So what do you do with all your old photographs?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Ok, a really dumb question. What kind of scanner do you need to do this?</p>

<p>I am guilty of most of the above offenses…zillions of photos thrown (really) into a very large basket. Only the early years of my 2 now-college-graduated kids are neatly stored in photo albums. I wonder whether I SHOULD scan them and store them on a pc or not, ie mousegray’s comments above.</p>

<p>If you really do have 20 years worth of pictures that aren’t digital, should I take this on or just organize them into photo albums that I then give to the kids??</p>

<p>More opinions about what to do are welcome. I definitely WILL NOT be doing both :)</p>

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<p>My suggestion: be ruthless in your editing. </p>

<p>If you have an entire roll of film of the cutest baby ever (yours!), choose the best two prints and THROW AWAY the rest. You can keep the negatives if you like. If you do, put them in another envelope, label the envelope (“John Doe, August 1985, Atlantic City beach”), and put them aside. Now label the pictures, in pencil on the back. Name, date, and place. (“John Doe, August 1985, Atlantic City beach”).</p>

<p>After a while of doing this, you will have a small collection of great pictures. Put those into photo albums, name, date, place for each photo. IMHO (but that’s me), skip the cute stuff.</p>

<p>For digital stuff, have one place for ALL the photos you read in, and another for the ones you like enough to think about printing, or putting on a CD to send to a friend, or whatever. When you’re on hold (or bored), go through the ALL photos folder and move the few really great ones to the PRINT/KEEP folder. I add a text label to the photo image itself in Photoshop as I do that so that the label is with the photo.</p>

<p>At occasional intervals I organize the digital photos into a book by using [url=<a href=“http://www.mypublisher.com%5DMyPublisher”>http://www.mypublisher.com]MyPublisher</a> | Create your own Photo Book with MyPublisher and receive a published hardcover book<img src=“or%20%5Burl=http://www.blurb.com%5DMake%20your%20own%20book%20with%20Blurb%5B/url%5D” alt=“/url”> and print the book. Both services also create an online copy that they store, which is nice backup. Sometimes I print an extra book for my husband’s parents.</p>

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<p>I’m dealing with the same situation as you are. Nearly 30 years of photographs of 5 kids, family, friends, acquaintances. What I did was buy two great big clear file bins from Staples and a bunch of accordian file folders that were sectioned by month. I labeled each folder by year and then sorted all of my pictures by year. That alone was a huge project, and I am done with that part though I still occasionally find loose pictures that I can easily stick in the right folder. </p>

<p>What I am doing now is sorting each folder by month. Can’t always get it right, but I try. I’m more than halfway done with that now. </p>

<p>When I finish with that project, I am buying albums and will put the pictures in them. There are albums that hold 500 photos. I get them as cheaply as possible. I have already done some of the albums even though I am not yet done sorting the years into months. </p>

<p>As I do the albums, I put a star sticker on the plastic sleeve at the corner of each picture that I think is a true keeper. Those will be the pictures that I will scan and have preserved for perpetuity. Everything else will be in these folders for as long as they can last. I intend to have multiple hard copies done of the pictures that I want more than one of my kids to have or other people to share. I will use this for scrapbooking too.</p>

<p>I started this when I did a scrapbook. I realized that with my pictures so disorganized, I couldn’t even find all I wanted to do a decent scrapbook. Now I can for the years that are organized. It is so easy now. Also I don’t have to throw out borderline pictures. Once the pictures are organized by month in those files, it is really easy to find things like baby pictures of Child #4 or 1st Holy Communion pictures of #3 and such. I did all of the birth years and was able to do a baby collage with all of the kids’ pictures at birth up to age one, something that would have been impossible to do before.</p>

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<p>Wow - thanks, everyone, for the great ideas and input. It’s good to find some kindred spirits who are as organizationally-challenged in this area as I am. (And hats off to those of you who have managed to keep on top of the photo proliferation.) I think cpt’s idea might be easiest for my d, especially considering the current (exploded) state of our pictures. I hope folks will keep the ideas coming.</p>

<p>VU0609, we have much in common beyond kids who went to Vandy - I am also a hopelessly awful photographer. I used to think I just needed a better camera, but I think I actually need a different brain. :)</p>

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<p>I second what Hunt said. I am a huge believer in off-site storage for everything. I use a service called Mozy. It costs me $5 a month, and it has 10 years of photos and my home and business computer backed up on it. If anything happens to my home or computer, I won’t lose everything.</p>

<p>This service offers 2 gb for free, or unlimited if you subscribe. There are many services out there. I used to keep a hard drive. But after seeing fires devastate family homes, I didn’t want to entrust everything to something that could be stolen or damaged like that. </p>

<p>I bought a very skinny, nice scanner to start scanning in photos. I have been scanning in photos a little at a time. I don’t print out my digital photos very often.</p>

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<p>I may be old fashioned in this digital age, but I still want a photo album to sit down and look through when the desire hits me. I often bring one in during the evening and leaf through the late 1980’s when the kids were very young, or the 1990’s when they were in elementary school, or the middle school/high school years in the 2000’s. </p>

<p>Starting when my two daughters were born, I ordered copies of photos printed off film in double, and then triple when the 2nd child was born. It was just cheaper to do it that way AND if I waited and reordered prints of those I wanted, I would have never gotten it done. I made photo albums for my husband and I, and one for each daughter from birth until they graduated from college (still working on the one from youngest D). We now each have several. When they finally leave and take all their belongings with them, I will give them the albums that represent the 22 years they lived with us.</p>

<p>I have long since thrown away all the negatives from the days of film. If I need a copy of a photo for some reason, I take it out of the photo album, scan it into the computer and print a copy. </p>

<p>Since digital photography has come into bring, I have a folder on the computer labeled “to print”. When I download photos I have taken, I delete those that are not good and move the ones I want printed photos of to the “to print” folder. When I get enough, I then order them on-line at Wal-Mart and pick them up at the photo center the next time I am in. I only keep my absolute “jewels” on my computer and those run constantly as a screen saver slide show. Those jewel photos I also save in my Google e-mail account - free and accessible from anywhere!</p>

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<p>do your kids (and their kids) one big favor - label shots of family and friends with who is who. I inherited my grandmother’s photo album from around 1910 with tons of snapshots, none labeled, so most are meaningless to me. Fortunately, some key ones were labeled.</p>

<p>Best to write in pencil on the back with some short notes-who, when where.</p>

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<p>Wow, I feel better - I have wonderful albums up until about 1995… then it’s all just in boxes.</p>

<p>I don’t agree with the idea of scanning and then ditching the originals. Technology changes too fast. (anyone have a 5.25" floppy disk reader handy?) If I were as ambitious as I would like to think I am, I would be sorting through and ditching the obvious rejects and putting the rest in good quality, non-acid albums. Unfortunately many photos printed in the 70’s and 80’s at those Foto-mat type places are already fading. Scanning them now may be a good idea. Pick your favorites and tweak the color back to what it was.</p>

<p>My bigger problem is sorting through the last decade of digital photos to get a smaller “meaningful” archive. Maybe someday…</p>

<p>You can now all put Paul Simon’s Kodachrome on your Ipods and start scanning…</p>

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<p>And, then you add to it two additional households. All four of our parents passed away in the past six years, so we have all their thousands of pictures too. It’s quite the daunting task. My question concerning scanning and saving digital files is this: What happens as the technology evolves? Will the programs we’re using to open files now be able to open files in the future? I’m not a techno geek, so I’m sure I"m saying this all wrong … but for instance, computers no longer use floppies or disc drives. We’re now all Cd’s and flash drives. Totally confused?</p>

<p>I was a big scrapbooker, but I would make triples: one for D, one for S, and one for H and I. Way too labor and time intensive. Now, I’m doing boxes for each as well as making online photo albums that I can order multiple copies of if I want. So much easier. And, as I pare down our parents photos … I"m trying to do the same thing, different boxes to send to different siblings. </p>

<p>Zebes, and don’t even get me started on converting all the 8mm film to DVD, let alone VHS. Aaaargh!</p>

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<p>Whenever the tech changes, you will have to change it. Yes, it is a hassle. But, there will always be enterprising people and businesses who will be happy to convert those images in whatever format you have. The key is, to do it, before it degrades. VHS tapes should be converted to DVD, because those tapes snap after a while. </p>

<p>The best thing to do is go with a standard format. I am using Iphoto. I don’t think that media will be obsolete. I could be wrong. I don’t figure jpegs will go away any time soon, either. I have them on cds and dvds in a photo/media safe. You can’t just stick them in a regular fireproof safe. Alternatively, you could probably scan and convert to cd/dvds and save in a bank safety deposit box.</p>

<p>I am not a scrapbooker, but I do have photo albums from the first 12 years of my marriage, all labeled and with names/dates on the back of every photo. I was obsessive about it. I got too many of those inherited photos that I have no idea who those people were - and it is a damn shame!</p>

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<p>Keep in mind, too, that if you print your own photos on your printer, they will not last as long as film photos, unless you are using a photo printer with archival ink (which they claim will last 100 years). So, if you have digital files on a disk, it’s best to take it to a photo lab to print for your special memory books, otherwise, you might end up with green photos in 10 years.</p>

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<p>I am also obsessive…I print and scrap hard copies, burn cds, and store online. I have no life.</p>

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<p>Get them all in one place. Dig them out of drawers, etc. and put in large boxes. Getting them centralized is the first step. Don’t let it bother you that the project will take a long time. It’s taken 30+ years to accumulate-- you’re not going to get it done in 3 weeks and keep your sanity. </p>

<p>You could organize the photos by: person (so each family member gets a set of their own photos), holiday (family Christmas photos), occasion (graduation of kid A, marriage of kid B), vacation (family trip 1988, 1978), by decade (everything from the 80s in one box, everything from the 90s in another box). Don’t label them at first-- writing on each photo takes forever. </p>

<p>That’s awesome that you have so many photos. While you can narrow them down some, it’s still great that you have them available. Your kids and grandkids will thank you one day.</p>

<p>Distribute among family/kids/yourself. Don’t go mad happy trying to do it all at once. Start slow, and consider it a long-term project. Don’t go crazy throwing out prints, duplicates, etc. Sometimes duplicates are good (backup copies, copies to share among family, etc.). Take it slow, and consider which photos are important, and which might not be (do you want 150 photos of the tulips that were in your backyard 50 years ago? Maybe.). Just because a photo is blurry or “bad” doesn’t mean it’s not a family treasure, if you have no other photos of that event or time frame. Slowly determine which photos you want, which don’t matter to you, and how many duplicates you want of each pose. </p>

<p>Don’t solely rely on digital. Technology changes. Technology fails. Technology also helps-- eventually get some of your favorites scanned, but keep the original photos.
Once scanned, you can do other fun stuff with them, like themed photo books (childhood up through graduation, whatever).</p>

<p>Personally, I’ve started putting everything in photo boxes. I get them for around $2. They hold about 1000 photos each, I think. I toss them in there. Old photos I quickly put into the boxes, while digital prints I organize by holiday, occasion, or year.</p>

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<p>Also: KEEP the negatives. Film negatives are crazy high resolution. You can scan them at impressive resolutions. And sometimes favorite photos that you’ve long forgotten about are on the negatives. Negatives don’t take up all that much space-- get them all rounded up and put them in box(es) too. Film negatives can outlast photo prints, too. Don’t make the mistake of discarding them. Of course, don’t toss the prints either-- you can’t really look through the negatives to enjoy and browse through like you can prints. </p>

<p>There are services out there that could scan all of your photos, but… if I were you, I’d start with getting all the print photos together. Organize by decade, for starters. Pick out a few dozen of your favorite, per year. Get your favorites scanned, and keep the old prints semi-organized. I’ve got around 1,200 old photos scanned-- most I scanned myself low-res, and others I had scanned. Even the local 1 hour photo lab will scan film negatives for me. </p>

<p>After you get photos in boxes by decade, you can later sort them by occasion, event, person, but the general goal is just to make it possible to find photos. If you have thousands of photos a year, sort them by year, if you think you can easily guess the year on them. That’d be hard for me to do, so I just put my childhood photos together in boxes. Recent photos go in another box.</p>

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<p>I would sort, throw many out and get the best into albums. You can digitally create books and have them printed. I made several for my parents and my son and I have plans to make one this summer and do what I have just stated above. Keep and best and pitch the rest. Now I have most in digital format in iphoto. That helps alot. But in the end they will all go to the digital winds unless put into book format. I still have family albums from the 1800s. They are a magical window into the past.</p>

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<p>image stability is a complex issue. Worse, it is difficult to generalize. </p>

<p>Historically, black and white prints were stable for many decades. However, many BW prints made in recent decades use a kind of stabilization process (hint - faster) that is not very stable, so one gets staining and fading after just a few years to decades. </p>

<p>Color is often worse - just look at early color prints or slides from the 50s and 60s. Unless you like warm pink tones, they can be just awful. </p>

<p>digital media? Magnetic (Hard drives, floppies etc.) fade over a span of 10+ years. CD/DVD? Jury is still out regarding stability, but we already know it varies greatly depending on the brand of media used. Then there is the risk of technical obsolescence: Anyone have the gear to read an old 5 1/4 floppy, coded in some obsolete format? What about an old 8"? True, DVD and jpg are so common you might find some gear to read them in 20-30 years, but look at video - Betamax was once common too…</p>

<p>The bottom line is that if you want to leave memories for future generations, you need to do some homework to find a print, BW or color, that will be stable for a long time. It is not easy, and I don’t have an answer yet. I’m still sorting the here and now.</p>

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<p>^^^^
What he said. LOL Man, you said that better than I did. Right now I’m trying to find a working projector to check out all the 8mm film I have from my grandfather/ parents. This summer I hope to begin the process of converting all of that to DVD, as well as adding in all the VHS tapes, too. </p>

<p>zebes</p>

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<p>Not a huge help for dealing with 9000+ photos, but here’s what I’ve been doing with mine: I really like making photo books through a website called blurb. You can download software for various templates and themes and then sync it with your photo software (I also use iPhoto) in order to drag and drop photos into a book. I’ve found that the blurb books are much higher quality (think small-scale coffee table books like the ones from Barnes and Noble etc) than similar photo books from sites like shutterfly, not to mention a lot cheaper! And there’s even an auto-fill option if your pictures are already in the order you’d want them in.</p>

<p>It’s fun to do a book after a trip or something because then I can document my trip in a totally useful way and when done correctly my books are fabulous conversation starters.</p>

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<p>If you want future generations to enjoy the photo albums that you make today, your best bet is to take your digital files (on a CD) to a professional film lab to print. Don’t take them to a drugstore, and don’t print them out yourself on your inkjet printer, unless you have a photo printer with archival ink (you will know if you do, because these printers are expensive). As for scanning, you will never duplicate the resolution of a negative unless you have access to a high end scanner (cost in the $1000’s). It’s best to just take the negs to a film lab and have them printed, rather than digitize and print them. Most home quality scanners are so-so at scanning negatives or slides.</p>

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<p>mousegray,</p>

<ol>
<li> Even professional labs vary in the stability of the media they use. For instance, stability is influenced by the choice of print base, by how often chemicals are replenished and by how well the processing equipment is run. As you noted, for inkjet prints, ink stability varies. So does the underlying paper.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>If you want things to last, you can’t take anything for granted. </p>

<ol>
<li> Decent scanners that extract everything out of a slide or negative do NOT cost thousands, unless you want a Hasselblad drum scanner or a Nikon that handles medium format.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>It is true that the $89 scanners you see everywhere on ebay are pure junk, but you can buy decent used scanners for a few hundred, and they don’t wear out much or lose value as you use them. I bought a Canon FS4000US, for example, this winter off ebay for $130. At full 4000 dpi resolution, I get all the content of the slide including lots of grain. </p>

<p>There is a lot of information out there about slide and negative scanning. If one reads and practices a bit, one learns that commercial scanning services fall into two categories: low cost low resolution low quality services, and the ones I can’t afford. The latter can cost tens of dollars per slide. For DYI scanning, it is important to have a decent scanner, which one can purchase quite cheaply, decent software (that may or may not come with the scanner, and the knowledge of how to scan to get all the content out of the slide, density range as well as resolution. </p>

<p>To give you an idea of cost and quality, I also bought an Epson 4490, refurbished, from Epson this winter, for doing old photos etc. It cost $130 or so with shipping. It also does slides and negatives. In head to head comparison with my dedicated slide scanner, it is difficult to see a difference except for problem slides. But both need their settings tweaked in order to get best quality, as well as post-processing in photoshop. </p>

<p>There are huge advantages to DIY scanning, even with inexpensive equipment. You can get gorgeous pics, far better than any commercial lab (unless you pay a fortune for custom prints - even then you get the operator’s view of gorgeous), and far better than the original prints you started with. </p>

<p>There is one big disadvantage - learning curve and time. </p>

<p>BTW, another big advantage of having a decent (i.e. $80+) scanner is that you can improve faded prints and old family heirloom photographs pretty easily, sometimes even removing stains and hiding tears. Modern software works like magic.</p>