PreserveMyPictures.com is Canada's leader in converting slides and negative film to digital images, converting photos to digital images, scanning your documents, all onto DVD or CD. Offices located in Niagara On The Lake but serving St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Welland, Niagara Region, Toronto, London, Montreal, Halifax, and everywhere in between. ? 2009 PreserveMyPictures.com
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Besides the benefits of having your images in digital format, one of the best reasons to scan your photos, negatives, and slides is to prevent the slow decay of time from stealing your favorite memories away from you. Everyone has seen the yellowed and cracked black white photos and the faded discolored photos from the eighties. There is a good chance if those photos in your shoebox are not at that point already, they are well on their way. There are many reasons for the deterioration of those images, but the main reasons remain poor environmental conditions, inferior storage containers, and the deterioration of the actual chemical composition of the photo.

Poor environmental storage conditions frequently occur in most homes and storage areas, and the main culprits are humidity, temperature, and light and it is finding the balance that remains the tricky part. High humidity results in the sticky wet image and causes image deterioration while low humidity causes cracks and curls. High temperature speeds up the rate of deterioration along with UV and visible light from sunlight, lamps, and fluorescent lights. Even air pollution can cause degradation of the image. Poor storage conditions are often the reason for these environmental problems, but it is tricky to get that right too. If the material of storage cabinet is inferior, harmful chemicals can leak in or it can become susceptible to insects and rodents. Prints stored too loosely can curl, and if they are stored too tightly they can bend or break, especially when dealing with negatives. Frequent or rough handling of photos is even enough to cause a good deal of wear and tear.

 Without storage or environment factors, the stability of the chemical composition can also fade with time. Black and white negatives and prints use fairly stable silver halide. However, over time and in less than ideal conditions the papers will yellow along with the gelatin matrix that makes up the image. If the image was not properly developed that once crisp image can develop a metallic blur. Color images fair even worse off as the chromomeric dye color is not stable over time, and that change in the color so often seen in old color photographs can occur because the three different dyes deteriorate at different rates changing the balance of the image. New ink jet prints and photographic processes are seeing better results, but as this technology is relatively young it has yet to stand the test of time. So, the bottom line is that unless you have properly stored your professionally developed photos in non-corrosive, non-combustible, acid-free containers in a dark room with the proper humidity away from insects, rodents, and dust making sure they were not too tight and not too loose and they, your images will deteriorate. Even if you go through these procedures (which hinder your ability to actually enjoy the images), over time and through chance they probably will deteriorate anyways. There are a number of ways to help slow down the process, but the best way to prevent it completely is to scan your photos: those digital images aren't going to be fading any time soon. Just send them in to PreserveMyPictures.com and we will even digitally optimize your images to reverse a little bit of that aging process. Then enjoy your crisp digital images without the worry of deterioration and decay.  

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