Guide to scanning old family photos; tips, best practices and more.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2024
- This is a pretty simple run down of the basic workflow I go through when scanning in old family photos, whether it's from film or prints.
Don't have time to watch the whole video? Here's the TLDW version:
-organize the envelopes and negatives before you start scanning.
-Look to keep images from the same year, or decade together. Maybe break them up in to smaller boxes.
-Scan in only two to three rolls at a time, then move onto the editing part.
-Name your files based on the roll they were scanned from (ex. 1955-Arizona-trip-Roll-01
-focus on the dpi/ppi (dots/pixels per inch) of the output. Basic rule of thumb is make sure you can print an 11x14 inch photo at 300 dpi or higher.
-if you are scanning in negatives, make sure you have a can or two of Dust-off.
-Use software like Adobe's Lightroom to keyword people and places.
-Use Lightroom's facial recognition feature to help with the process.
-If you know the date change it in the meta data. Helps for searching later.
I recorded most of this during one day of scanning, so there are some situations that may come up that weren't covered in this video.
Scanner: Epson Perfection series V750 Pro
Software: Epson scanning software, or Silverfast Ai 8 www.silverfast.com/
Editing & cataloging software: Adobe Lightroom
www.adobe.com/
Anything else I forgot to mention, let me know in the comments, I'll gladly add it in.
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My beloved grandpa passed away last week. I plan to scan a full bag of old photos I found at his place. Thanks for the tips
Thank you. It's fun to see someone else further along in the process than I am. I am just beginning. It's a labor of love, but, oy.
Thank you! Just starting the process. I have ten huge containers starting from 1932 to present. You truly helped me start thinking about the process.
Hi, Just starting on a journey to go through family history in photo's going back to 1930's.
Your video was of great interest and has inspired me to get more motivated to get on with the process. I am not a super keen photographer but very interested in the family tree and rich family history. Your video has given my ideas on how to get started. Thanks 🙂
Very cool. I love the whole archiving process..
This was really helpful in that it showed real time workflow and explained rationales for all the decision points
Thanks for posting this.
Great info. I've also experimented with scanning the backs of photos that have "keeper" writing on them, particularly those that have sentimental value to me or others. I generally lower the resolution for those scans. I give them the same file name as the original (a quick copy and paste in Finder does the job) with an addendum of "...back" to make it clear that the file is the backside image. In Lightroom, I then use the stacking function to pair them together and make it easy to "hide" those backside scans but also know that they're available. Definitely slows things down a bit but I am happy to have those backside images in the digital archives, too.
The stacking option in lightroom is brilliant. I tend to to the same where they have matching file names but one says back at the end.
Great video, so many things that could potentially be overlooked. i was just about to ploughing into some scanning, but now I'll wait until tomorrow when I am clear headed and can go about it more strategically. Thank you 🙂
Wow! What a great video! I learned SO much! Thank you! You covered so many things!
Your info was very helpful.
Very helpful. Thanks.
Nice informative vid ... i am a semi pro photographer with lots of slide and old pictures to scan ... For the slides i will purchase a flatbed similar to the one you have ... with regard to photos which would be a mixture of snaps and 'proper' photos, i was thinking of a batch scanner such as the Epson ff680w .. with that you can put a whole wallet of 36 prints into the front holder and scan at either 300 or 600 dpi at 1 -3 seconds per print (automated) finishing with jpeg or tiff with colour correction etc (for the older faded prints) ... from that once digitised, i would look through the files and if there are any individual prints that i would like to print, you could always rescan with a higher resolution flatbed, such as the 750 .... scanning thousands of prints (for archival purposes) would take years with a flatbed i feel, and i would wonder would the quality be that much better .. wonder what your thoughts would be ,, and hi from London ..
Thanks for this. I have the V700 which unfortunately show an error for the upper lid. No idea yet what it is, spare parts are no more it seems. I took it with me to locations and possibly the car ride damaged something. Found one secondhand, lucky me. I use the old one for reflective stuff, the other for negatives and slides.
Photos usually at 1200dpi which my be too much, but some old and small ones show incredible detail. I can always reduce it to 600dpi.
Negatives and slides at 1200dpi or even 2400dpi. One slide was even better at 3200dpi, but boy, it takes forever. And it's nit picking which is my thing as a part time videographer. I truly enjoy detail and good quality.
Scans are always jpg at 90% which are not archive quality, but it saves too much on space and I have scanned 1000's and 1000's.
Documents at 300 which is slightly high, but boy, does it may difficult to read letters readable!
Archiving the material is another thing.
I keep the negatives in dedicated sleeves, photos are sometimes in albums, but most are just in envelopes or something like that. I still have to organize those in order to be able to refind a particular original photo.
Fortunately many people made notes on the photo and slides and kept them organized. Phew.
The scans are first organized to source, .i.e it they weren't mine, the folder is named after the source, say a cousin or uncle. Then the scans are organized to family name and year and if needed event or occasion.
Then I create digital books which have all the photos and documents and stories to create biographies. If I hadn't done this my children would have thrown most out not knowing who or what. Now they are fascinated because it is their own living history and tells a story!
Months? Years! I've been doing genealogy since 1992 on and off. But it's big fun and you meet unknown family members.
Do you still recommend Epson scanners? What were your requirements on specifications? Why did you decide on Epson versus others? I'm just starting in family photo archiving and restoration. Thanks
The two big factors why I chose the Epson at the time (mind you this was 2008) were its versatility. First it can do prints and film, and not just 35mm, but 4x5, 110, 8x10, just about any size negative or slide can be scanned with the Epson. Second was price. I was mainly focused on 4x5 film when I purchased it and really wanted a Lexicon, but didn't have the $15,000, so I went with the Epson since it offered so much for about $1,000 at the time.
My Epson 750 creates annoying artefacts on many scans, which render the files useles for hi quality large prints.
Any tips on what format to scan the photos? jpg? what resolution? thanks.
Tif would be the most universal format that doesn't compress the image in most settings. Also DNG. For resolution you want to have realistic output resolutions. 200 dpi when printed is an industry standard. Higher is better, but most scanners have a limit based on the format they are scanning in and if you're scanning in a print the only thing higher dpi might give you is resolution for the dimples and texture of the paper it was printed on. I scan 8x10 prints in around 300-400 dpi. 35mm negatives around 1600 dpi (up to 3200 if it's something i think I may want to print bigger than 8x10).
What is the best DPI setting for scanning 6x4 photos? My options are 100, 200, 300, 600, or 1200dpi.
Best to think about the output you want. I tend to scan medium format in around 800. Best to think what size the biggest print you'd want to make is. 35mm i scan in at 1200 or higher since it's such a small size to work with, you really need the extra dpi if you want more than an 8x10. The thing you really want to avoid is having to scan again later, but at the same time you don't want to be wasting time sitting around while just regular old snapshots are set to a high dpi. So, just ask youself "how import is this image?" The more import, it never hurts to bump up the dpi.
Great video. I haven't really scanned any photos yet but I have photos that go all the way back to the 1800's. My grandparents were born in the 20's, raised during the Depression, and they saved everything. My grandfather saved all of his parents photos, which included my great grandmother's parents photos. My grandmother actually didn't have the old old photos on her side (her cousin actually inherited those). right now I have them sorted by family and have sort of sorted them by year but there are way too many photos. Do you have any tips on organizing and deciding which ones to toss? I have tossed a lot of landscape pictures or pictures of large crowds on a vacation, but all of the others are really good images for the most part and I hate to throw them away. I am 28 (the youngest grandchild) and no one in the family really wants a ton of pictures. My grandparents had a lot of duplicates (even from the 40's and I have all of the negatives too). Thank you for any help you can give me. I greatly appreciate it.
NOOOOO!!! Never toss anything! I have pictures of parade crowds from 1918 and they show what our hometown looked like and what life was like during that pandemic. That wasn't relevant till a few years ago though. So you never know. Also, you don't know what you don't know. There are limited photos from that time, so every picture matters. Just because you don't recognize the photos, doesn't mean someone else won't. If you have the time, pass them on to the local historical society.
As far as tips for sorting; I can't tell you what to scan, that's a personal choice, but the most important thing to do is never break up a physical set when scanning. If an envelope or scrap book has just a few photos you want, make sure to put the originals back with that group. This collection isn't about just your needs, but the needs of family members in the future. I mean, you're doing this for future generations wether you realize it or not.
@@VincentDJohnson I wasn't meaning that I was tossing every family photo. I just meant the ones that were really bad and blurry or just of a tree or a bush. I am keeping all of the family photos otherwise and passing duplicates on to family. My grandparents took pictures in the 80's and 90's of trips they went on and my grandmother took pictures of every building and just random people on the street with the sun shining through the bus window so it came out really blurry.
May I ask what the device was you had on the bed of your Scanner?
That was a slide tray that came with the scanner. There were 4. Each for different sized film.
@@VincentDJohnson Thank you, I have those, it just looked like you had a panel of some sort with a wire bale handle on each side. My trays were plastic I had to slip the film into and not place directly on the glass ( newton effect). I have the V850, maybe there was a design change. Just a lot of hassle inserting and removing into the carriers. Afraid I'll break them one day. Thank you for the excellent presentation of your workflow.
@@SteveHowardPhotography oh that. It was for wet negative scanning. You put a special solution on the glass plate and the negative sticks to the glass. I've never used it for that, but there are videos around on how the process works.
Question, I am wanting to preserve my mother's handwriting on the back of all the old photos as well. It gives the description of the photos. If I save this as a "duplex" digital item, can I print it that way?
I'm not sure what a "duplex" digital image is. Is that in Lightroom?
Writing on the back. Why not use a photo editor to write the text onto the photo so it can be read when the family is viewing the pictures? Is there anything out there to help do that?
The writing on the back was done originally on the photo. However old it might be. Using a photo editor or entering it into the meta data of the file is what I would do after.
@@VincentDJohnson - Thanks.
No offense intended but, you would probably be finished with this project and with much higher resolutions, if you had setup the whole project to use a DSLR camera. Peter Krogh, here on TH-cam, has an excellent B&H Photo video on how this is done. Several other "Tubers" also have complete tutorials on DIY setups that yield amazing results with minimal costs, except for the camera and lens. You do not need five lifetimes to do what you are doing. I started out with a desktop scanner and, after a year or so, realized it was sheer folly. My trusty Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 100mm Macro lens lets me shoot all day long tethered directly into Lightroom at 20 Megapixels, one every 30 seconds or so. But, if your method works for you, I'm not criticizing. I just want your viewers to know that there are, in my opinion, better and faster ways to do it. It's a nice vide you made, anyway.
Yeah I can't say there's anything wrong with your approach. It's what I used to do back in the days of film when i needed a copy of a print. It is a little more time consuming, but there's a part of me that just feels like that flatbed delivers a little better detail. Maybe i can do a follow up video with a side by side comparison.