Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: 12/02/05 Best advice for digitizing 90 years of photos

I'll do it for 50 bucks on my epson. lol. kidding. Holiday spirit kicking in.
Paul

Yes, I have old photos and have an Epson flat bed. I have complete control over what I do. I have printed my old pictures that look awesome, flawless. Why would I pay when I can do that? I agree with you 100%.
Paul

I also started to archive some old family picture probably some 80 years old and found very little guidance on what setting to use on my all in one 7130. My objective is long term storage and eventually restoring/fixing the damages.

I think it would help if you can recommend the appropriate setting for the scan such as resolution and pixel depth.

I use 600 and true color/24-bit for most of my scans. Also use the highest JPEG resolution for saving the file. This is overkill since the files are several megabytes large depending how big were the originals.

Could someone advise whether one get ultimately the same quality of image if one scans each photo individually or multiple photos at the same time then crop. I believe you suggested scanning a sheet.
and your input would be appreciated.

Your input would be appreciated.

You can also do most of this through Yahoo. I use Yahoo for storing some pictures and to put together albums to send to friends and family, free.

Scanning With Higher DPI:
I have photos from my family that are also extremely old - some are mounted on the old cardstock backing. One thing that I realized after having to go back and rescan a couple hundred photos: scan the files with at least 300DPI. The reason: detail. If you scan the picture with more DPI (dots per inch), you'll have a larger file, but you'll also have much more detail. An image file can be reduced in size and not lose detail, but when you want to enlarge the photo, you will lose detail very quickly as you enlarge the pixels. I have a scanner that connects to my printer port. It's old and slower, but the scan quality is still very good because of the DPI.

Naming Your Files:
Now that you have the photo scanned, you need to name the file with a name that will mean something. The format that I use for family photos is

YYYY-MM-DD--Familyname--Event (location).jpg

- Use the 4 digit year for obvious reasons.
- The ''Familyname'' is the lastname of the people in the photo. If there are a lot of different family members with different last names, I generally use either the lastname of the oldest person in the photo, or if the majority of the individuals are of the same lastname, I'll use that.
- Event can be a description of the event, people's names, etc.
- (location) - I've often wondered where a photo was taken. Adding this information - an address, park name, cemetery name, etc - allows me to also compare the background of other pictures and sometimes determine a location (wow, I didn't know they lived in that house for that long). This and the date will allow you to quickly group your photos using a filename search.

Backup Your Work!
I'm going to be sending my work out on CDs as Christmas presents this year. The side benefit for me is that if I ever lose the originals due to a fire or flood (we had to evacuate Hurricane Rita), someone in another state will have a copy of all of my work. I can remain the central point for my pictures, but I can also share quickly and easily.

Make sure your slides are ULTRA clean before you scan them, because at 2400dpi every speck shows.

All great information! I'm learning a lot on this thread. I am going to switch to TIFF format from now on when I scan, it makes a lot of sense especially with disk drive costs now below $1 per GB.

I totally agree with the file naming scheme that Mike presented. The more information the better. I recommend putting spaces in between each word in the file name for easy searching.

I spend a lot of time with both scanned and digital photos and taking the time to descriptively rename each filename really helps in the long run, also taking the time to name each containing folder makes your photography hobby fun because it is easy to locate specific photos and thus easy to share photos with others. I used to remove spaces from photo file names but found out the hard way that searching is a lot easier with spaces in file names. Filenames are also easier to read, and easier to type with spaces between each word in the filename. I have been using Picasa (picasa.google.com) since it came out and I love its easy searching and filtering capabilities plus it is free. For instance, I could easily view all Christmas related photos of one family member, from a certain year with just a few clicks. But it only works well if you take the time to rename the files with spaces.

Your statement>>>>>>>I concur completely on the premise that you cannot add back what is removed in jpeg format.

correct...(Jpeg lossless so you won't lose it to begin with......)

Your statement>>>>Basically, you need to get started scanning- that's #1


correct...I think this is why they are asking for help , perhaps don't know how or don't have a scanner yet?

your statement>>>>'d also add that no one really knows the lifespan of these CD/DVD blanks.

correct....(supposed shelf life if in sealed controlled conditions up to 100 years "in theory".)

YS >>>>Save as TIFF

correct....there are many other formats...

YS>>>>In the third year, copy again & dispose of the 1st. This means you always have two copies.

correct...huh?? Copy in one year, skip a year(perhaps leap year?) , in third year throw one copy away??

YS>>>It's at Joann's, right now

correct....where???

take care Paul

I've scanned several thousand family photos and envy those starting with a purely digital collection where at least the ''date-taken'' is provided by the camera; I've wondered over the years why, WHY!!!, photo developers never consistently date-stamped the back of prints as a courtesy. Of course, whilst ''Date Taken'' is very important, the single most important facet of any photo is the ''Subject'', or the people/place/event within it.

These requirements drive my naming convention, which can be summarised as follows;

1. Make every filename unique (across your whole collection) and obvious, don't rely on the folder or path where the file is located to add meaning. Sure, use folders to help in grouping or working with similar photos, but always name the file so that its contents are as obvious after it has been moved or emailed.

2. The first-most characters in the filename MUST be reserved for file sorting, and the most useful field that can be sorted on is the ''Date taken'' due to its singular nature, as opposed to the many possible people who may be in the photo. You then have the ability to browse your entire collection in a time-ordered fashion. I use: YYYY.MM.DD - Subject.xxx (where xxx is the normal file extension) I enter a ''x'' in any of the date components that I don't know, eg: 196X.XX.XX for a 1960's photo, 1991.07.XX for a photo taken in July 1991.

3. Use as many other characters in the file name to indicate subject, eg: peoples names (avoid relationships like ''Father'', ''Uncle'' which are, umm, relative) with perhaps a convention as to ''first, last'' or ''last, first''. This portion of a photo's filename is useful for searching, eg: filename like ''*Smith*.jpg'' or simply when you are browsing a file list.

It's not perfect but it has helped me, and ultimately I would hope to not have any concern about the filename but rather totally rely on the tags (exif etc.) within the files themselves.

COULD YOU GIVE SOME ACTUAL EXAMPLES OF FILES YOU HAVE NAMED USING THIS CONVENTION

THANKS LOU

Thank you, sir;

I did as you instructed and found thousands of pictures, each of which ran a 5% chance of being labeled a DUPLICATE FILE. Finally I have my first Christmas present: hundreds of pictures, each of which demand to be re-edited.

However, when I ran System Restore, all of my photographs returned to the origional folders from which they were extracted.

Your's was a well written letter, and I shall follow your advice every time I Post to a Bullitin Borard; but I don't think I'll modify my fourty+ years worth of 24 pictures per roll, and each roll contained in a folder: 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, (Where's 1960?--it comes after 1969).

Happy Holidays,
CousinJim

I agree that the point and shoot 35mm will die in the next 5 years, however the 35mm slr cameras will not.

I still use my 35mm SLR because I have so much invested in it. I also just brought a new 35mm body last year, since they come down so much in price from a few years earlier.

Also too many people have 35mm SLR film cameras that are not just going to go away. Yes, you can use most of your old lenses on the new digital slr cameras, however, you gain about factor of 1.5 to 1.6 on the focal lenghts. Say goodbye to your wide-angle lenses.

Plus how long does the CCD last on these cameras? And if one or two pixels dies on it, you will have to replace the whole CCD chip on it which is very expensive.

I won't go over to digital slr until the CCD on the digital SLR become the same size as the standard 35mm film. Therefore, I could use all of my old 35mm lenses on the digital slr cameras without the current side-effect. However, I do use a point and shoot digital camera. I no longer use my point and shoot 35mm cameras.

You mention cds data fading. Actually it's due to low level EMF and gravity. It eventually degrades the pits and hills on the cd. A cd has a shelf life of supposedly 100 years.(would like to see that one) That is of course put away on a shelf never touched or exposed to elements. I do however, every 3 years or so, take all my info off and put it onto new cds but mainly dvd. Also, you can't re-burn your cd unless RW. Rarely will you see a hard drive last more than a few years these days. There is debate as to why the older ones lasted so long. Personally,I think It's quality, and use. Hard drives get used far more and are at higher speeds, inducing more heat also. My opinion though.

Paul

I read you message and think, embedded into the plastic? You may be looking back on your life at a time when fisher price had those little plastic records with bumps on them, those were NOT cds those were play records.

That said, CDs are not nor ever were embedded into the plastic, they use a thin metal coating which is pressed onto the plastic. The plastic serves as a protective coating and allows focus for the laser to read the data.

Also I didn't chastise anyone, the postee made two very specific replies insisting jpeg will always degrade which is bogus info, much like your cd write up. Study up my friend you may learn something.

Still Grinnin'

Since projectors are almost obselete and lots of us have lots of slides, I'm surprised that more attention hasn't been paid to the tedium and problems of scanning 35MM slides.
I'm about in tne middle of scanning several hundred old slides and have the problems of mold, scratches, discoloration,etc.
I am using a fairly antique Nikon LS30 slide/negative scanner which only attaches to my Mac with SCSI - which means using an antique Mac with an antique operating system (OS 9.2) and means a very long time frame for each slide but it scans at a fairly high DPI and each slide can be individually color adjusted and otherwise tinkered with. Sometimes the result is clearer than the slide was to start, you may want to check out one of these.
I don't think the batch scanners that are part of many new flatbeds allow you to adjust the scanning rate, contrast, balance,and clean individual slides. When this is done as the slide is scanned, you have all the slide info available which may not be the case if you have to adjust the slide contents and appearence after scanning using photoshop or some such.
I expect to be finished with this project sometime in the next decade.