in our server for 1 year, in case you want an additoinal digital copy at a later stage.

Below are the steps to be followed, if you want to do the scanning by yourself and produce equivalent quality scans offered by ScanCorner.
 

1. Long hours of scanning (50 hours of scanning for 300 photos, 4 months if you dedicate 3 hours per weekend)

2. Purchase a Nikon CoolScan 5000ED or similar scanner for Rs. 1.3 lakhs

3. Purchase high-end Epson scanner for scanning the printed photos @ Rs. 30000 and upwards

4. Have a desktop/laptop with high end processor and 4 GB RAM

5. Install the software that comes with the scanner and get a clear understanding of various setting options and their advantages

6. Take all the photos/negatives out and start scanning manually

7. After every individual scan, open the imaging software for cropping and apply image enhancement techniques to each image

8. Save the image in a clearly numbered folder and store it
       

 1. Skill to operate Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED or other similar scanning equipment

 2. Adobe Photoshop expertise

 3. Clear understanding of image properties

 4. Good knowledge on how to enhance an image by modifying its various properties

 5. Idea on how to organize pictures, label those pictures, number them and store them.

ScanCorner offers high quality scans at a competitive price. To our knowledge, we are the only integrated company in India to offer scanning of the widest variety of photo formats. We do the scanning manually as automated process has severe limitations.  A resource is completely dedicated to an order who does the scanning manually, cleans and crops each and every image and then enhances the image.  All this we provide at an unbeatable price. We upload the pictures onto the server for you to download; we also burn the pictures to a DVD and ship it along with the originals. We are passionate about creating those special happy moments for our customers and our work exhibits our passion.  

 It happens mainly if the images are damaged badly that the basic restoration service we provide isn’t sufficient to restore those images. At ScanCorner, we can ensure some degree of scratch remvoal, color correction and restoration. But we receive some images which are highly damaged (may be due to natural calamities or due to flooding or even due to excessive exposure to sunlight). These pictures can’t be restored using the standard service. You have to opt for a restoration service and pay additional price for that. Our executive will restore the image to its original condition using a manual process and various photo editing tools.

We had taken extensive safety precaution to ensure the privacy of photos. This includes multi-level access restriction to the scanning facility using 24 hour security personnel, RFID Access to the scanning facility and another level of access restriction to the actual scanning zone. The scanning systems have multi-level access control and have no access to data transfer devices like CD-ROMs, USB and internet. All the scanned images will be stored in the server and uploaded directly from there.

Currently, ScanCorner is a ten member team working tirelessly 24x7 to provide best service to the customers.

As is with any revolutionary startup firm, ScanCorner is born out of a need felt by one of our partners Eric Schreider to scan old photoslides of his god mother in Switzerland. He was looking for a good quality and affordable scanning service and found that most of the service providers charged phenomenal rates. Then, he felt that perhaps there are many others like him who needed such services. He had a momentary discussion with his classmate Raja Upputuri and they both decided to set up a high quality scanning facility in India to service customers in Switzerland and soon they roped in their MBA senior Raghuram KS to join in their enthusiastic venture. A fourth partner, Toni Casas, soon joined to develop Spanish market

Now, ScanCorner has invested in the best quality scanning hardware and software and have a dedicated team of media technicians and restoration engineers to offer you the best scanning output in the industry. Currently, ScanCorner services clients in India, Switzerland and Spain.

We would love to hear from you. Whether you want to give a feedback, criticism or a pat on the back for our good work or just want to meet us, please write to us at contactus@scancorner.com

1. Register yourself at www.scancorner.in and place your order

2. Enter your detailed address with phone number and pin code. If your pin code falls under our home pickup service area across India, we can arrange a pick up. If not, you have to ship it to us using a reputed courier service.

3. Pack your photos and albums in a sturdy box or atleast in a waterproof thick envelope. Our shipping partner picks up your package and bring to our premises at Hyderabad

3. On receipt of confirmation from ScanCorner, make the payment using our secure gateway

4. Your order is in process at our global processing center

5. We upload scanned images at our online gallery. View, rejoice and share!

6. You receive the originals along with a copy of high resolution images in a DVD/CD
 

Keep yourself updated through our regular alerts on your email id and mobile no. used for registration at www.scancorner.in

For normal orders upto 1000 photos, we take 5 days to process after receipt of your order and payment. Shipping time will be extra. For bulk orders, please allow more time depending on the size.

We offer a simple and flat price of Rs. 9 per scan for printed photos (upto 11"x8"), 35 mm colour negative and slides. For Black & White negatives and all other formats, we charge Rs. 14 per scan. From time to time, we run attractive discount offers. Please register yourself at www.scancorner.in or become our fan in Facebook (http://bit.ly/scancorner) to get hold of any such offers.

On receipt of your package, we laboriously count the no. of photos/negatives/slides to be scanned and update the billing page in your account @ScanCorner. A link will be sent to be your email id prompting you to the security payment gateway.

Your account @ScanCorner is updated with the status of your order on a regular basis from the day we receive your package. Alternately, we also send you regular updates to your email id and mobile number used for registration

We recommend using a strong and rugged cardboard box, if it contains albums. Otherwise, you can use thick water proof envelopes and pack the photos collectively based on the type. Simply seal it and place an order with us, we will have your package picked up from your address.

Ya sure, you can login to check the progress of your order. We update order information in the system as and when photos move from one department to other.

All your pictures are placed in a folder. That folder is zipped, encrypted and then uploaded onto server. Link and the password to unzip the zipped folder is sent to the email listed with us. You can download the zipped folder, unzip it and experience your sweet memories. We also record all the images on the DVD and the DVD is shipped along with original photos.
 

On completion of scanning, your scanned images will be uploaded in our online gallery and a link will be send to your email id (used for registration). You can view the images by clicking on the link and you are free to forward the link to anyone. This is the very purpose of having an online gallery. Go and share your memories!

Link will be active for one month from the date of uploading

By default, all your scanned images are stored in our server for one year from the date of your order, after which they are removed permanantly. During this one year period, you can order another DVD containing your images by quoting your order number. This cost just Rs 99. Shipping charges extra. We are also working on a digital storage solution after this one year period as an additional service. Stay tuned for updates!

Printing and enlarging photos depends on usage. The acceptable quality varies according to usage and image itself. 300 pixel per inch is considered a standard in most cases and at that standard a paper photo can be enlarged to twice the size without any decrease in sharpness.

Slides and negatives can be printed in much larger sizes. At our standard scanning resolution of 3000dpi, a 35mm negative could be printed, photo quality, at 9" x 13", roughly.

At this moment we are offering two storage options

1) CD/DVD

2) Online Storage

When the images are scanned, those are uploaded into the server and link is sent to the customer. Also, all the images are recorded on a DVD and the DVD is shipped to the customer along with the original photos.

These DVDs or CDs can usually be viewed on your DVD/CD player or computer.
There is a chance for some DVD or CD players are not capable of playing those file formats.
Usage of computers are recommended for reliability

     10:00 – 18:00hrs IST Monday to Friday
    

We do offer restoration services at an additional cost. Please send an email to restoration@scancorner.com and we will revert asap with costing and time required to restore your photo

We have a team of media technicians and restoration engineers who are well versed with software tools and image enhancement techniques used for restoration. This is a skilled process involving manual intervention, photographic knowledge and experience

We accept orders around the world. Infact, our first order came from Switzerland and we continue to execute orders from Western Europe. Also, Non resident Indians based in USA, UK, Canada, Australia or other countries can place orders. If your photos are in India, we can arrange to have them picked up (subject to available service location list) or you can have them shipped to our facility at Hyderabad, India.

At this moment we support all basic formats. Below is the list of formats we support:

• Color Negatives 35mm
• Standard Slides 35mm
• Printed Photos A4 size max.
• B&W Negatives (Without ICE)
• APS Films
• 126 er Instamatic
• Medium format negatives
• Kodachrome and Polaroid

We are including other formats over a course of time. Keep checking this space for more information on formats we support.

As part of standard scanning, negatives and slides are scanned @3000 DPI, while printed photos are scanned @600 DPI.

Output doesn’t vary whether we scan it from either negative or photo.
Both will give equivalent quality any type can be preferred 

Yes. We can scan upto 5000 dpi. Please send a mail to contactus@scancorner.com for custom requests and pricing information

Yeah we crop and rotate the images. When we scan an image some additional unnecessary component appears in the scanned image. We crop that additional component. We also rotate the images to keep them in the right position.

The billing is done post receipt of your package and counting of photos and negatives. Your account will be updated with the exact count of work involved with billing amount (shipping charges are mentioned separately at the bottom), and a link will be send to your email id to initiate payment process

You can choose to pay by international credit card, debit card or netbanking through our secure payment gateway. We will send you payment intimation after confirming the count of prints, negatives and slides and shipping charges. This happens within 24 hours of receipt of your package at our office. Please allow 48 hours during weekend. For bulk orders, we may need more time for counting

Yes. As much as we would like to, we are unable to include shipping charges in the pricing. Some of the customers recommended including shipping charges and charging a higher amount, but we decided to opt for a transparent pricing. For select locations, we have an optional pick up facility, where the albums, photos and negatives are picked up with no upfront cost. The shipping charges are billed along with your order after we receive the package. Currently, home pickup is available at more than 400 towns covering 5200 pincodes across India. We are continuously working to increase the spread of pick up locations to provide you with convenience and peace of mind. Stay tuned!

We charge Rs 9 per scan for scanning printed photos, 35 mm colour negatives and slides. For black & white negatives and all other formats, we charge Rs 14 per scan. Shipping is charged based on weight and dimensions of the package. For detailed pricing, kindly refer our pricing page 

We are probably not the lowest cost provider, but surely provide the best value for money. Your photos, negatives and slides receive the best care with our trained technicians, who use sophisticated scanning equipment and software tools. The negatives and slides are cleaned with compressed air, wherever necessary, to remove dust and other minute particles. We apply a high grade photo cleaner to remove dust from printed photos. Further, we process your scanned image with Digital ICE technology to remove remaining blemishes and minor scratches. All this, with a careful eye, to give you the best possible output.

There are "ZERO" hidden costs involved in the scanning. All the prices are displayed to the customer before he confirms the order.

Our service relies on 100% customer satisfaction. In case, you are not satisfied with our services, you can write to us and we will do our best to resolve your concerns. If you are still not satisfied, we will refund your money back to you

The privacy and protection of your images is of vital consequence to us. To prevent misuse of your photographic images and to protect your privacy, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure your personal property.
Access to your photographs is strictly controlled both physically and electronically. Your photographs and scanned images are never shared with third parties nor used for any other purpose

Our scanning facility is manned by security personnel 24X7 and is monitored virtually using IP Cameras installed in various locations. More over, the scanning facility has an RFID Access to allow restricted entry with strict rules against tailgating. All the data transfer devices are deactivated at the scanning facility to restrict any kind of data transfer. All images are placed in a central server with multiple backups

All our media professionals are trained to use utmost safeguards while scanning your photo albums, negatives and slides. We use compressed air to clean negatives and slides, wherever it is necessary to remove dust and other particles. A high grade photo cleaner is used to clean printed photos. So, your photos are in safe hands!!

For scanning negatives and slides, we use Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED; for prints, we use Epson Perfection V700 with Dual lens sytem. We rely on Digital ICE for processing, which gets feeded into further manual processing to remove remaining blemishes ensuring the best digital image possible

Sure. Our scanning facility is located at Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad. We are a young team of management graduates and media professionals committed to help you preserve, restore and share memories. We have invested in good quality scanning equipment (Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED for slides and negatives; Epson Perfection V700 with Dual Lens System for printed photos) and software tools to enhance image quality and output.

We are currently serving West European market exclusively and about to launch ScanCorner officially for the Indian and NRI market in August. Kindly write to us at contactus@scancorner.in if you need more information or better still, you are welcome to visit us at our premises.

At ScanCorner we use high-end, industry best scanning tools to scan the images. All the images are scanned by hand. Post scanning all images are cross checked for any quality issues and if any image isn’t upto our standard, we do a manual processing again. And all images go through a final review before uploading onto the site. At Scan Corner, we strongly believe in doing our best, the first time!!

Absolutely!! Your photos are kept confidential and are not distributed, sold or used for any other purpose

ScanCorner has designed an integrated and centralized supply chain system to ensure that your photos remain safe throughout the process. Nowadays, courier companies carry valuable articles all over the world. We recommend that you use a good courier company. You can write to us at contactus@scancorner.in, if you need any help in this matter.

On receiving your package, we send you an acknowledgement and you can track the progress of the scanning and return shipment through ’Track my order’ utility by logging into your account at ScanCorner and receive regular alerts on your email id or mobile no. Our office is also equipped with security system and 24 hour surveillance to safeguard your treasured images.  If you live within Hyderabad/Secunderabad,  you are free to drop your photos at our Dilsukhnagar facility.

  Yes!  Please click the below link to view the samples of our work.
    Link:http://scancorner.in/gallery.php

    It is very simple, just signup and enter your details. The account is created post verification of your email address.

Click on ’Order Now’ or ’Scan Now’ button present on home page and other pages on the website. It will either ask you to Login if you haven’t yet logged in or take you to the orders section. Enter the order details and shipping information. You will then get a confirmation through email. Please follow guidelines for packing and await our shipping partner to pickup your package from your home.  Once we receive your package, these will be counted and we will update your account with the exact count of photos, negatives and slides.

Yes, you can check your order status online. Login to www.scancorner.in using the login details and click on the My Account tab on menu bar. There you see a link called My Orders, click on the link and it will show you all the orders. Click on each order and it will display the order status and other related information.

Absolutely! You can change your account details whenever you like. Go to www.scancorner.in and login using your login details. Then click on the My Account tab on the top menu bar. It take you to your profile. There you can click on edit profile and change your account information. Changing account information won’t in any manner affect your order information. 

Please fill in your requirements under Place Order section of Document Digitization for placing an order. Once we go through your requirement, we will send you an email confirmation along with the quotation. There upon, we will arrange a FEDEX shipment pickup of your documents from your doorstep. That’s it! You’re done! We handle the rest! Once we scan your material, we will send an email confirmation with your download links, and return ship your material.

Shipping books in the mail today has become a common practice for many businesses, as mail carriers have, over the years, perfected the process. We service providers like FedEx (whom we associated with) you can be rest assured. In all these years of business, we have never encountered a situation of a lost or damaged package.

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It is the process by which we convert the scanned documents into an editable text-based file format such as Word, TXT, HTML, etc. Please note, PDF files are based directly on the scanned images, and do not depend on OCR accuracy. However, the PDFs will contain the OCR text layer behind the images to make the text searchable and selectable.

In an effort to keep our prices low, we don’t perform manual page-by-page inspection and proof reading for OCR accuracy. Doing so would increase our cost and thereby the end price drastically. Thus, we do not guarantee perfect OCR results. Due to the limitations of OCR technology today, it should be assumed that there will be errors that require editing. If a customer is publishing from a Word document or other text-based file and requires 100% error free results, it is understood that it is the customer’s responsibility to perform the necessary edits to the final Word files before publishing. Please also be aware, since our ebook conversions (HTML, PRC, ePUB) are based on the OCR results, then it too will require editing before submission.

Our scanned output files include:
    1. One editable formatted word document
    2. One searchable PDF file
    3. One full color image of the cover (if applicable*)

No problem. Just let us know, and we will do what we can to resolve the issue, free of charge. Most problems can be fixed quite easily. Please also note, we retain the original scans in our archives for about 3 months, after which point they are deleted in order to free up storage space. However, we still retain a copy of the final product for up to 6 months.

If the changes are to correct an oversight on our part, we will handle this for you free of charge. However, sometimes customers will want to make additional changes to the final PDF files, such as deleting certain pages, re-ordering pages, rotating, cropping, splitting, combining, changing the resolution, reducing the file size, etc. All this can be performed for a nominal charge.

Yes. If you choose the option "PDF tailored for online publishers", we will be sure to configure the PDF settings for the greatest compatibility with online publishers. Although the exact requirements of some publishers may vary, they all generally require the same "essentials", such as; minimum bleed of .375", flattened text layer, .zip image compression, etc.

Most books in circulation today should scan without a problem on either our Unbound or Bound scanning devices, with a few limitations to each (see limitations listed below). If you feel your book may pose a potential scanning problem, please contact us first before ordering, so that we can review the request.

Limitations of our Destructive scanning stations: 
Minimum inner margin of 1/4". Maximum page width 8.5".

We generally recommend the unbound service, as it is usually faster, cleaner and cheaper than bound scanning service. We advise you to choose bound scanning service if you absolutely need the books back.

This is highly volume dependant. Usually it takes 5-9 business days for an order of size up to 5000 documents in unbound scanning.

It is the responsibility of the customer to insure compliance with all copyright laws, as stated in our Terms and Conditions, as ScanCorner cannot be held liable for any unlawful activity. By placing an order, the customer certifies full compliance with our Terms and Conditions and all applicable copyright law.

Yes, we do accept international orders. We have FedEx shipment pickup facility for all the countries FedEx has presence in. So, we can arrange a shipment pickup from your home. Shipping and handling of international orders incur an additional “customs fee”. This is mainly levied on bound books. To place an international order, you use our standard online order form. In the description mention the country from where the order is placed. Please do note that shipping charges are extra.

Yes ScanCorner is more than happy to give discounts to our valuable customers.

We don’t generally advise customers to take the pain of counting the pages. Once digitized, you can easily find the page count and you can compare our billing with the page count. But if you wish to count the pages before placing order please follow the below steps.

We will not scan just a small section from a book. When a customer sends a book to us, it is assumed that they require the entire book scanned.

It is important that all pages are counted, including blank pages, since our equipment cannot selectively scan non-blank pages with 100% accuracy. This holds true even if one side of every page is blank. However, if you would like us to, we can remove these blank pages from the final files for you. However, this will require a custom processing fee, due to the additional labor time required.

There are a number of reasons that may delay the delivery of an order beyond the advertised 5-9 business days. Sometimes our workload gets busy at certain times of the year, which may cause some delay. However, in most cases, delays are usually caused by the following;
      1. Customer did not fill the order form correctly.
      2. The order contains high volumes.
      3. The order contained additional options, which may require additional processing time

After we provide the digital download of books, we wait for the approval from customer. Once we receive approval, we ship the book along with DVD in case of Bound Material Scan and just CD/DVD in case of Unbound Material Scan the same day or very next day.

Sometimes we have heard reports of customers experiencing errors/slowness downloading/unzipping/viewing files on Mac computers. For downloading the files, we recommend using a standard browser, preferably Explorer or Firefox. If you experience issues unzipping files, please try using a free unzip utility called 7-zip. If you experience slowness/stalling viewing large PDF files on a Mac, try re-saving the file again from the Mac viewer. Our customers have reported this to be a fix on the Mac system.

No problem! You can scan the photo at high resolution using desktop scanner, save it in JPEG format and send the image to us. It is always advisable to do high quality scanning of the photo. If not, you can send us the printed photo by post mail. We scan it at our facility using very high end scanners, restore the photo and send the restored photo by email.

Yes, we can. You send us the printed photos by post mail. We scan it at our facility using very high end scanners, restore the photo and send the restored photo by email.

Rest assured that your photo is safe with us. The original picture is scanned to obtain a digital copy. All restoration work is done using the digital copy only. Your original will be returned unharmed.

Go to Place Order, enter the estimated number of videos you have, fill the order form and do an initial payment of 500 INR. Thereupon, we will arrange a shipment pickup and once we receive the videos, we raise the invoice for pending amount. You have to do the payment and thereafter we will ship the DVDs to you.

We will personalize your DVD case with a picture from the scenes on your DVD. We will also print your order number on the DVD.

Yes, there is sound on your DVD. We will capture sound that is already present on your tape into DVD. There is no additional charge for capturing sound.

We support a wide range of video formats from early 1960s to 2000s. Below is the list of video formats we support

(a) Super 8mm Film

(b) 16mm Film

(b) VHS Cassette

(c) VHS C Cassette

(d) Beta Format

(e) Digi Tape

(f) Hi8 Film

(g) Mini-DV

Our pricing is entirely based on total hours of footage digitized. The pricing listed on website is per hour price. So, suppose if you have a VHS Tape containing 2 hrs footage, it costs you around 600 INR to get the tape digitized. Even if it is 1 hr, 45 min of video footage, we charge for 2 hrs as our pricing is per hour basis.    

No, unlike with photos where you have gallery to review photos, it is not possible to review your footage before DVD delivery. But you can be confident about the fact that we provide best quality video digitization in India.    

The time taken to digitize the videos depends mainly on the total order quantity. For an order size of 10 videos, it takes around 7 days to process the order and ship back the DVDs.

You can, definitely. In our place order section, please enter the number of photographs and number of videos you wish to digitize.

We retain a backup of your video for a duration of 3 months. This is to ensure that you have a backup if there is some problem with the DVD. You can request an additional copy of the video within these 3 months. Charges applicable.

The process of digitization itself requires employee attention throughout the entire digitization process. This itself explains the complexity involved in converting VHS to DVD and thereby the need to outsource to a professional scanning service. But as mentioned in our website, our processing center is highly secure. There is no USB, Internet, Other Data Transfer access on any of these systems. So, you can be rest assured that no data goes out of our digitization facility.

We use the MPEG2 codec to prepare your video footage for fitting onto a standard definition video DVD.

It generally depends on the video format we are converting. For VHS tapes, we convert at 6000 bits per second. So, 1 DVD contains 2 hrs of movie. Whereas for Super 8mm film, we convert at higher bit rate and thus for Super 8mm, 1 DVD contains 1 hr of movie. Over years of conversion, we came up with different bit rate to suit the medium we are converting and the quality of original tape.