Well I've decided to finally take on the project of digitizing all of my parents' family photos. I did a rough count and it's around 5000 prints -- most are 4x6 or 5x7 size and in good shape.
I need a high-speed scanner that can do this job. 5000 prints is obviously too big a project for a flatbed scanner, and hiring a service bureau is out of the question because they charge like $3-$4 per scan, so unless somebody can give me $20,000 as a gift then it's not an option.
What do you recommend for a scanner? I prefer one that has a straight-thru feeder mechanism so it doesn't "roll" the photos like some of the cheaper ADFs do on low-budget all-in-one units. I also need one that can accommodate varying size photos in the feeder.
Here's my settings for the project:
--- 24-bit full color
--- 600 dpi TIFF
--- auto-straighten for crooked scans
I probably will do all the final cropping of the scans myself since I've never seen an auto-crop work well in Photoshop. I might try the batch Despeckle feature in Photoshop since I've seen good results with that before.
Also, I noticed about 1000 photos have hand-written notes on the back that indicate the date and some minor details about who/where. I'd really like to preserve this "metadata" for each photo. What's the best way to do this --- maybe scan these photos as multi-page TIFF? I'd like to avoid scanning them as PDF since that's really not a photo format.
My budget will allow up to a $1,200 scanner so gimme some good advice.
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