Archiving, Saving, Organizing Old Photos

Parent Cafe
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<p>I thought I’d access the collective brain here for this question. I’ve rediscovered an archival box that some years ago I filled with old photos. These photos had been stored in a flimsy old shirt gift box. Many of these photos are still in their display paper frames. I had sat down with my mom and together we labeled these, so I want to keep the frames, on which we wrote notes, and the photos together. Other photos are loose, some labeled on the back side, some not.</p>

<p>Do I just pile these back up in this box? Do I try to put them in an archival album? What album allows you to easily see the reverse side of the photos?</p>

<p>This topic drives me nuts. I have DD’s baby pix in an album, but to see if someone wrote on the reverse side you have to pull the photos out of their sleeves. I once had access to my grandma’s photo album, and peeled away the glued-in photos to reveal writing no one knew about on their reverse sides. At least with that album I was able to write up a summary describing the album contents e.g. page 5, upper left, Suzie and Sammy Smith.</p>

<p>I could always photograph the photos and make digital notes, and just stick the photos back into the box. But the box method bugs me - you can’t easily see the photos, and have no idea what’s in there.</p>

<p>Thanks for any suggestions!</p>

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<p>Scan? front and back and store digitally?</p>

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<p>The best way to preserve these pictures is to have them professionally scanned and transferred into jpeg format. You can take them in bulk to a photo store like Ritz who will do this. It is not expensive. You will be given the data on a CD. CD’s also degrade over time and it is better to transfer this data to an external hard drive which ideally should be kept out of your home (in event of fire or flood your images are safe). From here take the image numbers that correspond and make either an excel or word dox and reference the image number and add the historical information. Then save this document to the same external drive. This information can be electronically copied and passed on to children at a later date.</p>

<p>Your old photo negatives can also be transferred to jpegs in a similar way. They too degrade over time and are saved better in an electronic form. You can save them on the same external drive.</p>

<p>This is not an easy or quick path, however once done all information is in the same place and electronically saved.</p>

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<p>In the future, do NOT write anything in ink on the back of a photo. After a few decades, the ink sometimes “bleeds” into the photo iteelf and/or shows up in a scan.</p>

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<p>^ Wow, I totally missed that point! Great call!! There are pencils designed specifically for this.</p>

<p>[Photo</a> Pencils](<a href=“http://www.conservationresources.com/Main/section_5/section5_33.htm]Photo”>http://www.conservationresources.com/Main/section_5/section5_33.htm)</p>

<p>They might kick you on shipping, but the pencils themselves are $1.95/each.</p>

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<p>Have any of you tried those inexpensive slide/negative scanners sold at Costco and the like? Do they produce quality images?</p>

<p>[Costco</a> - ImageBox ? PLUS 5 Megapixel Film Scanner PC/Mac Compatible with MagicTouch Technology](<a href=“http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11534510&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|54023&N=4017769&Mo=7&No=0&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=3005&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=]Costco”>http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11534510&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|54023&N=4017769&Mo=7&No=0&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=3005&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=)</p>

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<p>[Taking</a> Care of Your Personal Archives - Nicholas Jackson - The Atlantic](<a href=“Taking Care of Your Personal Archives - The Atlantic”>Taking Care of Your Personal Archives - The Atlantic)</p>

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<p>I just bought this scanner due to its great reviews:</p>

<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Epson<em>Perfection</em>V300<em>Photo</em>Color<em>Scanner</em>(Black): Electronics: Reviews, Prices & more](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Epson-B11B193081-Epson-Perfection-V300-Photo-Color-Scanner-Black/dp/B001GBKTGM/ref=pd_ybh_8?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0TFEG0MNAPVXXBDXA2YT]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Epson-B11B193081-Epson-Perfection-V300-Photo-Color-Scanner-Black/dp/B001GBKTGM/ref=pd_ybh_8?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0TFEG0MNAPVXXBDXA2YT)</p>

<p>We’ve been using an all-in-one printer/fax/scanner and also have an old cheap scanner that doesn’t work with Windows 7 so is useless with our newest computer. But I really want to get better image saves on old photos, like DS as a baby for example.</p>

<p>I’ve only scanned a few photos but so far am quite impressed. You can request “color restore” right in the scan and it did bring back a couple of old faded photos to much more acceptable color. You can also lay down more than one photo and it scans each one individually. I haven’t tried the slide or negative functions yet but am looking forward to my new winter hobby. It will go along with my other new winter hobby of learning my Adobe Photoshop Elements software - so far I’ve only done quick fix.</p>

<p>My brother has been scanning in old family photos to a Facebook album and commenting on each one - good for the family to access.</p>

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<p>I have a top quality scanner, however with the 1000+ images that were in both print and negative format it was far more reasonable to have someone else do this. Last I checked the price was literally $50/shoebox. It would take me a very long time to scan that box of photos. I have never had good luck with converting negatives myself.</p>

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<p>I like the Mozy or Carbonite version of saving the data outside of the home. Or better yet, cloud storage, hard drive storage and backup discs in a multimedia fire safe.</p>

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<p>It looks like at Ritz it’s 17 cents per photo for over 100. I wonder if I could pay a kid to do it for less?</p>

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<p>I think Target has a good deal, too. I remember seeing a flyer for it and it seems cheaper than 17 cents each… or maybe that a special promotion.</p>

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<p>My only concern with an outside company doing it is when they magicially lose the slides/pics. I’ve had this happen before with current film developing but it’d be even more of an issue with the 20+ y/o slides/photos.</p>

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<p>

Count on a about 30 pictures/hour. If you are paying the kid $5/hr, that is 17c/image.</p>

<p>I didn’t think the quality was as good with Target. This may be regional. YMMV</p>

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<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad: I got one of those inexpensive scanners – not the Cosco one, but from Amazon. I highly recommend NOT getting one. What they do is take a picture of your negative, it’s not a true scan. The colors are off, the entire image isn’t captured. The one I had, when dust got into the scanner there was no way to get it out so the “scans” were marred with spots. I returned it. </p>

<p>I bought a Canon 8800F, very highly rated on Amazon. It took forever to scan in all my negatives, but I did. Dust was still an issue, but nothing like the cheap scanner. </p>

<p>One reason I’m glad I did it myself is that as many as 40% of my negatives were not worth scanning in. Bad quality lighting, closed eyes, duplicates, etc. – I took a lot of bad pictures over the years. I would have hated to pay for those if I had used an outside firm. I also had the fear of my images being lost – one of the scanning companies had a fire and lost a lot of people’s negatives.</p>

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<p>^^ Thanks - that was the kind of feedback I was looking for on these. I was wary of the low cost. I guess I’ll have to consider a higher end scanner.</p>

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<p>I spent about a $100 on my Canon flatbed scanner. It’s been awesome. </p>

<p>It is fast, yet still it takes a good amount of time to make progress. I took thousands and thousands of photos when my kids were younger, not to mention the old family photos. </p>

<p>I didn’t want to take a chance sending anything out to be scanned. I don’t trust others with my photographs!</p>

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<p>I have begun to send the digitals to be “published.” I use the Apple computer service with their iphoto program, but there are many others out there. I do have a drawer of photos and I have made one book through scanning those photos. I have plans to put them all in books.</p>

<p>I don’t trust the digital format i.e. webpages etc. to stand the test of time.
I have webpages with my photos but there have been major overhauls of the systems that house them.</p>

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<p>Well… time for an update. I’m copying the photos, then taping the loose photos to vellum and storing them in sleeves (all archival materials).</p>

<p>Recall that I had a box filled with enlarged portraits in paper sleeves, plus small B&W and sepia tone prints, some in old envelopes, some just sitting there. Also a few negatives. There did not seem to be much organization within the box - someone wasn’t careful to keep negatives with prints, etc.</p>

<p>What I am doing is scanning in the photos, one by one, or photographing them in cases where scans don’t work well.</p>

<p>I’m naming each image file with a number to start, then a short description i.e. a name, group name, whatever, and ending the filename with whatever numerical ID the photo has written on the reverse side. (example: S21aJoeSmith344.jpg is picture ‘a’ from the S21 roll, shows Joe Smith, and has 344 stamped on the reverse side). My intent here is to alphabetically organize the photos both on my disk at home and in my ‘set’ at flickr. Those numbers on the reverse are helping me date photos and even ID people at times.</p>

<p>As I scan and upload these photos, I’m editing a file that contains all filenames plus my notes on the photo. Some of these had notes written on the back from the times we sat down with older relatives. I can add some notes to some photos as I get familiar with these people and can ID a few more. I can make notes about questions and fix these descriptions as I go along.</p>

<p>I’m also scanning in the photo envelopes and giving them filenames that place them at the start of the series of photos that came from that envelope. I’m also scanning in some negatives (or photographing negatives that are very dense), as I’ve found that some of these negs don’t have prints for some reason.</p>

<p>When I’m done, I am taping these loose photos (a hinge at one side) to archival vellum. I then slip the vellum into an 8 1/2 x 11 archival sleeve with 3 hole punch. I’ll put these sleeves into an album when I’m done. The vellum allows me to see the reverse sides of these photos. So far, this seems to be a workable, relatively inexpensive solution. I’ll label these vellum sheets when I’m done, maybe by printing the notes from that file out and putting them in with the photos.</p>

<p>Now if we could just get that box of photos from that widower on the other side of the family…</p>

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<p>I just bought a hand held scanner–it would work on those photos that are taped in albums which are hard to lay flat on the scanner.</p>