scanning family photos ... Aaaauugh!

[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]

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-7...finements=p_89:Fujitsu&rnid=2528832011&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]

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.

 

[EastWest Gal]

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?

I scanned the largest of each of the packages, usually an 8x10. I put one copy of each size in a file folder to keep, for some reason. The rest went into the trash. My son's grandparents on his dad's side died when he was 1 and 3. My mom died when my son was 10, my dad before he graduated from high school, so we had no one to send copies to. My dad never spent much time thinking about his grandkids the last 5 years of his life-he was quite ill.

 

[JoeWras]

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.

The next generation (my nieces, nephews and cousins) don't give a flip. They do want to see a few of the scans, which I've provided. Physical prints? They want nothing to do with.

I think I'll save a few of the early 1900s. These are on thick card stock. Dad also created a few small albums. I'll save those. I also have an artist friend who may be able to use a few of the goofier photos pre 1960.

Everything else will go to trash because storage IS a problem. That's one reason for this exercise. Time to downsize.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

OTOH, which is more likely to be useful to genealogists a century from now: prints or DVDs/SSDs/NAS/data crystals? I’m going through and scanning a bunch of this stuff, too, and while I don’t intend to keep Dad’s slides of The Grand Canyon from our trip in 1968, I do hope to archive the original prints of great grandma from the 1870s. I’ve got a bunch of old tintypes, cartes des visites, and cabinet cards of mystery people probably from the 1860s - 1900s and they’re just too cool to throw away. But I do have space for a box or two.

 

[JoeWras]

OTOH, which is more likely to be useful to genealogists a century from now: prints or DVDs/SSDs/NAS/data crystals? I’m going through and scanning a bunch of this stuff, too, and while I don’t intend to keep Dad’s slides of The Grand Canyon from our trip in 1968, I do hope to archive the original prints of great grandma from the 1870s. I’ve got a bunch of old tintypes, cartes des visites, and cabinet cards of mystery people probably from the 1860s - 1900s and they’re just too cool to throw away. But I do have space for a box or two.

My mystery people are great, great uncles/aunts, cousins 3 removed, etc. Amazingly, I can identify my grandparents as kids. My grandparents never talked about their parents, but I know what they look like now, unless they just had random people posing with them.

I'm keeping these prints. This will be my small box of keeps. Most are on heavy card stock and have engraved names of the photographers, and an address. (In my case Belgium.) A quick internet scan reveals when and where they operated. Most went defunct in WWI. It was a turbulent time.

Even though some of these prints were taken in the 19-aughts, if there is a building the background, I can take a google street drive through the Dutch countryside and find these houses almost as they were 110 years ago. I've printed some of that information off and keep it with the pictures for any future person who finds it.

 

[JoeWras]

See, it is emotional. I have to show you my slideshow.

This is my great-great grandmother. I only know this because thankfully my grandmother wrote a note saying it was her grandmother, with a name and birth year (1849). Taken about 1900. I have no idea who the guy is. Maybe a husband, maybe not!

Even though it is scanned (including the back), how can I get rid of these? I can't. Actually, turns out I spoke with my cousin and she wants to do a genealogy thing, so I'll be giving most of these to her.

 

[unclemick]

I had the equivalent of a 50 lb contractors bag of photo's ready to evacuate for Katrina - forgot them in the rush.

Don't miss them.

Heh heh heh - I periodically zap digital photos during bouts of 'declutter'.

 

[meierlde]

Note that for color photos once they come from the 1970s or earlier if prints they start fading badly. slides have kept well back to the early 60s but, this is not true of the old purchased slide sets which fade badly. (Black and white snapshots seem to have a lifetime over over 100 years.

 

[Sunset]

OTOH, which is more likely to be useful to genealogists a century from now: prints or DVDs/SSDs/NAS/data crystals? I’m going through and scanning a bunch of this stuff, too, and while I don’t intend to keep Dad’s slides of The Grand Canyon from our trip in 1968, I do hope to archive the original prints of great grandma from the 1870s. I’ve got a bunch of old tintypes, cartes des visites, and cabinet cards of mystery people probably from the 1860s - 1900s and they’re just too cool to throw away. But I do have space for a box or two.

I would think, some of those things actually have value.
After you scan them, you could sell them instead of throwing them out.
I see people have sold them on ebay for wildly varying prices.

 

[dak2018]

My wife and I have been slowly working through this task. The hardest, but most important, step is to go through the collection and ruthlessly trash the photos that are of little interest. In our case, that meant with few exceptions, if there are no people in the photo, out it goes. Don't know who is in the photo? Trash. Blurry, hopelessly faded, or simply banal? Out it goes. Cut, cut, cut. Only save the best!

I do think that this is highly individual and family dependent. In general our family does not spend a lot of time revising the past, so these photos are of less importance to us. YMMV! I have often stated ( but not implemented(!)) that I could happily exist with 200-300 pictures of the past, but on that point I get some pushback from my wife

 

[Boho]

Quicker than scanning is to take a photograph of the slide or print.

I have about 40lbs of photos in a 90 quart plastic box, and this is after I removed all of the non-cardboard frames except one. Several are larger than a standard scanner bed. I'd love to put a good camera on a tripod and photograph a bunch at a time and have software automatically adjust the perspective separately for each photo and save one photo per file. But I have a feeling there's no such software.