digitizing old photos

[someguy]

Hi everyone,

I spent a few minutes searching and didn't see anything on this topic.

I've recently come across a fairly large stash of sentimental and historical family pictures. They are a variety of sizes and mountings. I want to get them digitized with as much quality as the original permits so they can be preserved and also shared/copied.

I will probably DiY on a few of the highest-value (sentimental) photos no matter what, just as a back up. But I don't have the expertise and equipment or want to spend the time on the entire stash.

I imagine I'm not the first in this situation. What have you done, how much did it cost and how did it turn out?

 

[RunningBum]

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/what-to-do-with-old-photos-88753.html was a good thread on this. I got a groupon deal from ScanMyPhotos and it turned out very well.

 

[meierlde]

Hi everyone,

I spent a few minutes searching and didn't see anything on this topic.

I've recently come across a fairly large stash of sentimental and historical family pictures. They are a variety of sizes and mountings. I want to get them digitized with as much quality as the original permits so they can be preserved and also shared/copied.

I will probably DiY on a few of the highest-value (sentimental) photos no matter what, just as a back up. But I don't have the expertise and equipment or want to spend the time on the entire stash.

I imagine I'm not the first in this situation. What have you done, how much did it cost and how did it turn out?

I have scanned over 20k pictures using an epson v600 scanner or earlier models over about 14 years of retirement. Then used photoshop elements to correct problems. These were prints, slides and negatives. (wore two scanners out) It does take a good bit of time do do. I scanned prints in at 300 dpi, slides at 2400 dpi and dpending on the size of the negative either dpi. This was possible because I was retired, and had the time. Then using photoshop elements I made contacts sheets as an index to the photos. Today with prints and a smart phone, you could just photograph 8x10 portraits however, and use google photos to store in the cloud. So as usual the question is how valuable is your time?

 

[bloom2708]

Look for a Brother or Espson all in one printer/scanner (cheap, not using ink) with an SD card slot.

Scan to SD Card.

Put photo in. Select Scan to SD Card. Set quality options (optional). Push Start.

Image is on the SD card. Later, transfer to your primary photo archive.

 

[Car-Guy]

I (well actually the DW) did all of ours (1000's) over a decade ago using a simple flatbed scanner. Of course today any good printer/copier/scanner should do as well or better. Easy to do and high resolution even back then. We actually sorted through them and dumped about half (1000's) before scanning what we wanted to keep. They are all electronic now and I keep a couple of backups, plus they are sorted/categorized now. I know there have been a number of times I wanted to send someone a copy of "one" of the pictures. Super easy, quick and free now.

 

[marko]

I was really into photography back in the 70's and 80's. Had some nice, very expensive cameras/lenses/tripods/filters etc.

Over the years, I came to realize that after one or two times, I never looked at all those photos I took ever again. Last year, cleaning out Mom's basement I saw that I had a box full of pictures I had taken. It had been over 30 years since I looked at them! THREW OUT every last one of them.

In my case, photos have become quite disposable and my cell phone photos are good enough in quality for the few times I will look at them. I will have one or two a year and print and frame them but that's about it.

DW spent a small fortune digitizing a VCR video of her late brother. She watched it once and ... it's somewhere in our digital pile.

JMHO

As an aside, years ago I was in the Alps skiing and said to my French friend that I wished I had a camera with me. He said: "No, the photo will never live up to the memory...just live with the memory and it will be better than any photo."

 

[donheff]

I agree with Marko that digitizing boxes of old photos is a waste unless you have a specific plan on what you will do with them. I make online albums of the trips we take because I enjoy doing it. But the reality is we rarely access them. We also have lots of albums of developed photos we took over the decades before digital took over. I have thought about digitizing them but concluded it’s a lot of effort for little return. I occasionally want to share one or two on Facebook or by email. I just take a photo of them with my iPhone, crop them and post. If they are old and faded I correct them in Photoshop - it’s often surprisingly easy to bring them back to life. If you focus on the few that are meaningful or beautiful the effort can be fun and not overwhelming.

 

[Ready-4-ER-at-14]

I bought an Epson es-400 and used it for high speed scanning of photos and old documents. Didn't work well with polaroid instant pictures or the tiny almost postage stamp smaller than wallet sized stuff either. I must have done 5-6k of document pages and pictures as I wore out the other Epson high speed scanner I had before the es-400.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

Timely thread for me as I'm just starting to take on a project to scan a bunch of antique photos I inherited, some well over 100 years old, some are tin types. This is in the context of my ongoing family history project. So far, and I actually just started yesterday, I'm using my hp all-in-one printer that scans up to 1200 dpi. I've used that setting a few times and of course it's creating some pretty large files so I need to step back and decide what's really needed. I'm considering making high-quality scans and archiving them as storage is cheap these days, and exporting them to a smaller-size format.

On the Mac I've found that it's easy to cover the scanner with small photos and scan them all at once, saving to separate files automagically.

I'm interested to hear how people are organizing these files once they're scanned. File names, folder structure, etc. and other suggestions are all of interest.

 

[RunningBum]

I made specific folders for trips and other events when I had more than a couple photos. For others or trips that were more difficult to identify, I have folders like Beach, Football games, etc. For my son I made folders on various life stages like Baby, Pre-school, Grade School, etc. Other folders for pets, houses, other family, and so on. That pretty much covered it for me.

I didn't try to give file names. Too much work, and I can display thumbnails to see what they are. Ideally I would've put the date in the image name like my phone does, but as I said, too much work.

The key to me was to go through and get rid of the photos that had no meaning, mostly shots of things. I was much more interested to keep pictures with people in them, and try to keep that in mind for my travel photos now.

Some are saying it might not be a worthwhile exercise, but I enjoyed going through all the old photos. Might as well do it now while I have the time and energy. When I move, I might not have the time to do all this, and don't really want to haul around all the old photos. So I'd say unless you don't mind dumping them all at some point, go ahead and take a shot at doing it at your convenience.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I have scanned over 20k pictures using an epson v600 scanner or earlier models over about 14 years of retirement. Then used photoshop elements to correct problems. These were prints, slides and negatives. (wore two scanners out) It does take a good bit of time do do. I scanned prints in at 300 dpi, slides at 2400 dpi and dpending on the size of the negative either dpi. This was possible because I was retired, and had the time. Then using photoshop elements I made contacts sheets as an index to the photos. Today with prints and a smart phone, you could just photograph 8x10 portraits however, and use google photos to store in the cloud. So as usual the question is how valuable is your time?

I bought this same scanner mostly based on this review, as it offers a wealth of tips and techniques.

 

[sengsational]

I disagree that scanning old photos without a plan is a waste of time if the scan operation gets the pictures in the trash and they would not be there otherwise.

I just got done scanning all our photos, plus FILs photos, plus one buddy of mine borrowed the scanner for a few thousand scans.

I used the FF-640 from Epson, and was impressed at how fast it was. It also scans the back, so captures the writing (if any, otherwise doesn't make an image of the back). And the speed is something like 1 per second. So you drop a stack, type a subject, press "go" and it's done before you get your hands on the next stack. My biggest complaint is that you need to keep it clean, or you get streaks. So you do spend time cleaning it. I have unaided close vision (good eyes) and I can see much more detail on the scanned photos than I can on the hard copy, so nothing lost to me by scanning. But this scanner, with the document feeder, is the only way I'd undertake a scanning project; flatbeds are way, way too labor intensive and slow.

Bought the scanner factory refurbished, and just sold it today for almost what I paid (although by the time I ship it and pay the eBay and PayPal fees, I'll be down $60 or $80), I think it was worth it. Emptied a huge shelf into the trash and now have more redundancy because DVDs burned are in various locations and also in the cloud.

 

[DrRoy]

We have an Epson V550 and Photoshop.

 

[someguy]

Thanks for all the tips and info so far.

My experience scanning more standard photos is that many scanners suck -- you get weird patterns, colors, etc. I've used plug-ins for GIMP (free, open-source Photoshop) to scan multiple prints at once and it automatically separates, straightens, etc. them.

This stash has clearly already been culled down. Virtually everything is "wanted" and will be saved for family history, plus given/sent to a variety of digital photo frames.

As far as I can tell, there are no negatives, but there are all kinds of sizes and mountings of "prints". This isn't a standard stash of stack after stack of FotoMart 4"x 6" prints. Some are close to tabloid size, some are mounted in albums, or have matting (ie, no scanner ADF). Some are media that I'm not totally sure of. Plenty are old and some are nearing 150 years old.

 

[misshathaway]

On the Mac I've found that it's easy to cover the scanner with small photos and scan them all at once, saving to separate files automagically..

I just radically downsized and moved. The only way I could get through the boxes and boxes of photos was to multi-scan like you did. One caution - I came across one recently that I was going to print out and I had put it on the edge of the flatbed and it was a little bit blurry. It was the only picture of my father and his brother as toddlers together. I threw out the oriiginals. Check each scan before filing.

Still not sorry I did it. The resolution is fine for printing out one at a time and putting it up on the refrigerator. When you stop "seeing" it, put up another.

I simply could not have gotten rid of the physical photos without preserving them somehow. My neighbors will still aghast that I would throw them out. But that was what would happen to them after I'm gone anyway.

 

[sengsational]

I simply could not have gotten rid of the physical photos without preserving them somehow. My neighbors will still aghast that I would throw them out. But that was what would happen to them after I'm gone anyway.

I couldn't trash them without preserving them. But once scanned, I was ruthless. My family was maybe a bit "aghast", but they had the DVD and I reminded them that if they wanted a print of something, upload it to one of those sites and you'll get a hard copy in the mail in a few days for just a few cents per print. And if you want to enjoy the old photos, get a digital photo frame or set up a slideshow on your TV.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

I spent a month or so scanning all photos, tax returns, records, etc as my first post retirement project, on a cheap flat bed scanner in 2006. Everything came out fine, got everything labelled and organized. I still wander thru them often, especially pets and vacations.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I see several references to storing photos on DVDs. It seems like those are already becoming obsolete. Just saying this can become a real problem sooner than we think. How many of us have floppy disk drives? I fear the family historians of the next few generations will have lost quite a bit of material.

 

[braumeister]

I see several references to storing photos on DVDs. It seems like those are already becoming obsolete. Just saying this can become a real problem sooner than we think. How many of us have floppy disk drives? I fear the family historians of the next few generations will have lost quite a bit of material.

It's a common problem. Once upon a time I remember religiously backing my computer files up on Iomega Zip Disks. Remember them? Didn't think so.

In fact there have been a number of amazing stories in government offices where data was entered on punch cards and later when the card readers and old computers that used punch cards were on their way out, the cards were microfilmed without any thought given to possible future difficulties in getting the information back out. Here's a fairly typical example:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/spring/aad-ww2.html

The original punch cards, which contained basic information about enlistees at the time they entered Army service, were destroyed after microfilming, a common practice at that time. The NPRC began using a copy of the microfilm, but it presented some challenges.

• First, there were 1,586 rolls of microfilm, making manual review very difficult.
• Second, the punch cards were microfilmed in serial number order, making a search by name impossible.
• Third, a variety of punch card formats were used to record the enlistment data over time, and documentation of the various recording formats was hard to identify.

 

[sengsational]

I see several references to storing photos on DVDs. It seems like those are already becoming obsolete. Just saying this can become a real problem sooner than we think. How many of us have floppy disk drives? I fear the family historians of the next few generations will have lost quite a bit of material.

Now that flash drives are so cheap and large, you might as well put your photos on one of those too. There will probably be USB connectors for a while. But I wonder how stable those flash drives are, long term.

 

[meierlde]

Now that flash drives are so cheap and large, you might as well put your photos on one of those too. There will probably be USB connectors for a while. But I wonder how stable those flash drives are, long term.

Since USB thru the usb c and up are all backwards compatable, it will not be a question of reading the drives but rather how long they last. One way would be at least once a year pluging the drives in so that the circuitry can refresh the memory. One web site says to move the data off the flash drive and redo every ten years. (Of course a 10 year old flash drive would be cheap to buy today due to the increasing sizes) It is also such that ssd are getting cheap enough for archival purposes but then you should plug them in overnight to refresh the memory between every 6 month to a year.

The big concern is the number of write cycles a drive can handle, which if you use new drives for archival storage it is just one write cycle.

 

[Walt34]

It appears that our ancestors got it right the first time and the most reliable and longest-lasting data storage method developed so far is that old favorite, carving in stone.

 

[meierlde]

It appears that our ancestors got it right the first time and the most reliable and longest-lasting data storage method developed so far is that old favorite, carving in stone.

Just fyi I digitized some color prints from the 1960s and 1970s that have faded badly. Whereas a black and white print from 1910 still is good. This is in the slide case due to using eastman color film not kodachrome etc. (The same disease is affecting theatrical motion pictures from that time frame) Of course with photoshop you can make them black and white and they still look ok. Digital photos just like digital over the air tv, it either works or it doesnt no longer is there an analog failure that just gets worse over time etc,
However it must be noted that services exist to copy 5.5 inch floppies to other media, and you can still buy a usb 3.5 floppy drive. My hunch is that with technology that is widely disseminated in the consumer realm, it takes a lot longer for devices to disappear. Even today there is at least one vcr being sold new as well as a lot of used ones, you can buy a box that will digitize vhs tapes if you have a recorder or there are lot of services that will do it. So that should the next revolution hit and usb flash drives be made obsolete services will still exist to copy them. (Services exist to copy 8 and 16 mm film to dvd) Also there exist devices at the library of congress to play even the old edison cylinder records. Essentialy since the specs are out there someone can build a player. The whole emulator market shows that as far as software goes if you can install an os and apps on an emulator you can retrieve old files also.

 

[Walt34]

The whole emulator market shows that as far as software goes if you can install an os and apps on an emulator you can retrieve old files also.

Well, we'll see in about 10,000 years. I'll bet those cave carvings will still be there. As for the digital images, we'll just have to wait and see.

 

[meierlde]

Well, we'll see in about 10,000 years. I'll bet those cave carvings will still be there. As for the digital images, we'll just have to wait and see.

Well of course the question is will either google photos or amazon photos exist then? You can upload the files to either and have backups and have pretty good reliability assuming they do backups.