Familly photo archives

[cursor]

I've recently been entrusted with all of the old family photos, handed to me by my 85 year old father. I've promised to digitally scan them, and document them (with his substantial input) for responsible distribution to all family member (9 children). Have others of you had experience with this type of task? Can you offer advice regarding method and technique?

Thanks.

P.S. — I have an Epson Perfection 2400 Photo scanner.

[Scotty]

Hi,
I did a a large # of my fathers old 35MM slides and archived them, and a relative from the old country sent me some scanned images of my fathers father and brother as children, I touched up some flaws and seved to a CD, delted the files from Hard drive. Then I lost the cD!!
So my advice is to safegaurd the storage media you store them on.
JimM
P.S. The slide I had (over 150 of them) were done over a preiod of time, with an EpsonRX500 scanner/printer.
I also advise to keep the documentation wiht the media also, as the information source for my Fathers Father died last year!

[steve.ledger]

Hi Curtis,

What do you mean by 'responsible distribution' ??

For a similar purpose, I have a Picasaweb account which is made available to all interested family members to manage equally. Additionally I have created a mail to PICASA account which enables any family member to upload to PICASA simply by sending photos to that one address. The Subject line of the email denotes which gallery those photos are added to.
They can also upload via the web or via Picasa software if they have it installed.

In this way, photos are shared by all family members who have been given access.
It works great because Picasaweb makes it easy to print, download, make collages or slides shows.

[diana]

I've been working on a similar project for several months. I had to remove old photos from old magnetic type albums, packets from the developers and slide in albums, plastic bags and so on. I've scanned more than 4,000 photos and a handful of slides with 3 carousels needing to be done and another large box of loose photos to go as well.

I do about 500 photos, burn them to cd or dvd depending upon the size requirements and go over to my father's house where I setup my laptop and type in the things he recalls about each photo as we watch a slide show on the television. We can pause and talk about other things that come to mind and I can type in a lot of data in my Open Office spreadsheet. I make backup copies of the spreadsheet several times during the day.

I keep backup copies of all the scanned photos on 3 of my computers, one backup USB drive, burned to several dvds and cds in stages, some stored at Dad's house, some with my sister, some with me because I am not going to lose all this work.

It is a time consuming job if you repair all the scratches and edit the photos for other issues. I clean off all the dust I can carefully before scanning and try to keep the scanner glass very clean and backup backup backup! I do not save just jpg copies, I keep the original bmp scans as well that are not compressed so if I make a booboo when "fixing" issues with the photos like tears or color corrections and want to tweak the image, I have the original bmp to work with instead of a compressed jpg image.

[jimhanus]

Cursor,
I agree with Diana's methods. I've done thousands of similar scans and have thousands to go. I use a Canon 8600F scanner which does 35mm slides and negatives, 120 slides and negatives, plus photos. In the photo mode it has a multi-crop function where I can lay multiple photos on the platen and do one scan and it recognizes the separate images and makes multiple files. Saves a lot of time and works well.

Jim

[cursor]

Thanks for all of the very constructive input!

I started this scanning process by saving all of my scans as JPG files. I understand now that I should create larger BMP files.

The idea of maintaining multiple backup copies is also smart. Thanks.

I've not used Picasaweb before, but will certainly look into that.

I have been maintaining a spreadsheet file that records filename and associated commentary. At this point I've been simply entering any handwritten information that might be on the backs of the prints. My father will later review the scanned photos, adding his own comments/recollections to the file.

At what resolution did you folks scan your slides and prints?

[Scotty]

Hi,
I scanned at 300dpi, I thought that would give me a printable resolution, and enough detail for touchups but keep the file size decent.
Don't know if that is right tho' LOL
JimM

[jimhanus]

Unfortunately, there is no right answer. I scan at as high a resolution as I am comfortable with while still maintaining a decent file size. What resolution you scan at is first relative to the output, so you can't really know what to use without first knowing what it's used for. What settings you use is also dependent on what options the scanner has available to you. A safe bet with small prints is usually 300dpi (dpi being a print resolution). Doubling the dpi increases the file size 4 times, so going from 300dpi to 600dpi will increase a 6mb file to 24mb, and slower scan times.

EDIT: Here's a good article about DPI, and how it relates (or doesn't relate) to pixels: http://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html

[cursor]

Thanks folks.

I'm headed outta town (actually, outta state) for the Christmas holiday. I look forward to jumping back in here when I return (on Monday). Happy holidays!