Photo digitizing project

[target2019]

In case it wasn't clear in my first post, I was recommending scan to tiff, and this implies saving as tiff. Your scanner may have ctif available, meaning compressed. Elements will read ctif. There you can make adjustments, crop, and save as jpg. Then on with your work flow.

As a comparison make jpg and tif scans. Compare them while you zoom in. Since disk space is cheap, go with tif for original scan, and also produce jpgs for your applications of dvd, Web, etc.

 

[MichaelB]

I am more encouraged after reading the suggestions here. Yesterday afternoon I stopped by the local bookstore to look at the Photoshop Elements book by Kloskowski, I think I'm going to get it today. (Thanks Walt). Still have to decide if I want the dead tree version or the "bytes don't pollute" e-book.

Picassa and the freeware mentioned here will be looked at in the next week or so, but I already have photoshop elements, now I know how to add notes (great tip, thanks), so I think I'm going to scan a couple of old photos into tiff format, add some notes - a sort of trial run - and then sit back for a day or three and talk it over with my kids (primary intended recipients) and other family members.

This will take time, but I am prepared for that. The feedback and suggestions in this thread are very helpful.

 

[target2019]

Not sure about the notes being added in Elements. Ideally you'd want such information to be stored as EXIF data, and have it embedded in your jpgs with dates.

When you carry out your tests keep track of how long it takes to carry out each step of your work flow. If you have many pix to process, it helps to streamline everything. For example, if your scans are too light most times, you can change default settings.

Good luck with your project.

 

[HFWR]

This will take time, but I am prepared for that. The feedback and suggestions in this thread are very helpful.

But what else are you gonna do all day?

 

[MBAustin]

Some great ideas here - this is one of the projects on my long-term to-do list. I'm 2 years into RE and not even done with half of the short-term list yet so who knows when I'll get to this one!

 

[MichaelB]

But what else are you gonna do all day?

I know exactly what you mean

Still thinking about forward compatibility of the the file formats and such. That is, making sure whatever formats and products we use will still be available to use in a couple of decades. In the basement we have a large box of VHS tapes I made in the late 70's and early 80's. Now we have no VHS, I know I can spend some money to buy some HW & SW to convert them to digital files but it is a minor pita.

 

[CoolChange]

I know exactly what you mean

Still thinking about forward compatibility of the the file formats and such. That is, making sure whatever formats and products we use will still be available to use in a couple of decades. In the basement we have a large box of VHS tapes I made in the late 70's and early 80's. Now we have no VHS, I know I can spend some money to buy some HW & SW to convert them to digital files but it is a minor pita.

As long as you don't fall too far behind the technology curve, this should not be an issue for your digitized photographs: Run batch conversion from whatever format you pick (TIFF, JPEG, etc.) to whatever the newest thing becomes, move the files from Amazon S3 containers to the next popular/cheaper storage spot, etc.

Even at the speed technology is moving now, I would hope you could let several years pass before starting to worry about this.

 

[kyounge1956]

I too have a parent wth a bunch of old photos waiting to be dealt with. Whatever format I end up saving the photos in, I am inclined to have them printed out in book form as well. There are a number of services that will do this. All these computers, storage media and file formats could be obsolete in 10 years or even less. Computers don't even have floppy disk drives in them any more. How long can we expect the currently "standard" formats and media to last?

I think the only medium capable of preserving photographs that has a proven track record of being able to survive intact for centuries and still be usable is ink on paper.

 

[meierlde]

As long as you don't fall too far behind the technology curve, this should not be an issue for your digitized photographs: Run batch conversion from whatever format you pick (TIFF, JPEG, etc.) to whatever the newest thing becomes, move the files from Amazon S3 containers to the next popular/cheaper storage spot, etc.

.

I would suspect that for a long time converters will exist after software no longer handles the native formats of jpeg and the like. Since JPEG is an international standards JPEG ISO/IEC 10918-1 thru 4 and a newer version has not yet come out, it will be a while before it is replaced, and any transition will take a long time. Today you can still find word and excel 97 converters for example. Plus as long as you can get an operating system that runs the old software to run in a virtual machine you could also work with the format.
So for Jpeg I would guess 10-15 years as a minimum life.

 

[photoguy]

If you are using Photoshop Elements 9 (or Picassa), there should be a dialog box / window somewhere in the program to enter IPTC information (International Press Telecommunications Council) which is meta-data associated with the image file. IPTC is a standard and will be readable by many programs and will include fields for things like caption, keywords, location, etc. EXIF is a similar form of metadata usually added by the camera to hold information like exposure settings, etc.

Many programs allow you to easily enter IPTC meta data for multiple images at once. For example, in lightroom you can select several images with your mouse and enter the caption "Bob's birthday party, Chicago" all at once. You can also do this with keywords. Using this batch entry of meta-data is very fast.

I believe Apple's iphoto and aperture programs will also perform face-recognition to caption/keyword photos to label people in the pictures. I have not used this functionality so I can't comment on it's effectiveness.

The meta-data is stored as a header in the file, so it's only visible in a browser. If you want a caption to appear on the image itself, you will need to enter it manually with the text tool in PS. If you are good with scripting, you can probably also achieve this with automated actions (photoshop has this, not sure about elements) or with third party tools like ImageMagick and ExifTool.

On Tiff vs JPEG, I would recommend storing the images as high quality JPEGs. The reason most photographers prefer using TIFFs is that if you make a lot of edits to your image (and resave the file as a jpeg multiple times) you can get noticeable degradation. TIFF also supports 16bit images which is important if you do heavy postprocessing but probably unnecessary for snaps. The advantage of JPEGS is that the image files will be much smaller and easier to view especially for non-technical folks. Many professional photographers only shoot in JPEG because their smaller size makes them much easier to work with.

You will probably want to create two versions of the files: (1) A high-res "master" that captures the image at the full (or nearly full) resolution of the scanner. This is the file you should use if you want to print the image. (2) A smaller web sized picture that might be say 600x900 for sending to friends/family.

Also looking for suggestions on how to store the original photos. Some are old (early 1900’s) large and bulky.

I would take them out of frames/albums and store them in archival boxes/envelopes.

 

[kyounge1956]

I would suspect that for a long time converters will exist after software no longer handles the native formats of jpeg and the like. (snip)
So for Jpeg I would guess 10-15 years as a minimum life.

But isn't there some loss or alteration of data with every format conversion--or at least potential for loss? After it has been through three or four successive file format conversions, is it still really the same photo you started off with? And ten or fifteen years per file format will pass the photos intact through forty to sixty years, which is perhaps not even the entire lifespan of grandchildren who are young now. My mother has actual original photographs of her parents as children, all four of her grandparents, and of other relatives, many over 100 years old. What, if anything, will be left of digitized photos 100 years from now?

 

[NW-Bound]

I would worry much more about the media to store the digital images than the formats themselves.

Many formats are lossy, but further conversions to a new format can be made in a lossless mode, I would hope, in order to not cause additional degradation.

On the other hand, I have had many CDRs and writable DVDs going bad on me. Just can't trust them! So, I have been keeping electronic copies on two different hard drives, but will have to keep them in separate locations. I thought about cloud storage, but because I have many GBs, I wonder if the cost is exorbitant.

 

[meierlde]

But isn't there some loss or alteration of data with every format conversion--or at least potential for loss? After it has been through three or four successive file format conversions, is it still really the same photo you started off with? And ten or fifteen years per file format will pass the photos intact through forty to sixty years, which is perhaps not even the entire lifespan of grandchildren who are young now. My mother has actual original photographs of her parents as children, all four of her grandparents, and of other relatives, many over 100 years old. What, if anything, will be left of digitized photos 100 years from now?

Let me put a question, what would be left of paper photos after a couple of generations of sorting as things are handed down? Once folks no longer know who the pictures are of then they might well be put in the trash.

 

[HFWR]

I have scanned some old family photos, and some of my own, such as from vacations, etc. Nice to have them, and may pass some down, but, quite frankly, no one, including me, really looks at them...

 

[NW-Bound]

...quite frankly, no one, including me, really looks at them...

Yes, ain't that sad!

Still, I do like to look at my old travel photos to jog my memories of where we have been. Scenic photos are usually only precious to myself, because nowadays, one quick look on the Web fetches hundreds of similar photos taken by better photographers.

But old photos of people when they were young would be something of interest to the younger generation. Those are the ones I most like to preserve. Some captions would help generate some interests, like the OP sought to accomplish, but I would not want to put captions on the archived files themselves. The complementary narration could accompany the images in a slide show, but the slide show may be too long for the casual viewer.

Is there a way or a software that can automatically display a linked caption when a viewer clicks on an image to view?

 

[martyp]

I've chosen to save my old photos in hi-res JPEG format. They are stored on a removable hard drive at home and on flash drives that I keep in our safe deposit box. Saving them on a cloud application like Picassa also makes sense.

My view is that pictures are going to be viewed on a monitor of some kind. I'v been to two travel photo events recently at friends houses and they both displayed their photos on their flat screen TV's. You should experiment with the files settings and then put them up on a large TV to see how they look. Things should only get complicated if you plan to print your pictures in formats of 8x10 or larger for wall display.

I would assume that digital files need to be maintained over time. That means rewriting DVD's every couple of years. Also, rewriting files on hard drives and portable drives. This will also let you check your file format compatibility with the current software. Digital format is probably not write once forever and then forget about it. Film negatives and photos can last longer but that is very dependent on the printing technique at the time and the storage conditions.

Annotating photos in Photoshop is not very practical. I've got Photoshop CS 5 and it still isn't convenient. PowerPoint has been suggested. If you do this then you should save your photos in lower resolution because the PowerPoint files can get very large very fast.

Something I've begun to do lately is to create videos with my photos. You can mix and match still photos and videos. Annotation is supported in the software. You can add music. I then post the results on YouTube. I'm using IMovie right now but I have used a very capable $95 program on my PC in the past.

The problem is when you try to distribute the digital photos to older family members who aren't computer/internet savvy.

Also, be selective about the photos you save. It's still a lot of work.

 

[W2R]

The problem is when you try to distribute the digital photos to older family members who aren't computer/internet savvy.

Maybe you could just put the jpgs on an SD card and put the card into one of those photo picture frames, that goes from one to the next. Then send them the picture frame + card. That way they wouldn't even have to turn on a computer in order to see them, even though they wouldn't see the annotations.

 

[kyounge1956]

(snip)What, if anything, will be left of digitized photos 100 years from now?

Let me put a question, what would be left of paper photos after a couple of generations of sorting as things are handed down? Once folks no longer know who the pictures are of then they might well be put in the trash.

That is true of photos, and equally true of digitized pictures. Disks, where you can't see the contents without the right hardware and software, are perhaps even more vulnerable than a book. With a book, at least it won't be discarded because nobody can tell what it is. And the other nice thing about a photo-book is that in many of them you can add text alongside the photos, giving a description of who, when, and where. That's why I think the book would be a big improvement over a typical photo album with unidentified photos. A caption will hold a lot more information than a file name, too.

It's true that there may come a time in any family when there's nobody in that generation who is interested in genealogy. I think it may be possible to donate copies of ones materials to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. If so, I'd be inclined to make a second copy of each photo-book, and send it off there, where it would be safely stored until perhaps an interested descendant comes along in another generation or two.

 

[Walt34]

Maybe you could just put the jpgs on an SD card and put the card into one of those photo picture frames, that goes from one to the next. Then send them the picture frame + card. That way they wouldn't even have to turn on a computer in order to see them, even though they wouldn't see the annotations.

We tried that with FIL, 86. There was only one button to push ("on") but with all the other buttons on there he'd get confused, start messing around with it, get the settings all off and it would display only one photo.

He's just never going to get more technologically advanced than 1975.

 

[explanade]

As a kid, I used to look at the family albums all the time. People do have attachment to images, though I don't even know where those family albums are any more.

I've shot thousands of travel photos over the years. I have them all on the computer but I don't always view them, though I've edited most of them, keyworded them and geotagged them. I haven't printed any either.

Ultimately, I plan to hook up my AppleTV and do some slide shows on the big screen. I'd done slide shows on the iPad. If there are videos among the stills, the slide show will cycle through the photos and when it gets to a video, play it back and then go back to stills. Really nicely done and you can play music along with it.

Remember teachers used to put on slide shows with projectors and then tape recorders, playing back "multimedia" slideshows. It wasn't a trivial undertaking back them. Now it's just a few clicks or taps.

 

[MBAustin]

Let me put a question, what would be left of paper photos after a couple of generations of sorting as things are handed down? Once folks no longer know who the pictures are of then they might well be put in the trash.

Very true. When my parents decided to sell the house we kids grew up in, there were trunks from my grandparents houses that had never been opened since their houses had been cleaned out. There were hundreds and hundreds of photos (including tintypes and other 19th century photos) that we threw out because we had no indication who the people were. Very sad.

 

[REattempt]

This was really helpful to me. Until there is a metadata standard that will survive, I'm keeping two version, one I've edited to put captions in the photo itself...

http://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/picasa-versus-windows-live-photo-gallery/

 

[fidler4]

Reviving an old topic:

I have a coupe of thousand photos I want to start scanning. I also have the negatives of many of the 35mm photos. Is it better to scan the photo or the negatives?

Thanks


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[sengsational]

You need a better scanner to scan 35mm negatives, and you would need to load the strips into a carrier. I did my slides a while back...slow and tedious:

 

[photoguy]

Reviving an old topic:

I have a coupe of thousand photos I want to start scanning. I also have the negatives of many of the 35mm photos. Is it better to scan the photo or the negatives?

Depends what you mean by better.

If you have a good dedicated film scanner and are comfortable correcting color casts, the negatives should yield better quality in terms of resolution as the print is a second generation copy.

But if you just have a flatbed scanner I would scan the print itself and not the negative. This will also be a *lot* faster (especially if your software lets you scan multiple images at once) as film scanning is incredibly slow.

Even If your flatbed scanner has a film attachment, I would still scan the photo print and not the negative/slide.

For out family photos, our strategy has been to scan the prints and throw away the negatives. I would only scan negatives/slides on a dedicated film scanner for the most important images.