I have 12 albums of photos that I want to digitize. Is it necessary to scan one at a time, or could I do 4 to 6? I personally don't want to print any of them, well maybe a few to frame (I'm not getting rid of the original photos/albums). Someone somewhere down along the line in a future generation may want to print them. I suppose it's more of a personal opinion, but I'd like to get some of your thoughts. Thanks.
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Posted 2 years ago #
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There is a thread called Generations of photos, several people talk about scanning photos, and they mention that there are companys who do that, too. Maybe that would be helpful to you?
I have no experience-based advice of my own for you -- I still have to decide for myself how I want to organize my non-digital photos. An idea I was toying with is to actually evaluate the albums before scanning them. Even though I put a lot of work into them once, half of the pictures don't mean anything to me anymore anyway, or are the same thing from a different angle. If you're not afraid to pull the albums apart and declutter in them, this may reduce the amount of photos for scanning :o)
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'm going to scan a lot of family photos, make online albums and invite those people into the albums and let them choose photos they want. When I mentioned this to my one of my husband's sisters, her eyes lit up, and she can't wait to see the photos. I will use people's names as tags, so each family, my husband has 7 brothers and sisters, all married and all have children, can search on people in their family. It's going to take some work, but in the end, I can take the best of the best, put those in an album for my son, and I can feel ok about throwing the rest away.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Out of curiosity, what platform will you use for making the online albums? Flickr?
Posted 2 years ago # -
a lot of scanners have an auto-detect feature for scanning multiple photos. i can get 6 of the old square photos and 3-4 standard rectangular photos on the scan bed of my canoscan 8800F scanner. as long as there is enough space between each photo, the scanner automatically scans them as separate images. even if you aren't planning to print them, you should scan them at 300 dpi (to print actual size) or 600 dpi (to enlarge to twice the size), since it really doesn't take more time to scan them at higher than screen resolution and might save someone the chore of having to rescan for print quality.
you could always scan a page of photos at a time to make one large image, but that makes digital organization more difficult.
i agree with trillie about evaluating the photos before scanning. 12 albums worth of photos is a lot of scanning!
Posted 2 years ago # -
Trillie, I'll probably use Photobucket, but to be honest, I haven't explored other options.
Posted 2 years ago # -
trillie - i use both flickr and picasa web albums. both have free options, but flickr is cheaper with $25 annual unlimited storage. picasa web albums is a google product and has a tiered price level for purchasing additional storage. the cheapest is $5 a year for something like 20 gigs. picasa web albums integrates seamlessly with google's picasa photo management application which has powerful organizing tools like tagging and face recognition, etc. flickr isn't as friendly for bulk image downloads.
i have a pro account on flickr which i use to back up all my photos at full resolution. most are marked so only i can see them at this point, but you can also mark them as public or semiprivate for access by friends and family. picasa web albums has a similar structure. i have my photos backed up on cds, dvds and ehds at home and other physical sites (my husband has copies at the office and my parents have a copy), but i like having them backed up on reliable servers far from me for additional peace of mind.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Wow, you guys are fast, thank you. I think I'll scan several photos at once, my scanner also detects multiple photos, which I had forgotten. Having looked at the first 4 albums, I will not be scanning each and every photo. I'll toss the blurry, half the face cut off, landscape type photos. I will most likely organize by date, as it makes the most sense and is the easiest for me, which is how I organize w/ iPhoto. It seems like just a few years ago I bought new albums (15) and redid my photos, and here I will be doing it again. I'm beginning to think I will *always* have stuff to get rid of, even though I thought I was down to almost my minimum!
I have several pages of old family photos that I scanned for my folks 50th anniversary album, so I can already count those as done!
If I thought my extended family would benefit from it, I would put them on Picasa, but most of them can barely turn on their computers, let alone find a website from a link! It's a super idea, I've done it with my immediate family vacation photos and my long distance daughter really enjoys reliving those times, as do I! Now that there is a Picasa for Mac, that is what I use. I haven't found the need for tons of storage, so I use the free version, though $5 a year is more than reasonable. I have flickr and photobucket accounts that I started years ago, cannot remember my username or password....more cyber clutter....Posted 2 years ago # -
Maybe you could burn them to a CD or DVD and give them to some of the relatives who aren't as computer-savvy? All they'd need to do is put the disk into their drive (or a DVD player).
Posted 2 years ago # -
update: due to a sick child home for 2 days last week, I was able to sit and go thru all 14 albums and pitched over a third of all the photos. Taking 300 photos x 14 albums out of those little pockets is hard on the nails and fingers....
Scanning them is next, that will likely be a summer long endeavor. I managed to remember my usernames/passwords for all the photo sites I used over the last few years, cancelled all accounts but one.
pammyfay: once I have all the photos scanned it will be so easy to put together a disc for family, good idea for gifts! Last summer I took my parents old family movies that had been converted from celluloid to vhs tapes and converted those to DVDs and gave them as presents to my folks,sis and bro, they loved them.Posted 1 year ago # -
Good job, irish!
Posted 1 year ago # -
@irishbell, wow! One third is a lot. Congratulations on your progress :o)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Thanks JuliaJayne & trillie. It's funny how when I paid for photos to be developed I felt I must keep them ALL, regardless of content or quality. Do I need a series of 8 photos of my oldest, in her high chair with baby food all over her face, or just the 2(or 3) with the clearest focus and sweetest expression?
Thanks goodness for the digital camera. Now, I print the photos at home myself, usually just for framing or giving away.Posted 1 year ago # -
Hey, irishbell, how is it going with your project? I'd like to do something similar at some point.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Erin has 3 snapscanners as prize give aways today - check out her home page if you are interested.
Posted 1 year ago # -
i am in the process of scanning my analog photo albums and i don´t scan the photos as single photos- i scan the pages of the album and leave it like this. i got so used to see the pictures combined and with comments written on the pages- i´d like to keep this like it is, just in a digital format. ...and it also saves a lot of time ;)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Good idea, Mimi!
Posted 1 year ago # -
ninakk: unfortunately the project was stalled after the scanning of one album, due to ill health on the part of both parents, I am the main caregiver/chauffeur/helper etc!
Funny you should bring this up so recently, because in my recent christmas inspired organization and decluttering, I just moved the 3 boxes of photos to a downstairs bookcase along with the empty albums! I'm actually thinking of using a scanning service now, possibly one box at a time so it's more affordable. It seemed like a huge important project at the time, but priorities change due to circumstances beyond our control! Another good lesson for me.
Mimi: how do you scan a whole page at a time? Mine are in plastic photo pockets and the pages are bound together, unable to be undone. I don't think they would scan well with in the pockets. I must have different kind of albums, but that is a super idea.Posted 1 year ago # -
hi irishbell, i seem to have a different style of album, mine looks similar to this one: http://winkelhofer.info/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/photo-album-icon1.gif to your album: give it a try, maybe it works even there is plastic around. i scan my pictures in a copy shop at university, you can scan very large items because the copiers are scanners as well. and it costs only 1 cent per page. hope your parents are healthy again!
Posted 1 year ago # -
So, I am at the tail end of scanning my parent's photos (about 4000ish, haven't done a count recently). What I did is I would take them out of the pockets and scan them into the computer 4 at a time on my flatbed scanner. I then used photoshop to crop/rotate them. Overall I could get a couple of hundred photos done an hour, but it still took awhile, most of my vacation around Christmas actually.
When I thought I was done she of course found two more albums in an upstairs closet.
Posted 1 year ago #
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