Picture Perfect Memories : * Photobusters, a two-woman crusade, turns haphazard piles of keepsake photographs into orderly albums, organized by time or by theme.

You’ve got a lifetime of photographs, stacks and stacks of prints that add up to a hill of a mess. Chances are, they rarely see the light of day--tucked away beneath the clutter of dresser drawers, cardboard boxes, shopping bags, storage trunks.

To bring order out of chaos, whom should you call?

Photobusters.

It’s a budding partnership, barely 2 years old, formed by Pat Sciortino and Pam Motown on the rebound from previous careers and broken marriages, dedicated to their long-held belief that most families are created equal when it comes to keeping their keepsake photos in the dark and in shambles.

They pledge to unscramble the mess, then organize (usually chronologically, but often thematically) and showcase your hundreds or even thousands of prints in ways that rekindle flames romanced, babies born, trips traveled, birthday candles blown.

Clad in gloves and white jackets, Sciortino and Motown work together in what they call a “dust-free,” spacious room with virtually bare walls (except for two tiny photos, framed with a client’s note) inside Sciortino’s 1886 Victorian house in Van Nuys--transplanted, she says, from its original Downtown Los Angeles location, where the Westin Bonaventure hotel now stands.

Theirs is a luxury service and not for everyone, they concede. After an initial free consultation, hourly charges of $25--plus reimbursements for materials such as photo sleeves and albums--can add up to fees of $1,000 or more. They say they’ve averaged between two and four clients a month, asking each to give them two to four weeks to complete their work.

“It’s a one-time service--once we return, it’s done,” Sciortino says, adding that a major task is gaining a client’s trust. “When we leave with their boxes and bags of photos, the looks on their faces tell us, ‘There goes my whole life!’ ”

“Photo therapy” is how Sciortino describes their work--not just for clients but for themselves.

“It seems none of us has gotten to enjoy the complete picture of our lives--and sometimes that means thousands of photos,” she says. “We’re really all one family of man. We all have the same kinds of photographs.

“Pam and I, of course, must be discreet. We see entire lifetimes pass before us. We see that eccentric uncle--he’s always with a different woman. We see the new hairdos, the new house. And pretty soon we’re both so wound up in these people’s lives that I want to cry out, ‘God! How’s Uncle Harry?’ ”

In many cases, Sciortino and Motown are asked to sort out photos that outlive family breakups, deaths and remarriages. “The kids are all there, but suddenly the husband or the wife is gone; or we start seeing stepchildren,” Motown says--as well as prints dating back to the late 1800s.

Marty Kaplan, a Walt Disney Co. screenwriter-producer in his 40s, says Photobusters has neatly arranged thousands of his prints, creating and updating albums for each of his small children, while carefully packaging 1880-vintage family photos brought to this country years ago from the Ukraine.

“I can be a complete slob,” Kaplan says, “but they’ve made me look like the best-organized and most artistically talented guy around.”

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For Toni Erlich of Tarzana, Photobusters filled nine albums of photos accumulated during nearly two decades of marriage, placing between 2,000 and 3,000 photographs in clear plastic sleeves--an accomplishment she says pleased her husband, Rueben, and their children, Dara, 15, and Ross, 11.

“I didn’t have to tell them much,” Erlich says of Sciortino and Motown. “For the most part, they have an uncanny ability to match who was supposed to be with whom. I mean, they came back and told me about my own family!”

Rita McGregor, a Beverly Hills homemaker, says she had a difficult time explaining whenever her husband, Charles, kept asking, “Who is this Pat that keeps calling?”

McGregor had surreptitiously enlisted Photobusters’ help to spring a surprise anniversary gift--nine albums of photos--on Charles.

“He was absolutely thrilled,” she says. “After 37 years of marriage, shirts and ties as gifts start to wear off.”

As partners, the Photobusters complement each other, having met four years ago as single parents when their children attended the same preschool.

Sciortino, 42, Florida-bred and an erstwhile New York stage actress and Hollywood studio publicist, is theatrical and animated; Motown, 50, her British accent intact and careers as a punk-clothes designer/retailer and nightclub operator behind her, is taciturn and droll, bringing an artistic, literary flair to the pages of clients’ albums.

What Sciortino and Motown offer most, says one client, is a “sensitivity to family dynamics.”

“It wasn’t inexpensive,” Richard Rubin, a Santa Monica advertising copywriter, says, “but if you can afford it, it’s almost like having an heirloom. Now, my kids look at our photos and enjoy them. It’s probably my most precious possession in terms of their irreplaceability.”