scanning family photos ... Aaaauugh!

[GrayHare]

Some prints, especially from around 1970, have a textured finish that scanners pick up. I have yet to find a software tool that removes that texture pattern without also blurring the image. Has anyone found one that does a good job removing textures?

[Car-Guy]

DW scanned ours (probably 1500 pics) at least 15 years ago. And that's after we tossed another 1000 or so that we decided we didn't want. Even with the scanning technology of those days the quality was/is excellent. I think it took her about 3 or 4 weeks to complete the scanning doing some each day when she had a little spare time.


Now they are cataloged and backed up.

[Teacher Terry]

I never look at my photo albums or the pictures on my phone. My mom had black and white pictures and a million slides. We took what we wanted and she threw the rest of them away. I probably took about 15. My kids didn’t know my grandparents so wouldn’t want pictures of them. I have no grandchildren so after my kids die who would want the pictures. Scanning seems like a lot of work for nothing.

[bingybear]

we have a lot of digital pics that were originally taken in the format. But I have taken DMIL slides to digital she could watch them using a dvd player. For a while she watched them.



I have combined ones I scanned with our digital pics and set up plex server so we can watch them.


I've use an epson v100 (old) to scan pics and slides. I've even used it to get pictures from glass slides from the late 1800's.

[Kwirk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski DW wants to scan the many photos that we have. A question for thoe who have done it... do you ever really look at them?

Yes! While having morning coffee we often watch the random photos thrown up on a big screen TV by a media center screen saver. It leads to nice recollections. "Where was that?" "What year was that?"

[CyclingInvestor]

This was one of my first retirement projects. About 4000 photos, plus all paper records (taxes, documents, etc). Cheap flatbed scanner worked great.

[jollystomper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski DW wants to scan the many photos that we have. A question for thoe who have done it... do you ever really look at them?

When we have younger/new family members visiting, a BIG part of the visit they enjoy is looking at our old photos.

For example,When we first met our future daughter-in-law, she was very interested in DS's past, since it was so different from hers and her parents. The best way to show it was through photos. They live over seas now, and as their family grows they like us to send copies of older photos, to show their children their history.

[steelyman]

I’m in progress with a scanning project (link referenced earlier in this thread). It got suspended when I turned my attention to digitizing CDs (music). Both are mind-numbingly boring tasks but nice to get done.

I wrestled some with deciding what software to use for organizing the scanned images and now appreciate the value of metadata, tags and so on.

The most important thing to do, of course, is to get around to doing the scanning. At least you don’t have a deadline to meet!

They’re viewed much more frequently from the scans than the original prints. Old friends share their digital images too and those are easy to incorporate into the digital collection, which is pretty cool. We tend not to use cloud-based sharing of images.

[Music Lover]

My mother and one of her sisters have been scanning photos and sharing with their other siblings. They have also purged hundreds/thousands of photos while doing so. As an example, 4 sisters took pictures at a family wedding and there were 200 photos between them. Does anyone really need 200 photos from every single wedding or 60 from each person's annual vacation? Keep the best and dump the rest.

[dixonge]

Get you one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-Fi-70...8832011&sr=8-6

Ignore the price. Once you're done, you sell it on eBay. The difference between what you paid and what you get back is your expense. It will be cheaper by far than paying someone else to do it.

We did this twice - once when *we* downsized, second time when parents moved into assisted living. Group things by size/topic, scan a batch to pdf or individual jpg images. Put photos/documents back in box, go to next batch. About 100 times faster than a flatbed scanner.

[Katsmeow]

OP - I had my photos scanned at DigMyPics. When sending photos off to scan I divided photos of particular events in two and sent off one batch and got the results then sent off the second batch. I did this so that if the plane crashed or there was some other disaster I would, in most cases, still have some photos. For some particularly meaningful single photos I scanned them on my home scanner before sending them so that I would have something in the event of disaster (this was only a few photos).

[JoeWras]

Old thread bump warning. It is still appropriate.

So, the pandemic got me to take on this project. Over 5000 photos scanned from the late 1800s up until 2000. With nowhere to go, it turned out to be a good project. It took me a few hours a day for 2 1/2 months using a flatbed.

So my question to those of you who have done this:

What did you do with the old paper photos?

I just don't know what to do! I have about 4 file boxes of wedding photos of my parent's generation alone. My mom and dad stood up to many weddings and got huge 8x10 matted photos. These are from the golden age of photography. I mean, quality paper and wonderful posings, shot on 120. Just incredible.

But do I just shred them?

There's a serious emotional element to this I'm not dealing with well right now.

[Jerry1]

Assuming storage space is not an issue, I would just put them in something airtight or as airtight as possible and just leave them for the next generation to deal with. Not worth stressing over. Having them on your computer is nice and makes it more likely you’ll actually view them again. I doubt you’ll ever look at the originals again, but if you don’t have to deal with it, don’t.

[jollystomper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerry1 Assuming storage space is not an issue, I would just put them in something airtight or as airtight as possible and just leave them for the next generation to deal with. Not worth stressing over. Having them on your computer is nice and makes it more likely you’ll actually view them again. I doubt you’ll ever look at the originals again, but if you don’t have to deal with it, don’t.

+1. I am doing the same thing with the ones I scan. I am also noting who is in the photo, to help future generations.

[RunningBum]

I only have 2-3 shoe boxes, and a couple dozen 8x11s. The boxes are still sitting out while I consider whether to toss them. If they go back on the shelf they'll get tossed whenever I do a big purge before I eventually move from here. Maybe I'll save a few of the best ones for picture frames but I think I already have the ones I want displayed. I should at least toss the ones I didn't think were worth scanning, as many were blurry, had bad lighting, or are bland scenery pictures. I see no reason to waste time shredding them.

[sengsational]

After I scanned the photos, made copies of DVDs and handed those out, the originals went in the trash.


I didn't have many of the professional prints, though, so an easier decision.

[Souschef]

My late wife put together an album for her parent's 25th anniversary. I scanned ti, made CD's I gave to her 2 cousins, and tossed the album.

[albireo13]

OP here ...
I still need to do this. I retired last year and have been busy with projects, etc.
I bought a NAS and started ripping all our CDs onto it, to be used with our Sonos system.

After this, I plan to tackle scanning photos and putting them up on the NAS as well, so we can access the through Wifi in the house. Haven't decided yet whether to scan them myself or send them out.

Another update .... my M&D passed away last year and I have more boxes of pictures!!!
My Dad was into photography so, there are tons of slides and prints. Just going through them will take weeks!!!

One issue we have is when the kids were younger we bought picture packages of each of them, through the school, as they grow up. I bet this is common. Anyway, we now have boxes of old pics, nicely done of the kids ... nicely bound and many copies.
What do folks do with these??
I will definitely scan them but, what then? .... trash them?

[EastWest Gal]

I'm doing the same project. I've kicked that can down the road. I'm tossing some, while others are being put in a box so I know they have been scanned. I will deal with that box when I finish. Most will end up in the trash. There are a lot of badly taken photographs taken over the years, so many snapshots were tossed without scanning.

I also started a a family tree on Ancestry, and it has been fascinating. I have found distant relatives whom I don't know wiht copies of the same old photographs they posted online. It has helped me identify the people depicted in unlabelled photographs. I also have learned much about family members who have passed on.

I will probably toss most of the snapshots once they have been scanned, and send copies of the appropriate scans to my sister and cousins on jump drives when I'm done.

The goal is decluttering and organizing. Every picture cannot be preserved forever.

[Teacher Terry]

Personally I think it’s a huge waste of time. My mom had tons of slides that no one wanted. She made us each a VHS tape specifically different for each one of us. At first I occasionally watched it. Haven’t in 25 years. Her photos in albums we each took what we wanted and she threw the rest away when she was dying. My kids wanted me to just leave the photo albums and they will take what they want when I die.