Month: October 2023

Looking to Digitize Photos with a Service?

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Avoid Opting for DIY

Old images before a services digitizes the photos

Looking through old photos lets you recall treasured memories. People can have a few treasured pictures or vast photo collections. Whether you have old Polaroid pictures, 35mm photo slides, or photo negatives, protecting them is crucial.

Many old pictures degrade over time. Exposure to light, air, and other factors causes old photos to fade, blur, and lose their overall quality. Fortunately, there’s a way to protect your beloved image collections and albums from damage: by digitizing your older pictures.

But before digitization begins, you have a few options to consider. Should you use a photo digitization service or digitize photos yourself?

How to Digitize Old Photos: 3 Options to Consider

If you wonder how to digitize many photos, you have three methods to think about. Here’s more information about each digitization option.

Option 1: Digitizing Photos With a Scanner

If you have a desktop or laptop computer, it’s possible to connect either device to a scanner. You may even have a scanner you forgot about somewhere in your home. A drawback of digitizing photos at home is you get what you pay for. Buying a scanner for a few hundred dollars sounds like a great deal.

However, home scanning devices don’t provide the same media conversion quality as professional-level scanning equipment. Other potential roadblocks are the time and adjustments required to get the best possible digitized photos.

If you don’t want or have time to set up software, read manuals, and configure settings, skip this option.

Option 2: Using Your Smartphone

A smartphone offers a few potential ways to capture old photographs digitally. The first method is to take pictures of old photos with your smartphone’s camera. Unfortunately, this frustrating option means holding perfectly still, balancing a room’s light levels to avoid glare, and keeping your smartphone’s camera in focus.

Smartphone cameras are great for capturing life’s special moments. However, they lack the results provided by a professional photo digitization service.

Option 3: Choosing a Professional Photo Digitization Service

A Kodak camera between old photos

The easy way to digitize thousands of photos is by leaving this work to the professionals. Besides old photos and slides being sensitive to conditions, improper handling also ruins pictures. 

Two Squares is a media conversion company specializing in professionally capturing and converting older media into digital formats. Our media experts handle your media with the care it deserves. After we convert your treasured photos, you get back your original plus digital copies.

Another advantage of choosing Two Square’s photo digitization services is convenience. Whether you want your digitally converted images on a hard drive, DVD, or another storage solution—Two Squares does it all.

Our professional-level photo scanning and digitization equipment is the perfect way to capture pictures. Whether you have a few photos or thousands of pictures, the Two Squares process is a time-saving and stress-free solution.

No matter how many photos you need scanned and converted, contact Two Squares. Older film, music, and photos degrade over time. Protect your memories from time and wear by speaking with one of our media conversion experts.

Digitize Home Videos, Tapes, & Film Before Video Degradation

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A close up of a VHS tape

Whether you’re reminiscing in treasured home movies or finding footage of loved ones, there’s nothing like watching old home movies and films. But what you might not know is that many types of older media, such as VHS tapes, 35mm film, and other formats degrade over time. Video degradation can happen in a few ways. Whether due to time, improper handling, or both, degradation affects the quality of your old media formats.

Fortunately, you can potentially avoid film and magnetic tape deterioration by understanding how these situations occur. Here’s a closer look at four common ways media can degrade over time.

Sticky Shed Syndrome Causes Magnetic Tape Deterioration

An old tape reel displaying video degradation

Often, the degradation of magnetic media happens due to sticky-shed syndrome. Magnetic tapes feature binders that help contain oxide coatings. These binders can break down due to time, improper storage conditions, or both.

Sticky-shed syndrome occurs when moisture from the air interacts with the polyurethane to make the surface sticky. Think of it like dried glue absorbing water and becoming sticky again. Using tapes afflicted with sticky-shed syndrome can damage tape players and the affected media itself.

The best way to stop this situation from causing tape and video degradation is by baking your media. This doesn’t mean baking tapes in your home’s oven. Instead, let Two Squares use its professional-grade equipment and expert-level technicians to bake and dry your media carefully.

Magnetic Tape Deterioration Over Time

Even in normal conditions, older media formats like videotapes, cassettes, and other forms of magnetic media slowly decay over time. Unfortunately, time-related data decay doesn’t just happen to VHS tapes or your favorite cassettes. 

As the magnetic fields inside magnetic media lose their strength, it will result in decayed or damaged data. If left unresolved, these forms of media can become impossible to view or listen to.

The only way to stop further time-based audio and video degradation is by transferring your beloved media to a digital format. Two Squares can convert your audio and video to digital formats, including CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, or hard drives and flash drives.

Excessive Use

Whether moving your old media or preparing to display it, excessive handling can also cause magnetic tape and film deterioration. While they’re not visible to the human eye, our hands can contain oil, grease, dirt, and other media-damaging substances.

Excessively handling older media can deposit unwanted dirt and grime onto your treasured films and audio tapes.

Preserve Your Home Videos, Tapes, and Film with Two Squares

The best way to preserve treasured media and avoid video degradation is by contacting Two Squares. Our company offers professional-grade media capture and conversion services. We use our tools and knowledge to carefully capture and convert your old films, music, photos, and more to digital formats. Having digitally stored media lets you preserve treasured memories for many years to come.