Preserving documents and photos is a time-honoured tradition requiring sensitivity and appreciation of the original item. 
lumar provides a truely digital way to move the whole archiving of cherished and deteriorating photos and documents onto various digital media including disks, Hard Drives, CD Roms and the new convenient CD Rom Business Card.
Our Services are primarily 'Imaging' documents and photos, and building convenient interfaces for accessing the final archives of work. Our aim is to preserve their original look and feel efficiently through careful attention to image processing and compression depending on the final use of the archive. The results are almost 3D in nature and will effectively 'freezeframe' an image of your documents and photos for all time.
Here are some of the services we offer:
- Digital Archiving to multiple formats - Documents, Photos and Diaries
- Digitally Encapsulated Family Photo Albums
- Image Processing, Manipulation and Color Correction
- Basic Digital Storage Backup - onto the Web or DVD/CD/Bluray
- VideoTape Clips to Digital
DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS
Digital Archive Services - Documents, Photos and Diaries
When you genuinely need to preserve a time honoured document, (text, photos, books or diaries) with the best quality and highest resolution, then you need to look at more serious techniques that take care and attention to efficient image processing and storage of the resulting digital file.
Our LUMAR digital archive service is one where we seriously look at the original and assess the best way to transfer it to the digital medium. Often an image will be too large to fit on a traditional scanner and here we apply very accurate techniques to recombine the image digitally and seamlessly. At other times images may be faded and require at the request of the client, subtle enhancement to bring them back to their original luster.
Whether it is a treasured diary you wish to save for future generations, photos or an old out of print book (free of copyright), all material is kept confidential and is returned ASAP! Once it has been captured we then spend the time preparing the files so that you can easily access them.
Digitally Encapsulated Family Photo Albums
You know that old box of photos everyone's got on that top shelf in the closet away from the light so the images don't fade away, the one you rarely take out and look at?Our Digital Photo Encapsulation is an image by image digital copying process that takes that box of photos and not only freezes the quality of those images for all time but makes it both easy to share among members of the rest of your family and easy to look at on just about any computer. Inquire by Email about our prices for scanning to determine a rough estimate of the cost of your project.
All of our user interfaces are designed to work conveniently through any Internet Browser so your archive of images can be customized to play back in a variety of unique and attractive ways. See one of our basic Sample Thumbnail Pages for easy access to old photos.
Depending on the quality and size of your final digital archive, you may also be able to store your entire collection (hundreds of images) on a small business card sized CD that you can carry around in your purse or wallet. With musical soundtrack and narration? You bet!
Image Processing and Manipulation
In the old days photographers dodged and burned in or out various picture elements and flaws to arrive at a 'perfect photo'. Part of the services we offer are more precise attention to an image to reconstruct and enhance or recover as much of the image as possible. Of course we do this digitally so that nothing is harmed or changed in the original but it is surprising how much can be removed or fixed to bring back the original look and feel of the original.
 Before |  After In the photograph on the left, the client wanted to not only lighten up and enhance the original photo, but wanted to also give the bride a stylish wedding shot (above) she could never have had during the Second World War. Here extremely complex composite imaging was involved. |
PROJECT EXAMPLES:
Recently we embarked on a large project to scan and digitally preserve an ancient 400 year old Latin Bible. Over 1700 pages were digitally scanned with the results appearing not only clearer than the original, but almost 3D in nature. At first this may seem to have been just a huge scanning project but we were dealing with gigabytes of data in the end and ways had to be developed to bring the project down in size so that it would easily fit onto a series of CD Roms. The problems of image compression and text readabilty were carefully worked out so that the finished archive is beautifully preserved and easily read, more easily than the original (assuming you know Latin ;-)
We then built a convenient interface for accessing the individual books through just about any internet browser. In the the end the entire project fit onto a series of four CD Roms and can now be studied safely by any number of scholars and researchers while the original Latin Bible can finally be hermetically sealed and stored. ( see Latin Bible: Circa 1590 )
Our Digital Archive Service is a way to preserve or 'freeze-frame' an image of the original so that many more people can access old documents and photos with no further threat to the original. The process requires attentive, appreciative and careful handling and once it is done, it is forever accessible with an ease and comfort knowing the original is safely stored.
Our aim at lumar is to help bring the past into the future, preserve the integral look and feel of old documents and photos, replicate them accurately and make them accessible to more people, researchers, family and friends.
PRICING AND QUOTES
The prices for all our services are initially quoted based on the resolution and nature of the final archiving project itself so there is no set rate per se. We invite you to contact us to discuss the potential project you have in mind and we will provide you with a free cost breakdown proposal and estimate.
We handle anything from basic digital storage to more elaborate development of a user playback interface to be discussed and included in our quote.
Ancient books and photos are our specialty with image processing and image enhancement provided as optional treatments at the users' request.
Email The Archivists or Ph. 1-250-537-1973
1-250-537-9701
Make Payment to LUMAR for scanning