The main goal of BrightBits is to digitally capture your family photos. Why?
With proper care, a digital image can be maintained indefinitely. The same is not true of either photographs or negatives. Colour photos can start to fade within 20 years. Black&white photos last longer, but are also subject to yellowing and fading over time. At 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit), and 40% relative humidity, fresh negatives will remain in good condition for only 50 years. In a typical attic or basement, where most people store negatives, temperature and humidity fluctuations will shorten their lifespan considerably.
CD-ROMs also have the same problem: over time they will deteriorate and lose data. However, there is a distinct advantage to digitally scanning your photos and storing them on a CD-ROM. Digital images can be recopied many times over, onto a fresh CD-ROM or whatever new media are invented in the future. And, unlike photographic copying, an exact duplicate is made each time, so there is no degradation of the image.
One of the goals of BrightBits is to preserve your family photos and memorabilia at a reasonable cost. To that end, BrightBits has invested in two excellent yet modestly priced scanners. We use a Nikon CoolScan IV ED for scanning 35mm negatives and slides, and an Epson Perfection 2450 Photo for scanning photos and other items. Many professionals use these same scanners in their work. The produce very good high-resolutions scans of both colour and black&white photos and negatives.
If you have negatives, it is better to scan these than the actual photos. Negatives have higher resolution and dynamic range than printed photographs so the image will be sharper.
Besides 35mm negatives, 120/220 and 4x5 negatives can also be scanned (although the resolution will not be as good). Documents and other items up to 8.5x11" are also accepted.
Not only paper documents can be scanned. Ribbons, medals, coins, buttons etc. scan quite well, although the flatter the better.
Additionally, both sides of a photo or document can be scanned, and printed for display. Your old photos may have hand-written notes on the back that you wish to preserve. Old certificates, property deeds, etc. often have information on both sides.
You will receive a CD-ROM containing your scanned images in the format of your choice. Uncompressed TIFF format is recommended as it does not lose any image information when the image is manipulated. It is up to you whether you choose to purchase the scanned images on CD-ROM, but I highly recommend it.
BrightBits offers two types of photo restoration services. Basic restoration improves image contrast, sharpens the picture, and balances the colour. Automatic software functions provide a quick and easy way to dramatically improve your older photos. Basic restoration is included with the Premium service.
Very old or damaged photos will required more extensive restoration to repair cracks, holes, tears and blotches. This requires hand-editing of the image and can be time consuming. But, the results are well worth it for your treasured family portraits. BrightBits uses Adobe Photoshop for all image processing, which is the "gold standard" for this type work. Examples of old photos that have been restored can be found in the Heirloom Photographs page.
The same restoration techniques can be used on newer photos as well. Here are some examples:
| Sunset, Lagoon City |
| Cats on Steps |
| Three Amigos |
(c) 2002-2005 BrightBits - a division of Garnet Star Consulting Inc.