How I Am Digitizing My Old Family Photos
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- Опубліковано 20 січ 2024
- In this video I show you how I am digitizing, organizing, and preserving my old family photos. I adapted the system described by Denise May Levenick in her book "How to Archive Family Photos." I go step-by-step through the process of sorting, scanning, and storing your original photos safely. This is the beginning of a large project, and I plan to post an update video once I am further along.
Thank you for demonstrating and for your detail. Right to the point. I really appreciate you and this
Thanks for doing this video and providing tips and best practices. I like the meta data tip. I believe this technique would also good with photos taken with our phones, etc.
Amy, this is amazing!This is so thorough and detailed. The "f" and "r" are genius, and I'd never once thought of creating a log of my photos. (Thanks for the book, recommendation, too.) My first thought it that it's a lot of work, but family history is a lot of work. And, sadly, there are a finite amount of old photos. Unless we find more, which is always the dream!
What are your thoughts on a microfiber cloth for wiping the dust off old pictures? I'm just trying to think of things I have around the house without purchasing something new. I also have some of that spray to spray off keyboards, but that seems too harsh.
I know you said this is part of a huge project. How do you plan to break this work up? I'd be tempted to try to knock it all out in a day (or successive days, depending on those 14 minute scans) but that sounds like a tedious few days. On the other hand, if I didn't try to knock it all out, I might start strong and then only get halfway through!
Thank you, @CopperMineGenealogy!
I tried using a regular microfiber cloth on the glass of my flatbed scanner, and found that it left more dust than it picked up. What you see me using in the video is a lint-free cloth that came with some glasses. I use it on the scanner and occasionally on the photos if the dust is really stubborn. It seems to work well!
Some keyboard sprays have chemicals in them that would leave a residue on your photos. You want a spray that is nothing but compressed air.
If you have as many photos as I do, there is no way you could finish them in one day. It's helpful that my photos are already broken up into 20 drawers. However you do it, you want manageable chunks so you can have achievable goals along the way. :)
Looking at your level of detail, i wonder if it would be a good exercise to save your photo inventory list into Airtable or the like. Then you would be able to isolate photos across years, by person, by topic. Something to consider...
Thank you for your comment! What would be the advantage of Airtable over Google Sheets, which is what I am using?
JPEG is a lossy format that compresses an image. There is no further loss of quality if you open and view an image and the close the file as you said in your video. If you edit the file further there can be a small loss. Another trick is not to scan at a resolution that exceeds the original print. When you add meta data it needs to be embedded in the file or it can be lost. EXIF is the most portable form.
Thanks for the ideas. Can you clarify what you mean by “not scanning at a resolution that exceeds the original print”?
Setting your scanner to 4800 dpi scans at that resolution but does not create it if it is not in the original photo. If you are scanning a 35m slide or negative then the film has a very high resolution and the 4800 dpi is appropriate to capture it. For a print, then you need to consider a couple of things. What are you going to do with the scan and how good a quality /resolution is the print. Tiny prints say a 1.5inch square you might want to blow up so you would say scan at a max of 1200dpi to avoid any pixilation when you enlarge them. For a 6x4inch print then 600dpi is as high as you want and will cover any usage. Excessive resolution just bloats file sizes with no benefit.@@amy.pittman
How do you name those photos that don’t have names on them?
All the photos have a code file name according to the naming system, for example, SCHI-P-0001. (SCHI is the first 4 letters of the grandparent's surname, P is for "photo," etc.)
If you mean the title given on the spreadsheet or in metadata, I put whatever I know. If the photo had no name written on it, I usually recognize who it was anyway. But if not, I'll comment something like, "Unknown infant, photo was found among the belongings of Elizabeth Smith." Hope that helps!