Archiving, Saving, Organizing Old Photos

blueiguana
Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:45:51 +0000

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.

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.

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