Heirloom Shipping & Scanning

• 1) For the Best Quality Enhancement and Repairs it is always best to send us the original, sending it with a tracking number is recommended.
• 2) If you prefer to send in a scanned copy; Scans which are entirely adequate for an e-mail or small prints, are often too coarse, and lack the sufficient detail to warrant restoration work and to recover enough detail, for optimum restoration; Very low resolution photos tend to be blurry and can take up to an extra 10 to 20 hours of labour to recreate what we believe might have been there originally, costing you, the consumer, and possibly not creating an absolutely true recreation.
• We prefer to scan all photos we work on at 4800 x 9600 dpi giving us an image of 19,200 dpi to work with and a file size up to 1 GB. after the restoration we down size the file to a manageable size for file storage.
• This benefits the quality of restoration as well as the amount of time that is need to effectively finnish the restore. All scanning done by Heirlooms, is Free.
• 3) If you cannot achieve this high quality of a scan, the lowest resolution scan that is still workable is 300-600 dpi (any copy or photo place would be able to perform this). The difficulty we run in to with lower dpi (dots per inch) is that the smaller the picture is to begin with, the less we have to work with and the more difficult it is to recreate what was lost, or to enlarge the picture at all.
• Scan your photo at resolution of at least 600 dpi, at color setting regardless if it is black and white or color, with none of the automatic adjustments such as sharpening, descreening, etc. Save your file as TIF, PSD (Photoshop), or similar formats that does not compress your image. If you must use JPEG, set it to the highest quality value.
• If you need to have the scan done for you by a good quality service bureau, using the same settings as described above. If it is too large to email, mail us the digital image, preferably on a C/D
• We have found that the mail service, if packaged correctly, is safe to use.
• You can utilize a tracking service as well. It is a good idea to take advantage of this extra security.
 
• Place photos between two pieces of cardboard or similar protection. The cardboard should be a bit larger than the largest photo.
• Use a padded envelope or special "Photo Mailer" package if you wish.
• Shipping containers should be marked "Do not bend/ Fragile" on both sides.
• If you fill out a customsform, it should be marked "photos" no value.
• Email photos to e-mail Heirlooms two at a time (10 MB maximum in total).