Packing Tips

When shipping your photos to our scanning service, it’s important they arrive safely.  The secret to safe shipping is to pack your pictures tightly into rigid boxes.  Fill all the space in the box with padding so that when you shake the box, there is no movement inside.  Here are some more suggestions:

1. Remove your photos from your photo albums.  If you can’t get the pictures out of the albums, please give us a call.  In most cases, we can scan the entire album page and electronically pull the pictures off the page, but this service is more expensive.
2. Slides in sheet protectors are acceptable as well!
3. Group the photos or slides into stacks, and secure these stacks with rubber bands, baggies, envelopes, cling wrap or aluminum foil in such a manner that they are held tightly together.  Slides are particularly problematic, as it’s their nature to escape and travel about inside boxes.  If you have a stack of slides held together with rubber bands that would come apart if you dropped it on the floor, it’s probably going to come apart inside the box during shipping.  Limiting stacks of slide to 4 inches high and using two rubber bands to secure them works well.  Slides are susceptible to damage if they are loose inside a box.
4.  After collecting all of your photos and/or slides please ship them in a cardboard box. Please do not ship in envelopes. Even padded envelopes do not adequately protect your photos from becoming damaged, as they can get bent.   The best thing for you to ship your pictures and/or slides in is a cardboard box.  Fill any space left over in the box with padding so that the photos can’t bounce around inside the box.