1. Always clean the glass bed of your scanner with a non-streaking cleaner such as Windex® before you scan.
    
2. With a can of compressed air (or by gently blowing) try to remove as much dust and dirt from the surface of your photo. Do not rub or scrub the photo, just use air.
    
3. Make sure the glass cleaner on your scanner had dried and center the photograph in the center of your scanning bed.
    
4. Scan your image at the actual size you would like your final image. For example if your original photo is 8 x 10 and you would like a final restored photo size of 4 x 5, scan your image at 50%.
    
5. Set your scanning resolution to a MINIMUM of 600dpi/ppi, preferably 800dpi/ppi or higher. (The higher the resolution the larger the file size.)
    
6. Set the color mode of your scanner to RGB.
    
7. And VERY VERY importantly turn off all the auto sharpening, descreening, filters and color correction functions in your scanning software.
    
8. Save it as a .jpg with NO compression. If you are on a Mac, please add the .TIF extension.

Sending the file
Depending on the size of the file, the speed of your internet connection and your experience with file transfer there are several options for sending your file to us.

• Files Over 15MB (or any file)
  For files over 60MB we recommend that you put the file onto a CD and send it to us in the mail. Please print out an order form and include it with your CD.
   

• Files Under 5MB
  For files under 5MB, you can attach them to an email, however your should check with your e-mail provider to make sure they do not have a file size limit on outgoing e-mail attachments. Please read our E-mail quote request page for instructions.

If available you may try using a utility like WinZip (PC) or StuffIt (Mac)  to compress your file in to a .zip or .sit format before attaching it to an e-mail.