scanning family photos ... Aaaauugh!

[albireo13]

We have a pile of boxes in our basement filled with old family photos.
I've been meaning to scan them into digital files but, haven't had the time yet. Perhaps a retirement project?

A year ago I started scanning pics but quickly realized how time consuming it is. I have a nice Canoscan flatbed scanner.
This is a daunting task indeed.

I am considering looking at a new scanner which has really good scan speeds. The other option is to send photos out to a scanning service, like scancafe.com. This would be costly though.

What have folks done …. and been happy with?


And following this, how do you archive all the pics?


Thx,
Rob

 

[Katiek]

I scanned some in on my own and sent some out to a commercial service. It was definitely worth doing. We gave my Mom a digital photo frame which she loved when she had to downsize from her house to a smaller apartment. She no longer had room to display all her pics, and now she had hundreds of them to view.


I also shared them with extended family members who appreciated them. We got to share some of the old pictures of grandparents with cousins who didn't have the photos.


I'd try to do an hour or so every other night so it wasn't so overwhelming. Also, I was lucky my family had a lot of slides since they were much quicker.

 

[RunningBum]

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/what-to-do-with-old-photos-88753.html is a good thread on this. I found a great Groupon deal with ScanMyPhotos.com.

It was a lot of work to sort through which photos I wanted scanned, but it was worthwhile to me. I found that I mainly kept good photos with people in them, a lot more than all the vacation scenery photos. Of course I scanned anything spectacular or memorable for some reason.

It's quite a project no matter how you do it. If you don't want to send photos away, I'd invest in a high speed high capacity scanner. There's no way I'd try it with my inexpensive 4 in 1 printer/scanner.

 

[GrayHare]

Quicker than scanning is to take a photograph of the slide or print. Slides will need good backlighting. When I've done this the result was surprisingly good. Though this approach removes the slowness of a scanner, it does not solve the problem of dust and imperfections. Editing those out can be very time consuming. One solution is to do such editing only upon the most treasured photos.

 

[CRLLS]

Probably about 15 years ago, I scanned some family photos of our ancestors. I made digital copies on CDs or DVDs. I can't even remember which, and gave them to all the living family members. To be honest, I have never looked at the disc and don't think anyone else has either. I often wonder in 20-40 years from now, if there will be devices to read such digital photos. I have a few family photos on 720kB 3-1/2" floppys. I cannot read them now on any of the computers that I have. My laptop today doesn't even have a DVD slot.

I don't know what the answer really is.

 

[sengsational]

If you have prints that are not bound into albums, you can get those scanned pretty reliably with the right scanner. I bought one, an FF-640, and I'm sans almost all paper photos now. I bought the scanner as a referb and then sold it on eBay and even with shipping, it only cost me about $60, if memory serves). Also, I've had several occasions to pop open a folder and grab photo files and make them available for viewing.


http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f54/image-management-software-95971-4.html#post2269048


http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/digitizing-old-photos-100032.html#post2302468

 

[GrayHare]

As for archiving, I start each photo's file name with the year, that way they can be sorted by time, a common order in which people want to view family photos. Though in the file name I wanted to include the names of the people shown, that became impractical for photos with multiple people. Instead I created a separate text file listing photo file names and details. In that text file I did not describe every photo, only the more significant ones. The file employs text format, rather than a proprietary word processor's format, on the basis text should be easily accessible well in to the future. Be sure to make backups!

 

[jollystomper]

It has been a retirement project for me. It has become one of my "things to do while watching sports" tasks. Rather than just sit on the comfy couch and stuff my face with snacks while watching, I can spend some time scanning on my flatbed scanner (multiple pics at the same time) and checking the results during breaks in the action or commercials. Just eating this particular project elephant one bite at a time. It has cut down on the number of snacks I eat when watching games .

 

[sengsational]

As to file naming, that's the most time consuming part of using the document-feed scanner. I'd pick up a wad of photos, and, like GH, decide on a date. Sometimes it's easy, if it's in the photo finisher's envelope. Other times I've had to go start with "1960s" instead of the real year. Then usually a description of what it is...my the best photo file names are something like "19620318_JackAndJillOnTheHill", then that gets prepended to a number that increments for that particular wad. Of course it's imperfect in that Jack had a few photos of the cat he had to take since he didn't finish the roll of film right there on the hill

 

[dadu007]

I have used ScanCafe.com for years and have been very happy with their service and always recommend them. The only caveat is that, unless you choose the US service option, your photos and negs are shipped to India (very securely) and you'll have about a 2 to 3 month wait. Subscribe to their newsletter and wait for 30- 40% off coupons. Still, HIGHLY recommended.And this is from a person who has a Nikon Coolscan 8000. I use the Coolscan very sparingly and I let ScanCafe do the heavy lifting!

 

[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?

The ones that she is determined to scan have been collecting dust up in the attic for 30 years ... it seems that the only thing we do with them is move them when we move houses.

 

[dadu007]

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?

I'm sort of the extended family photo archivist...and so, yes, I have family members ask me,..."Do you have a photo of..." and they get a kick when I retrieve it (I use IMatch to catalog the database of photos.)


But I know what you're saying. When I grew up, I got out the "photo box" from the hall closet ALL THE TIME and quizzed relatives about who was in the pictures...So I thought it was important and so it's my side hobby...photos in the database and many many organized binders, BUT my children? They don't seem to have much interest looking through them, which does make me sad. Maybe in 20 or 30 years they'll be asking for them. PRINTING photos is more important than just scanning them, IMHO. Scans will die the digital death eventually. And I just like the tangible object.

 

[Jerry1]

DW took on this project. It is indeed time consuming. I can't imagine having someone do it. I wouldn't want to send my only copy of a picture out for the risk of it not coming back. Plus, I'm sure they run it through some process and I doubt if they make sure it's well done (crooked, cropped, too light/dark . . .).

There is a lot of joy in going through the pictures. However, I can agree that the likelihood of having them looked at again is slim. Though, once they're in digital format, they are a LOT easier to look through and having them as a screensaver or in a digital picture frame does make them easy to view.

As for archiving them, I've chosen a hard drive approach. I've had too many times where a disk, CD, DVD could not be read years after the initial write. With the hard drive and the low cost of storage these days, the HD works great. Just make sure to have two copies.

As for the file structure, DW has kept the file name the same, which of course is not helpful at all (img123.jpg), but she puts them in folders buy year and them by month. So, if you know the wedding was in July of 1985, you can find the pictures rather easy and, as I said, the format of having them on a hard drive makes them easy to look through. With a good computer, (mine), you can click through pictures as fast as you can click.

As was said, it's an elephant. One bite at a time and pretty soon you'll be done.

 

[RunningBum]

I have the opposite worry, that printed photos will get yellowed, cracked, lost, or damaged by fire, flood, or insects. I keep my photos backed up, with a copy kept away from my house. I have confidence if the .jpg format goes obsolete, I'll be able to find a conversion utility.

Do I look at them? I have a digital frame that shows photos. I don't turn it on that often, but I have at times.

 

[RunningBum]

DW took on this project. It is indeed time consuming. I can't imagine having someone do it. I wouldn't want to send my only copy of a picture out for the risk of it not coming back. Plus, I'm sure they run it through some process and I doubt if they make sure it's well done (crooked, cropped, too light/dark . . .).

I had no problems with the quality of the scanned photos with the service I used. They also had some enhancement software that could bring out faded colors, and I really liked the results.

I totally get the reluctance to put photos in the mail. Ultimately I decided it was worth the risk, especially since I so rarely looked at the physical photos anyway.

 

[GrayHare]

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?

I do, monthly if not weekly on average, but not all of them at a sitting, just a few photos to answer some family question or memory. "Did Uncle Bob ever smoke?" Well, here's a photo of him doing so at the [fill in year] reunion.

 

[W2R]

Here's my photo scanning story:

I scanned 1,923 family photos back in 2012, using this photo scanner. Probably better scanners have become available since then.

Anyway, each day I scanned for maybe 2-3 or more hours until I got tired. I guess it took me about 5 days.

It is so good to have it completely done! I look at the scanned photos far more frequently than I looked at the paper photos, that were all dumped in a big box. They're still there, in the back of my closet but I am just saving them in case my daughter wants them some day.

The reason I didn't send them to a scanning service, is that I was concerned that these family photos would get lost or further damaged in transit. I felt they were safer here at home where they could not be lost, and being carefully scanned by yours truly. As soon as I scanned them, I copied all the scans on SD cards and sent one to each of three other family members. So now, they have the photos too.

I haven't scanned any photos since 2012. All of mine lately are digital.

 

[Winemaker]

My 84yo mother has 50+ years of slides. DB said he'd take care of reproducing them about 5-10 years ago, I think I'll be 84 whenever he gets done, if he ever got started.

 

[misshathaway]

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?

No! But they take up way less room.

 

[meierlde]

I digitized about 15,000 slides of mine and my fathers and grand fathers. For slides with epson scanners you can do them 4 at a time, and if you limit yourself to 2400 dpi it does not take to long for each set. I do recommend getting photoshop elements to do clean up (remove spots etc) and possible color correction, in particular as color prints from the 1970s may have faded. Then I did about 30k prints and negatives for my sister, 35 mm negatives can be done 8 at a time, and you can put 4 prints on the screen at a time, and the software will divide them for you. One might digitize them in .tiff format because it is lossless, and then convert to .jpeg everyday use. Elements organizer preserves the file structure you used to digitize, so you can name directories by subject etc. Unfortunately Google Photos goes by date which in the case of digitized photos in general does not mean a lot. One thing one can do with digitized photos is to use ones flat screen tv as a super picture frame to look at the photos, using elements or other slide show makers. With some tvs if you get the photos into .mp4 format you can plug a flash drive full of pictures in and view them on the tv. Note btw that you can use the tv to see how the picuture might look if you make an enlarged print.

It took me about 14 years of doing this on and off after retirement to digitize them all and wore two scanners out in the process.

As a side note black and white photos from 1910 were still quite good but color prints and negative films tend to fade, while kodachrome and etkachrome slides still preserved colors well.

 

[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]

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?"