4 Apps for Photography in Android Smartphone

Are you fond of photography? Do you like to take your time for photography? In such a situation, our news may come to you. Often, while photography, we take care of the fact that if we had a DSLR camera, then the quality of our photos would be fantastic. Many times this thinking does not make us want to do photography from the smartphone. But now you do not have to be frustrated, because we are going to tell you about some such apps, with the help of which you will get photos of DSLR quality.

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Know about the features of these apps:-

1 - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC:

App has downloaded 10 million users to Google Play Store. The app has got 4.3 stars at the Play Store, which has been rated by more than 1 million users. The size of the app is 57 MB. So it would be nice to download the app on Wi-Fi network.

FEATURES

There are many great features in the app. You can set the light of the photo in your mind with the help of the app. Apart from fog clearing to real color, the features are included in the app.

2 - VSCO:

The app has downloaded 5 million users on Google Play Store. The app has got 4.4 stars, which has been rated by more than 6 million users. The size of the app is 49MB.

FEATURES

The app enhances the quality of your photos. Editing and many special effects are given in the app. Along with this, social media sharing option has also been given in it. If you have a passion for photography then this app can prove to be your work.

3 - Camera Zoom FX:

The app has downloaded 5 million users on Google Play Store. The app got 4.0 stars at the Play Store. More than 88 thousand users have rated the app. The size of the app is 5MB.

FEATURES

The app includes many features like deep zoom, slider shot, and HD collage. With the help of the app, the quality of your photo will be magnificent.

4 - Camera Connect & Control:

App has downloaded 1 thousand users to Google Play Store. The app got 3.9 stars. More than 1 thousand users have rated the app. The size of the app is 6.4 MB.

FEATURES

The app controls your smartphone's camera. With the help of the app, you will be able to take a good quality photo with your camera.

How to Get the Bokeh Effect in Smartphone Photos

Bring out your artistic side with this attractive photography effect

The white circles in the background of this photo are an example of bokeh. Wikimedia Commons

Bokeh photography is popular among DSLR and film camera shooters, but it's now possible to mimic the effect on a smartphone camera. As demonstrated in the above photo, bokeh is the quality of the out-of-focus areas of an image, precisely, the white circles in the background, which in digital photography is caused by the shape of the camera lens. It's a technique that adds artfulness to portraits, close-ups, and other shots where the background doesn't need to be in focus. Once you recognize it, you'll start seeing bokeh everywhere.

What is Bokeh?

A close-up of the bokeh effect. Jill Wellington.Pixabay

Bokeh, pronounced BOH-kay, derives from the Japanese word boke, which means blur or haze or boke-aji, which means blur quality. The effect is caused by a narrow depth of field, which is the distance between the nearest object in focus and the farthest in a photo.

When using a DSLR or film camera, a combination of the aperture, focal length, and the distance between the photographer and the subject, creates this effect. Aperture controls how much light is let in, while focal length determines how much of a scene a camera captures, and is expressed in millimeters (i.e., 35mm).

A narrow depth of field results in a photo in which the foreground is in sharp focus, while the background is blurry. One example of bokeh is in a portrait, like the first photo above, where the subject is in focus, and the background is out of focus. Bokeh, the white orbs in the background, is caused by the camera lens, usually when it's at a wide aperture, which lets in more light.

Bokeh Photography on Smartphones

On a smartphone, depth of field and bokeh work differently. The elements needed are processing power and the right software. The smartphone camera needs to recognize the foreground and background of a photo, and then blur the background, while keeping the foreground in focus. So rather than occurring when the photo is snapped, smartphone bokeh is created after the picture is taken.

How to Get a Bokeh Background

Another example of the bokeh effect. Rob/Flickr

In the photo above, shot with a digital camera, the photographer had some fun combining bubbles with bokeh, where much of the scene is out of focus. A smartphone with a dual-lens camera will shoot two pictures at once and then combine them to get that depth-of-field and bokeh effect.

While newer smartphones have dual lens cameras, it's possible to get bokeh with only one lens by downloading a third-party app that will give you the tools to create the effect. Options include AfterFocus (Android | iOS) , Bokeh Lens (iOS only), and DOF Simulator (Android and PC). There are plenty of others available, too, so download a few apps, give them a try, and pick your favorite.

If you have a flagship phone from Apple, Google, Samsung, or other brands, your camera probably has a dual lens, and you can get bokeh without an app. When you take a photo, you should be able to choose what to focus on and what to blur, and in some cases, refocus after you take a picture. Some smartphones also have a dual-lens front-facing camera for artful selfies. Take some practice shots to perfect your technique, and you'll be an expert in no time.

Who needs your data? And should you be worried?

Data is everywhere — in every website clicked, every share, every personality test is taken online, every like, dislike. Amidst the row over the breach of user information on Facebook, The Sunday Express looks at why this data is not just yours.

Cambridge Analytica-Facebook data breach

In November 2008, a 22-year-old Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. As the audience listened in rapt attention, the young CEO, in what would go on to be his trademark round-neck T-shirt, went on a hardsell of the relatively new Facebook. “I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before.” This formula for social sharing came to be called the ‘Zuckerberg Law’.
A decade on, as Facebook finds itself caught in a debate over Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm accused of using the social networking site’s user data to influence elections in the US, Zuckerberg might be hoping that his platform didn’t grow at the pace he predicted. A speed at which the company itself could not keep up with the amount of data it was generating, the number of third parties that were using this data and the kind of problems this mix was creating.

An increasing number of Facebook’s 2.2 billion users are now becoming more cautious of what they share, but the majority still live in denial. While most people, like Donald Duck in the meme that’s been doing the rounds since the Cambridge Analytica controversy, might think that “your data is as worthless as you”, the fact remains that it is an asset with immense value, especially when it forms part of a larger dataset.
While users believe that the data they willingly surrender to Facebook, Google, and other Internet companies are in return for personalized services, the troves of user information can often be very tempting for some players in this value chain.
Cambridge Analytica, for instance, used the data collected by a personality quiz app, called ‘thisisyourdigitallife’, to swing voting behavior. Approximately 2.7 lakh people downloaded the app and in doing so, gave access to their friend lists, their reading habits, and political inclinations.
Most apps collect permission for accessing much more data than they actually need — like a torch app getting access to a user’s contact list. Some might end up misusing this data or selling this information to others. That’s where the problem begins.

In an interview to The New York Times after the Cambridge Analytica row, Zuckerberg suggested that there could be other apps that “could have gotten access to more information and potentially sold it without us knowing or done something that violated people’s trust” and that Facebook needed to “make sure we get that under control”.
A Facebook India spokesperson told The Sunday Express they were investigating all apps that had access to “large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014”.
Facebook said it would tell people affected by apps that have misused their data and that from here on if apps are removed for misusing data, “we will tell everyone who used it”. A lot of other measures, which includes turning off access for unused apps, have been put in place.
In response to queries, Google India pointed to its Google Play Developer Policy Center, which elaborates on how apps should ideally handle user data. The policy says developers need to be transparent in how they handle data, including by “disclosing the collection, use, and sharing of the data”, and must limit the use of data to the description in the disclosure. Apps that handle personal data must post a privacy policy that mentions “the types of parties with whom it’s shared”.
Mayank Bhangadia, CEO, and co-founder of Indian social media app Roposo asks why would someone require user data for any other reason apart from making the in-app experience better? “Why share this data with a third party, if there are any chances of the data being misused? Capturing calls logs and capturing activity on other apps a user uses is, in my opinion, quite unethical.”
Express Explained | How Facebook data may build the picture of voters’ minds

What is data?

Internet businesses have thrived around the ad-funded model, where users give up their browsing data to access free services that are funded by ads that feed on this data. For instance, every time you search for a holiday destination or even receive a mail from a friend to plan a trip, your data goes to advertisers who might have holiday packages or airline tickets to offer. This explains the ads that pop up on the screen based on your online behavior.
These data-driven ads are much more effective than traditional forms as they are based on user preferences. But then these user preferences are gleaned from what people do online, often without their consent and without their knowledge.
While most regular Internet users now think twice before filling any online form with their personal data, not many are aware that everything they do adds to a data pile somewhere. For instance, while smartphone photographs and tweets share location data, social media posts give a clear idea about purchase preferences, habits and, of course, political leaning. Technology these days enables companies to read even the mood of the people from posts, even without the user selecting the ‘feeling happy/sad/thrilled…’ field.
Also, all this data is not voluntarily surrendered. For instance, from the day a user starts using an Android phone or a Google app, the search giant starts mapping all the physical places the user went to unless the location tracking was switched off. According to some reports, Facebook logs call data of its users on the phone and anyway has all location data.
Others are catching up too. Ola, for instance, is working on serving targeted ads on its Ola Play screen given that it knows where you are headed, and maybe for what. So the ads will be different if you are headed for work, going to the airport or for a party.
Related | Meaning Psychographics: Analysis of personality and opinion, using data
And there are other forms of data these companies have access to. For example, commands to Google Assistant on an Android phone are stored and available for users to review on Google’s MyActivity page. Similarly, every time a fingerprint scanner or an iris scanner for a device’s security is used, this data is stored, but usually on the device itself.
Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, co-founder and former CEO of Opera, clarifies that most companies do not collect data without consent. “It is only a few and no, they should not be able to do this, with or without asking for consent. There is nothing right about being able to collect user data at the scale we see today,” says the Icelandic businessman who was one of the pioneers of the Internet as we know it.
Related | What is the data protection framework in India? And how safe or unsafe is your data?
As Tetzchner says, not all companies are interested in this data. At the Recode event this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook rebuked Facebook saying, “We could make a tonne of money if we monetized our customers if our customers were our product.” But, he added, Apple has elected not to do that. “We’re not going to traffic in your personal life. Privacy to us is a human right, a civil liberty.”

How valuable is your data?

Companies such as Facebook and Google that have made the most of this model enjoy a lion’s share of the digital advertising revenue. According to investor data of both these companies, Google’s ad revenue for Q4 2017 stood at $27.2 billion, while Facebook’s jumped 48 percent in Q4 2017 to $12.2 billion.
Google and Facebook corner about 62 percent of all global ad revenues, but that’s not surprising considering they together have about 2.5 billion monthly active users — a third of the world’s population.
Also read | Data privacy on the internet: How to check all your data that Google keeps
All Internet companies that have ad positions enabled charge a premium for targeting — the nicer the audience, the more the ad firm pays the Internet company. So the more data the user gives to the platform, the more money the Internet company makes.
Tetzchner puts things in perspective: “What we are talking about here is really stolen goods. The user data belongs only to the user and nobody should be able to steal this data and sell it.” He says there is “something creepy” about the notion that surveillance data can be collected and sold with no consequences. “We used to call this spyware and trojans. The Internet is not built on spyware. The Internet would run just as well without companies having the ability to collect and sell user data the way it’s being done now by some of the larger companies.”
Just a week ago, Tetzchenr’s new Vivaldi browser enabled DuckDuckGo as the default search engine in its Private Windows — even in private mode, the default search engine knows what the user is doing. DuckDuckGo avoids personalized search based on user data.
However, Raposo's Bhangadia says it will be tough to offer customized services if users start withholding data. “If they stop or skip sharing data, it would clearly hinder the in-app experience a platform can offer,” says Bhangadia, whose app now claims 8 million users. He says Roposo is “extremely careful” that no third party can directly or indirectly use any user data.
Bhangadia says users will be more secure if they stop ignoring terms and conditions. Tetzchner, who has studied Internet user behavior for over two decades, too agrees that most people have no clue what is happening. “They just have this strange feeling of being followed, which they are.”

What Indians Do Online

– Indians spend 45 percent of their time on mobile phones. Weekly time spent on a mobile phone is seven times that spent on a television set
– Of the time spent on their phones, 45 percent is on entertainment, followed by “search, social and messaging” at 34 percent. News and media occupy just over 2 percent of people’s online phone time. India is the Number 1 market for time spent on Android
– India’s top downloaded Android app is WhatsApp, followed by Facebook Messenger
– More apps downloaded on Google Play Store in India than in the US (Source: Mary Meeker 2017 report on the state of the Internet)

How to be in control

On Facebook
Go to the Facebook Settings page, click on Privacy. Here you can limit who sees what content. For instance, you can ensure that only friends can look you up on Facebook via your email address or even restrict this information as hidden to all by choosing ‘Only Me’.
On Google
Go to MyAccount.Google.com and sign in. This page lets you monitor how data for all Google services have been collected. This includes data for search, YouTube, video and audio devices, etc. On Google Maps, you can go to timeline and see your entire location history if you have that turned on. You can turn off this timeline feature if you wish to do so.
On Third-party apps
– On Android 6.0 and above, a user can review an app’s permissions. So if a photo-sharing app wants all your call access data, you can turn it off in the settings. On iOS too, you can monitor, which apps get access to what services. For instance, if you do not want to an app like Ola or Uber to access your location data all the time, you can make sure of it in the settings on iOS.
– Further, when downloading an app, make sure it is from the authorized Google Play Store or App Store on iOS. Do not download apps from third-party stores as they might not be secure. Do not download apps from links sent over messages, Facebook, etc as these might contain malware.

If you have a Gmail account, then you are in a big danger

Google is the most widely used search engine, almost 96% people in the world use Google every day either in terms of Youtube, Google apps, or simply as a Google search engine, but the point is whether you use anything thing related to Google it always told you to use a Gmail account for that So, that whatever you have searched on Google can be tracked. Yes, whatever you have searched on Google whether on Youtube, Gmail, Google maps, or in any Google platform it has been tracked and stored on the Google servers.

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Why Google track all the information of us?

Now, the main question arises that why Google need our information?So, this is very simple for making our life easy and for earning money obviously. Google tracked the search history of ours and use it for showing us relevant advertisements. You have all experienced that whenever you have searched a product on Google after that exactly similar product advertisements you have been seen on Google platform even if you frequently go to any places then Google also tracked your location and give you alert like "It is the time to leave for office" So, this information is used by Google for making our life easy and of course for making money.

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Is it safe to be tracked by Google?

Well it depends on you many people don't like to be always tracked by someone and they want privacy in their lives but at the same time some people like the features of Google that it automatically knows our choice. As per my knowledge, Google saved the information of people but never shared with any other companies it always does all those things on their own so it is a good thing but if you want to be safe and don't want to be tracked then it is also possible by taking some steps in Google account.

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How to be safe from Google?

Users can turn off every single information tracking by going to my activity on Google platform where you can see all this information that is tracked every day you can either delete it or you can permanently disable it to keep your privacy safe and secure.

Advanced data analytics, latest technology and digital marketing driving profitable growth of the organisation

Digital marketing is becoming vital for brands due to the fact that an average Indian consumer is looking at the smartphone at least 150-170 times in a day.

Digital marketing is more than the buzzword today, as it has proven to be the clear driving force behind the online success of many leading brands. More and more organisations today have a dedicated digital marketing budget as an integral part of the overall marketing expenditure.

Among the latest trends in digital marketing and the constant need to align with the newer IT technologies, data has become the core driver for marketers to transfer the digital business for today’s organisation.

There is a greater need than ever before for a marketer to align advanced data analytics, other latest IT technologies with the digital marketing not only to improve the consumer experience but also to understand his overall buying journey.

Digital marketing is becoming vital for brands due to the fact that an average Indian consumer is looking at the smartphone at least 150-170 times in a day. Moreover, the number of smartphone users in the country are also increasing each month.  Smartphone market for the Q3 2017 is approximately 42 million units up 24 percent since same quarter last year in India.

Today’s intelligent and empowered consumer is forcing the marketers to realign their marketing strategies as they are demanding fast and immediate responses and relevant messaging in the respective channel of choice while interacting with the brand.

The following trends have necessitated the above alignment:

Big data churning: Consumer is exposed to more and more data every minute and the overall digital universe is also expanding at a much faster rate, expected to reach more than 50 trillion gigabytes by 2020. There is greater need for the technology to make this big data more actionable for driving overall digital and marketing strategy and solving complex business-related issues.

Convergence: There are multiple consumer touch points that exist today with significant traction for marketer to attract. Technology becomes imperative to create digital content with target rich data and also to converge the search, content, mobile and the local market for effective digital marketing campaigns.

Automation for the right content: Due to non-linear consumer journey nowadays, there are multiple consumer touch points, and there is greater need for the right technology and data science to capture the consumer imagination at the right time at the right touchpoint for creating the precise intelligent content.

Some of the newest technologies embraced by many organisations such as machine learning, big data science, predictive analysis, cloud technology, blockchain, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, big data analytics etc.

All these technologies are fundamentally changing the way the marketer is interacting with the consumers and viewing the data related with it. Apart from covering new consumer Insights, organizations are also targeting new consumer base, approach the existing consumers with specific solutions for the pain points and also optimising the spending by effectively collaborating with traditional marketing practices.

These technologies are also helping the marketer make sense of the large chunk of digital data available to them from various touch points.

They are able to create a single quantified view of the consumer that is unique and personalised by integrating the information and data coming from various touchpoints and also turning this consumer insight into relevant business action.

Marketers are now using omni-channel strategy to target new-age consumers as consumer reception to different channels also include mobile platform videos (18-20 percent), and online (38 percent), which are catching up with a traditional medium such as TV (42 percent) and direct mailers (18 percent) etc.

Credit: Shutterstock

Apart from this, the modern-age marketer is also leveraging technology to overcome challenges due to the proliferation of real-time consumer data coming from various connected digital devices the consumer uses. Brands are using technology tools such as artificial intelligence and machine tools constantly to connect customer insights to swift business actions in real time. This, despite the non-linearity of the modern-age customer, as his journey consists of various combinations of channels and touchpoints before he or she makes the actual purchase.

The new-age technologies as mentioned above are also helping organisations effectively leverage internal data such as CRM, web data etc., rather than being overdependent on third-party data, which is more syndicate in nature and does not give specific deep-dive insight on a particular brand performance.

The organisations across various sectors in India are continuously investing and retaining the digital marketing talent and also improving collaboration between various other divisions within the organisations to make them technology-ready, so that alignment and usage of technology results in superior customer experiences.

Social media analytics by technology giants such as YouTube analytics, Klout, Facebook Audience Insights, Social Mention, Google Analytics are constantly evolving to help track the customer insights, which also complements the new-age technology.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)

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Cryptocurrency malware will pop up in ‘most unexpected places’ in 2018, researchers say

One of the more unfortunate trends that shaped up as a result of the massive blockchain boom last year was the sudden proliferation of crypto-jacking scripts – malware designed to steal your CPU power to surreptitiously mine cryptocurrency. And new research suggests the trend is here to stay in 2018.

A study conducted by ad-blocking service AdGuard indicates that so-called crypto-jacking threats will likely continue “to be found in the most unexpected places” over the course of this year.

Previous AdGuard research had discovered that there are over 33,000 infected websites on the internet, accumulating a total of one billion visits and over $150,000 in mining rewards.

The study further notes this new epidemic partially has to do with the dwindling effectiveness of ad monetization.

“The code of mining scripts was being found on websites, in apps, games, browser extensions, and of course in advertising banners and other elements,” the researchers write. “Ads often get infected with malware or mining scripts by hackers that break into ad networks, so even ads of well-known and reliable advertisers can be dangerous.”

While cryptocurrency mining scripts have often been leveraged with unethical intentions in mind, some legitimate websites appear to be also considering adapting their business models to capitalize on this new trend. Indeed, popular publisher Salon is currently experimenting with this approach.

Unlike Salon though, some other websites – like The Pirate Bay and CBS’s Showtime – were caught secretly running scripts to lend visitors’ computing cycles to mine crypto.

It is disappointing to know that crypto-jacking will only spread more over 2018, but the good thing is that there are measures you can take to thwart such attempts before they’ve happened – you can find more about that here.

Alternatively, you can just download the latest version of Opera, which comes with built-in protection against crypto-jacking.

Read source.

New tracker prevents your luggage from getting lost

London: A new innovative technology has come out that can prevent your luggage from getting lost on flights.

The tracking device is designed by Delta Airlines and allows people to keep a check on their items on their mobile phone.

The concept of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is used in tags to track their items. These tags are then tracked by various antennas along the route.

Touted to prevent a lot of hassle, it can help customers to monitor their bags at any given time. The passengers can keep a track on Fly Delta app and opt to receive push notifications.

According to Daily Star, the product testing has been positive so far. It has come out with 99.9 percent success rate, ensuring accurate loading and routing.

Currently, the tracking device is being used on the routes from Heathrow to the US. However, it is expected to be rolled out across more hubs in the future.

Tags: Tracker, Luggage, Flights, Technology, Radio Frequency Identification

Google integrates payments offerings under Pay; will bring to India through Tez app

Tez is likely to be strengthened with additional Google Pay functionalities for merchants and customers Google has integrated its peer-to-peer (P2P) payments app (Google Wallet) and its mobile payments and loyalty solution (Android Pay) under one single brand — Google Pay. Now onward, all payment information saved in customers’ Google accounts would be stored across Google products and auto-filled during Chrome or web purchases, Android in-app purchases, YouTube subscriptions, and offline point-of-sale, and more. “With Google Pay, it’ll be easier for you to use the payment information saved to your Google Account, so you can speed through checkout with peace of mind. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see Google Pay online, in-store, and across Google products, as well as when you’re paying friends,” Pali Bhat, VP of Product Management, Payments, Google stated in an official blog post.

Google also announced popular consumer services like Airbnb, Dice, Fandango, HungryHouse, and Instacart already support Google Pay, and more sites and stores in the US are set to roll out Google Pay in the coming weeks. What it means for India While Google Pay is largely focused on Western markets — neither Android Pay nor Google Wallet was made available in India — its features are likely to come to India via Google’s made-for-India product, Tez. “Tez was built for India first, as the payment needs and environment are different. Tez is not affected by today’s announcement, but we will be bringing all the additional Google Pay functionality to India’s users, developers, and businesses through Tez,” a Google spokesperson told YourStory. Tez launched in September, and has recorded 140 million transactions since. It has an active user base of 12 million and is supported by over 5.25 lakh merchants in the country. The UPI-led app started with allowing P2P payments only.At the Google for India event in December, Google announced that Tez was rolling out support for utility bill payments. Tez wallets can now be linked with mobile and broadband carriers, electricity boards, water and gas suppliers, DTH providers, etc. Google also roped in Xiaomi for Tez integration. Now, customers can pay on Xiaomi’s e-commerce platform, Mi.com, via Tez. More such partnerships are likely. If Tez is further beefed up with Google Pay functionalities, it’ll expand the overall payments ecosystem and generate multiple use cases for customers. “Tez is a wallet and it draws users from the UPI ecosystem. Google Pay, on the other hand, is a PoS product. It can offer a loyalty programme, discount coupons, merchant benefits and more. Google Pay will pull users from a larger universe,” Pavel Naiya, payments analyst at Counterpoint Research, told YourStory. Thus, a Google-Pay-cum-Google-Tez offering would possibly create the most holistic digital payments solution in India.

Here's The Reason Why Apple Photos Always Show 9:41

Did you ever notice that the iPhone is always set to 9:41 in product photos?

Google

It might seem random, but there is a very deliberate reason for this. It was 9:42 AM when Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone in 2007 and originally, all the iPhone ads always display the time as 9:42.

But that changed when the iPad was introduced. After it's big reveal, the screen on the device displayed 9:41. Thereafter, most promo images for apple products showed 9:41 instead.

Google

Apple executive Scott Forstall says the keynotes were timed so the big reveal happens after about 40 minutes, so the images would sync up with the presentation. Even though this rarely happens now.

Google

The Apple watch, however, is a different story. Promo images for this product are usually set to 10:09. Most watch brands set the models to 10:10 in ads, so that the hour and minute hands don't block the brand's logo under the 12. One theory is that apple chose a minute earlier to be ahead of the curve. Another says 10:09 is actually more symmetrical.

How to convert old photos into digital images

You can turn the old photos in your shoebox into digital copies. Here's how.

Is that old dust-covered box of photos in the closet haunting you? Are you worried about losing your memories in image form to faded years or, worse, a natural disaster? Instead of letting your old photos fall apart, you can convert them into digital format for easy viewing and storage. The easiest way to go about this process is to send them away to a scanning service, but you can also do the job done yourself. Let's take a look at both methods so that you can stop worrying about your old pictures.

Invest in a photo scanning service

The easiest way to turn your old photos into digital format is to send them away to a photo scanning service. These services generally convert negatives, prints, and slides, and will sometimes offer some sort of restoration for damaged, faded, or crumpled images.

Depending on how many photos you want to convert, this method can also be the most expensive, because they often charge a fee per photo. Still, if you don't have time to scan, edit, and save or print your own photos, a dedicated service is a solid option.

Memories Renewed

Memories Renewed offers photo, negative, and slide scanning, plus they'll transfer old videotapes, 8 mm and 16 mm film, and audio into digital formats. As far as photo scanning goes, all images are scanned at 600 dpi for a clear picture, plus photos can be restored if they're damaged. All photos are handled carefully, so you don't have to worry about your old prints receiving further damage.

The Wirecutter went to great lengths to choose a best photo scanning service, and Memories Renewed came out on top. From that review:

Memories Renewed offers the best combination of price, quality, and turnaround time.

Standard photos cost $0.60 each, plus you can purchase a USB thumb drive, CD or DVD. You can also send your own hard drive, and your photos will be transferred at no extra cost. If you're looking for a great scanning service, this seems to be it.

Scan your own photos

The best way to convert those old photos into digital format on your own is to use a photo scanner and editing software. You get to keep your priceless pieces of paper, plastic, and ink where you can see them — you never know what will happen if you send them out — and you can ensure the digital scans are up to your standards.

To get started, you usually want a quality photo scanner that can capture your old pictures properly. We put together a roundup of the best photo scanners on the market that includes affordable and deluxe options. If you don't want to go in for a dedicated piece of hardware, consider checking out the Office Lens app that lets you use your phone to scan old photos.

To save time, we recommended that you scan multiple photos at once. Most scanners have a large bed, and you should be able to fit a few pictures. Once scanned, some sort of image editing software can be used to crop each image and, if you want, do some touching up. Red eyes don't have to live forever!

Check out our roundup of the best affordable graphics and photo-editing apps for a good selection of software that can help you get your old prints into shape.

Finally, once your old pictures are on your PC in digital format, you should back them up for safekeeping. No sense going to all this work just to have a hard drive crash. You have multiple solutions to choose from, but we recommend backing up to at least two different locations. We put together an ultimate guide to help you get your photos and data backed up.

For a bit more help with scanning your own photos, check out Staff Reviewer Rich Edmonds's excellent write-up.

Are you scanning?