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

Good day Robert,

I read your reply and I am now a lot smarter about this whole project of scanning and image files. I am no stranger to doing this and have used scanners and various photo software for about fifteen years. However, I must admit I never save in TIFF format thank you for the valuable advice.

Terrific reply by the way!

Regards
James

Robert: You should win the first prize, as your advice and suggestions were eye openers for me!
However, I am faced with a daunting task of transferring old 8mm film to DVD, as well as slides and old b/w photos. I purchased Serif's "Movie Plus" for this purpose, but as yet have not installed the software.
I briefly read the manual, and, frankly, I haven't a clue as to the sequential steps I have to take to get the film from the reels to the computer for editing and then to the DVD disk.
I know that common sense tells me to try a professional transfer service (I did for some wedding film, but too costly for the amount of film Ihave to transfer)but the cost is prohibitable (for me)and then, I like the challenge of doing it myself! Do you have any suggestions in how I can accomplish this task without frustrating the hell out of me? Thanks!

Paul Scheckel

Hi Robert,

That was a very comprehensive answer!

Now for my first question: I've followed your advice in my own scanning ''adventures'' but have run into trouble scanning in 24bit color sometimes. When I try to edit photos, Photoshop says it cannot handle 24bit color images. Have you run into this problem and how have you handled it? I'm running Adobe Photoshop 7 on Windows XP and have a cable modem.

And here's the second question: I've created a website with photos using a free web hosting service (and put up with the ads). However, storage space is pretty limited on those sites. Do you simply post web-compatible (72 dpi) photos or do you post the ''real deal'' printable dpi files (in jpeg, I assume) and keep the tif files in local storage? I'd like a low-cost way to quickly upload files for sharing (ideally both printable and viewable file resolutions). What would you suggest? Also, does your family have any concerns about privacy? Do you use a password protected website?

Thanks,
Dianne B

Recently I began a project of scanning old (real old) photos into my MS Power Point, hoping to have a scrapbook type of presentation upon completion. With PP I've been including pages of what I know about these photos, on separate pages in between the photos... accross the photos if I choose and also add pertinent captions. For background, (over the photos on the scanner) I use colored materials (or paper), plain or wild prints. I have so much to learn about scanning and will reread all of these submissions to try and better understand my undertaking. I felt fairly confident of a nice end product untill reading all of these posts. Darn!

Great article Robert. I have done several and used jpeg at the time and agree with you it was a mistake. The one rule of thumb is I scan all pictures at 300dpi as you do and make the target of size 8 X 10. This includes color slides. That way all of my copies have exactly the same number of dots stored.

Do you scan slides by just laying them flat on the scanner bed or do you use one of the attachments that allow a larger image and what is the quality of the images made from slides?

I use a PrimeFilm 1800u which does an exellent job on positives and negatives, but only does one at a time. I guess I'm having trouble understanding how you could get good results scanning multiple slides at a time.
If I remember correctly, the PrimeFilm scanner will scan up to around 14,000 dpi, enough for anyone.

The way I scan my slides is with the help of my D10 Canon camera and an extension tube attached to a 100 mm Macrolense with a slide holder in front, It works very well.

Hi Guys;

Just a little note: the State of California official photograph archive format is 500PPI.tif.

CousinJim

Here are the initial steps I would take to make it happen:

It's all about meaning and feelings: depending on whom in your family you want to reach, the very old will want a few prints (not many, because they've lived a lot of this history already and much older members of a family often have less spacious living quarters or have simply a hard time dealing with "more stuff".

Printing is going to be very expensive. Instead of "printing", I'd let my family and relatives decide which photos they want to print for themselves, and the best way to give them the widest possible choice is to send the photos on a CD. . . and make a few prints only for those family members that do not have any access to a computer.

With 90 years worth of photos, that means some are rare, and pretty hard to read (faded, damaged, torn etc.) and others (the more recent ones) are easier to get. First, I'd settle for making two CD's, one for all photos before, say, 1960, and then one CD for all photos since 1961 to the present. CD's cost around $1 a piece and hold about 650 to 680 MB per CD. That's a total of --give or take-- 1330 MB of photos, if all are at more or less 1 MB each If you decide to make your scans so that each 5x7 picture is about 1 MB, which is a reasonable size for a nice, printable resolution, now you know that you'll have to cull your collection of 90-year worth of photos to end up with about 1330 photos max.

Next, since this is not going to be a "Life-Magazine-level" endeavor but you still need crisp scans with faithful colors, make your life really easy and get an All-in-One HP 7410 printer/scanner/copier: why? Because it's actually very sturdy, very simple to use, the steps from scanning to photo enhancement to printing and/or making a CD are seamless, and it has the easiest software that makes photo books for you in all kinds of fun formats, that you can actually save as a photo album on a CD, with varied pages and color schemes. It also creates the CD cover and jewel-case art with you (No, I don't work for HP :-)). I have iPhoto, and although I'm a Mac enthusiast for many things, I think Apple completely missed the boat on iPhoto... The 7410 is well worth its price, you might even be able to get a refurbished unit from Hp directly, for less money... Oh, and the scanning features and results are excellent, by the way, and it's a fax, too.

It also has what you are specifically looking for, i.e., it will print and/or save "contact" sheets for you, or 4 per page or 8 per page or more, and reduce the size of the photos per page automatically for you to fit on the page size you choose (8x10, 8x11, 8x14 etc.) the scanning glass is 8-1/2x14", which not many scanners have these days. You don't have to settle for the "little soldiers in a row", boring look at all!

Once you have the 7410 installed, buy a bunch of CD's and practice creating booklets with a few photos, then learning to burn a CD, always remembering that the first picture on the row of photos you are choosing for your CD is going to end up on the printable artwork cover of the CD. So move the photo you choose as a cover as photo #1 in the batch.

I had photos of friends that were waiting forever to be put on a CD, and since I got this 7410, I've already done several CD's and finally given them to my friends. Complete with CD cover etc. It's fun, it's fast, it looks good.

Just practice a little before you do the family albums, to get the feel of the software. If this is a good beginning, I wish you the best in your trip down Memory Lane! If you need further info, just let us know and I'd be happy to oblige.

Submitted by: Catherine V.

Correct on the point that some elderly may now want prints, but that is probably not the case from my experience.

From family reunion experience earlier this year, I found that more of the older ones have DVD players than computers. Show them how to view the CD or DVD on the DVD player attached to their TV! Most of them did not realize they could do that. Solves the print problem and for those with deteriorating eyesight it was a godsend.

Mike

I need that address. Thanx

I too have been getting DVD blanks for around 20, or less if there's a rebate. They actually hold closer to seven times the capacity of a CD.

Which brings up a semi-unrelated story. I paid my daughter's wedding photographer a full-buyout fee and received the "weddiing album" containing ALL of the usable photos that were shot that day, on a DVD, no prints. This is important, lots of photogs insist on holding the copyright and forcing you to get all prints and duplicates through them at their markups. We can, now and forever, get whatever prints we want the same way we get prints of our ordinary photos, and hi-res JPEGs have been posted online so prints can be ordered easily. The photog also has a gallery on his website so guests can order prints from him (at his markup) if they want.

If you don't want to go printing your whole library of old photos for grandma and grandpa, you can give them a CD or 2 or 3 or 5 and even if they know zilch about computers and don't even own a computer they can take the disk to the kiosk at walmart or the local drugstore and choose their favorites.

My father was an amateur photographer and I'm still sifting through all the photos from the past 60 years.

I have learned to look for "quality" in the photo before I do anything with it, unless that is the only photo of an individual at a particular time. That means no poles "growing" out of heads, no under or overexposures, no bad lighting or bad poses. With a photo that may represent the only one available of someone or a group of people, one of the many advantages of scanning is that you can learn to correct many of these faults with your photo editor *if the photo is worth the effort.*

As for photos to share with older family members, the quickest and easiest way to share photos that you do not have negatives for is not to scan them, but to take them to a copy shop and copy them with a color copier. You can enlarge them on the copier, and you will be surprised at the quality. By the time you scan and print them from your computer (if you count your time as worth anything) it is really cheaper this way. You can group many small photos on one sheet of paper. The work is fast and easy. Some older relatives are not computer savvy and will find this the best solution.

For the younger set or anyone with a DVD player, I recommend creating a slideshow of as many as you think people need to choose from and burning it to a DVD. There are a number of software programs that allow you to do this. I have Intervideo WinDVD Creator that came preinstalled on my computer. It is very easy to create a DVD with a slideshow with this.

After your family views the slideshow, they can pick which pictures they want to have printed or put on CD or even another DVD. The final DVD can have chapters representing the subjects of the photo slideshows it contains.

Best of luck. Just remember, the longest journey begins with a single step.

Hi Lilibet,
Thanks for the question! I should have mentioned that I use OS X.3.9 on an iMac G5 I bought refurbished from Apple around December 24th of 2004, and upgraded it with a pair of 1GB memory sticks (for a total of 2 GB of RAM). I haven't investigated what, if any, compatibility problem there might be with Tiger ( OS X.4) because it simply wasn't pertinent to my set-up.
I've noticed, though, that HP is more ''responsive'' to driver updates than it used to be. The HP AIO 7210 series seems to have attracted many unfavorable comments from users, while the 7410 series is much stabler.
To download a compatible driver with OS X.4, paste the link below in your browser's window:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?lc=en?=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=391194&os=219

...and start downloading
With kind regards,

Catherine