There are various ways to get your photos to me. These recommendations apply mainly to photograph restoration projects. See my FAQ page for other image topics (for example, web imagery). By the way, if you are unsure about any of the information given on this page, please do not hesitate to contact me. I'm not in the business of bamboozling my customers!

By Hand

The best way, if you live or work in the Edinburgh area, is to deliver the photo to me by hand. This way, you can be sure that the photograph reaches me safely, and I get to do the initial scanning (I prefer to do it myself, where possible, to get the best results). Alternatively, it might be possible for me to collect the photo from you, especially if you have more than one photo in mind. Phone up and ask me about this.

By Scan

(If you know nothing about using scanners, file formats and the like, just skip this section).

You can scan the photo yourself, if you have access to a scanner, and then either:

• email the electronic image to me;
• upload the image directly to my server (see the form below);
• burn it on to a CD and post this to me.

If you are looking for photo restoration work, please:

• Scan at 600 dpi;
• Save the resulting image as a "tif" file;
• Zip the file up, if you can, to save upload time.

For other work (web images, electronic art work and so on), see my note below about file formats.

File size limit is 100MB, but I expect most files to be under 50MB. Please be patient - large image files will take some time to upload fully.

Please include your name and contact details. I can use this if your file fails to upload correctly.

your name:
telephone number:
your email:
what can I do for you?

Show upload status in pop-up window (recommended - this will show you how long your upload has to go before it is complete). It is possible that some pop up blockers might prevent you from seeing this window. However, I see the window in my browser of choice (Firefox), and I use its built in pop up blocker. If you find that the window is blocked, please let me know, and I'll start adding a list to my FAQ pages!


Caution! Once you have started your upload, do not navigate away from this page, unless you wish to cancel the upload. If you go to another page before the upload status window confirms the upload is finished, the upload will not complete properly, and I will not receive your file.

A message page will show briefly at the end of the process to confirm that the upload has completed.

By Post

Package your original picture (unframed) as securely as possible, and post it to my address on the contact page. I recommend using the Post Office's Recorded Signed For delivery option.

(You might also want to consider obtaining a copy of the photograph before sending it to me. Obviously, by the very nature of the service I provide, in many cases the photograph you are entrusting to me will be the only copy you have of that photograph, and it may well be irreplaceable. Many high street photo shops can do quick prints, and having a basic copy is a good insurance against unforeseen postal problems).

A note about file formats

For photographic work, I like "tif" files! "Tif" files use what is known as "lossless" compression; this means that the file retains all of the information obtained when the file was scanned. As a result, "tif" files (and other lossless file formats, such as Adobe Photoshop's proprietary "psd" format) give the best results when undertaking a photo restoration project.

Unfortunately, "tif" files are often very large, despite using compression. This is no problem if you can burn the file to a CD or DVD, but it makes for an uncomfortable upload experience (particularly on slow or unreliable internet links). However, to do the best possible job, I need quality materials at the outset, so if waiting for an upload to complete isn't your idea of fun, it's best to let me handle the scanning side of things.

For web work, on the other hand, a "lossy" format such as a "jpg" file is often preferred. Also, many digital cameras only produce "jpg" format images, so if you wanted me to do a montage of a recent set of digital photographs, your choice of format might be already decided for you.

As a result, several image file formats can be uploaded via the upload form on this page. However, if I consider that the quality of the image I have received is too low for the purpose you have in mind, I will contact you to discuss other options.

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