By far one of the most common questions we get is “What do I do with all my old photos?” Frankly, we've all got shoeboxes full of them too, so we went off in search of a solution. First, if you’re only looking to digitize a small batch, maybe around 100, then there are lots of inexpensive flatbed scanners out there that will do the trick. Some even scan film negatives, which is a real plus. But before you press "scan" for the first time, let's talk dpi.
Now, if you have hundreds, yes, with an “s,” then you may be better off having Scanmyphotos.com take care of them for you. They have high speed scanners that turn your lifetime of photo memories into 300 dpi files burned conveniently onto a DVD. Their prices are reasonable ($79.50 for 1000 photos), but there are some details you’re going to want to let Carley tell you about.
So check out this week’s Twirl for everything you need to know about digitizing your favorite photo memories. Then, just think of what you can do with all that space you freed up in that bottom drawer.
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51 Comments
Sabrina says:
Hi, I love this post! Thanks for sharing. I plan on sharing this with all my organizing clients, family, and friends! We all have some degree of photos to scan. I love the tip about the dpi, I never knew how large I should make the file if I want a better quality printable photo. Thanks again.
CKnobloch says:
Sabrina— So glad. It's tough to talk dpi without getting too geeky, so I'm glad I explained enough for you to know what to do. Resonating with personal organizers this week... cool!
Vicki says:
That's a great idea to have that service scan them - I have 1000's!!!
However, I wouldn't do it. I'd be too afraid to send my pictures somewhere and never see them again. We all know how the mail can be. I couldn't risk it.
Guess I'll have to look into the scanner option - although it will take FOR-EVER!!!
CKnobloch says:
Vicki— I feel your pain. It is a conundrum. There are local services that will do the same, where you can drop your pictures off at the drug store, etc. But I love ScanMyPhotos for all the extra services they provide, and they treat your treasured memories very well.
Connie Buskness says:
Look at http://www.appo.org for a personal photo organizer in your area. They will scan the photos themselves and not send them anywhere. They will help you manage your memories and share your story. Association of Personal Photo Organizers
Margo Marks says:
I've been trying to figure out what to do with all my photo albums for years. This is a great idea and may just liberate me (and my boxes and boxes of albums for good!) I think I'll digitize and put the originals in smaller containers for preservation.
CKnobloch says:
Margo— Yes! And, I don't know about you, but making photo albums are a thing of the past for me. I don't want to lug them off a dusty shelf and look at them. I'd much rather be enjoying photos on my smartphone, tablet or in a photo book. So I'm loving everything digital... I may even pull some of those pictures out of old albums and send them off to join the digital age...
CKnobloch says:
Margo— LOVE it! Send us pictures of you scanning pictures!
Connie Buskness says:
Check out the Linea App for sharing photos on iPhones, iPads and computers. It's amazing, ad free, and allows the full size photo to be exported by friends and family. http://www.getlinea.com
Natalie says:
Hi Carly,
Great webisode. It gets you thinking. I have a question for you that I am sure you've spent some time thinking about. Now that Mobileme is no longer as of June I am sorry to see that MobileMe Gallery will be gone. When I go on girls trips with 8 women, we all post our 100 photos (give or take) on our mobileme personal sites. This allows each girl (ahem, woman) to download EVERYONE's photos from the trip at a great resolution!
WHY oh why did Apple remove such a great feature. Anyway, Facebook is not the answer, I believe Flicker costs money and you can only get 100 photos (not sure about the control on the resolution) and I heard that Photobucket is limited.
I also want to share videos with my family, but they can't figure out the whole "Private" function on YouTube.
Do you have any thoughts (and maybe for another show) on how to share and give away photos privately to family and friends?
Eunice says:
Hi Natalie, I love MobileMe as well and sad to see it go. I take tons of pictures as well and share with friends and for now I use flickr. I bought a Pro account that is about $25 for a year but you get unlimited storage. Sharing isn't as seamless as mobileme but you can download photos. Another option is dropbox (similar to a cloud storage drive) where you can share files. Dropbox has a neat feature with it's photo folder which allows you to view it in a gallery format and either download pictures individually or download the entire folder in one step. OH, and to share videos -- another alternative on youtube is to set your video to "Unlisted" it won't show up on your youtube feed or in searches but it allows your family to view the video by just sending them a specific url. Hope that helps! Good luck!
Al Hoefer says:
I too was 'crushed' when the Gallery went away. I'm now using https://picasaweb.google.com - I don't like Picasa, but you can get just the uploader app and send your pictures to the great server in the sky for sharing.
Have fun,
AH3
CKnobloch says:
Natalie— I love all of Eunice's ideas. Dropbox is great, and so is Evernote (they allow you to share notebooks with others). There are some other fabulous services emerging that meet this "I don't want to blast pictures of our backyard bbq all over facebook" need, but many of the photo sharing sites (like Flickr) have built in albums you can share with invitees yet remain private.
samantha says:
OMG - this is SOOOO awesome!!!
hey, i have a GREAT idea for you and something i know ALL mothers could use help with. is there a way to scan large size artwork that our kids bring home from school? i know the smaller scanners can handle something around a standard size sheet, but what about larger pieces of art? i would love to scan all of the papers and art i want to keep and then create a photo book with all of the art for each of my kids - that way i can get rid of the bins and bins of art and papers we have collected.
know anything about that???
would be so helpful!!!
Tricia says:
Samantha: I take a picture of the artwork with my camera. Voila! Digital.
CKnobloch says:
Tricia— Brilliant!
Terri says:
Samantha! I take photos of their artwork, and then make digital books! It works really well. Just be sure to have good, non-glaring natural light, and aim the camera straight on to avoid distortion. (Either put the artwork on the floor and stand above it, or on the wall and stand in front of it.)
CKnobloch says:
Samantha— I agree with Tricia... get a pile of them going and then set aside some time to stand on a dining room chair and take some well-lit pictures from above. If you have a white table, it's perfect. If not, maybe get some white craft paper or bristol board so you've got a crisp surface to shoot on. Then you can store them in Evernote for safe-keeping and publish a book of them. A yearly retrospective is a great idea.
Samantha says:
thank you so much for the ideas!!! so helpful!
wendy says:
Love this twirl! Great resource. I really liked that you mentioned "curating"your photos before you scan them. Being a little selective will make your whole collection so much more meaningful! Thanks again!
CKnobloch says:
Wendy— Meaningful AND less unwieldy! It's more expensive and more cumbersome to store 50 versions of your kids with their eyes half-closed, so best to get rid of them before they go into deep archives and take up valuable space on a hard drive or in your cloud storage.
Hera says:
Samantha:
I photograph my kids' larger artwork & I file those digital photos along with the scans of their other artwork. Hope this helps.
CKnobloch says:
Hera— Love it! I take photographs, too, of those, milk cartons with the paint that chips off and gets all over my house! That way I can preserve the artistic memory... while preserving my carpet.
sylrayj says:
Combining this, plus your recent show about digital frames, and a WiseBread post about the 'reverse bucket list', I am thinking that I might make my own histories presentation. When my best friend died last year, there was a powerpoint presentation of photos of him, although I don't know if any of us knew what was happening in all of them, and it was fairly clear that he had at least 3 very different circles of friends. I want to be able to look at my own story, to share it with my friends and family, and expand upon it so I can better anticipate what things I want to add to my story. I bet there's a perfect tool out there to do it!
CKnobloch says:
Sylrayj— You've GOT to check out a site called 1000memories.com that I mention in a show I did for Yahoo! http://shine.yahoo.com/more-family-fun/more-family-fun-185800158.html. I normally don't spill the beans on future Twirls, but we love this site so much, expect to see it in an upcoming episode. It's perfect for building a memorial with pictures, videos, stories... and everyone can contribute. Let me know what you think.
Dana says:
I recently cleaned out my garage and took pictures of the very large pieces of art to my telephone. It worked out great. I
CKnobloch says:
Dana— Great to inventory stuff in your garage so you know what's there (and don't forget!). Evernote is a great place to keep all that stuff too, so you can search for it later.
Heather says:
Great ideas all the way around. There is a great website, http://www.appo.org It is the Association of Professional Photo Organizers. It is an international association but based in the US, of people that can help you turn all those photo mysteries into a family history! They help you figure out what to do with physical and digital pictures. Whether you need someone to show you a way to organize physical photos or on your computer, scan pics and/or put them into photo albums, either digital or traditional, most of these people can either do it or hook you up with someone that can. GREAT organization!
CKnobloch says:
Heather— How AMAZING that there's an association of people devoted to this problem! Thanks for sharing.
Andrew says:
Ok, 2 thoughts come to mind with this twirl:
1) If your going to the trouble of digitizing your photos, then you really need to back them up. Backups should be according to the following formula: 3 copies (the original, and 2 additional copies one of which is offsite or in the cloud), also 1 copy should be on a different media type then the other 2 (if one copy is in the cloud then its offsite and on a different media).
2) If your going to the trouble of scanning the pictures then a digital picture frame is the next great addition to the household. Most new one have a slideshow function and it will cycle through the pictures. It's a great way to show of all these great pictures!
CKnobloch says:
Andrew— great advice. Have you seen our episode about the Kodak Pulse? It's the frame we're twirly for.
Dawn says:
I appreciate this twirl but like members above I would not mail my pics off.
Can you please recommend a photo scanner that has automatic document feeder?
CKnobloch says:
Dawn— Great question: and there's actually a product from Epson that looks like it makes easy work of scanning lots of photos.
http://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Limited-Flatbed-B11B172171/dp/B0006TVTGE
I haven't tested it, but it got some great reviews.
Ramona Russell says:
Best twirl yet! I have been wondering about this for years, and now I'm actually motivated to do something about it. Being the photographer in the family, I have all of the family photos, which means they would be lost forever if something happened to them.
CKnobloch says:
Ramona— Scary thought! Let us know how you decide to handle your archive project!
Sue says:
I used ScanMyPhotos to scan 2000 photos and had great luck and good results.
CKnobloch says:
Sue— Thanks for sharing that. We think they do a great job.
Mridu Parikh says:
Hi Carly,
I've recently started watching your videos and I am so hooked! And this one is especially close to my heart, as I'm a photo and video organizer. And I couldn't agree more with all your recommendations. Thanks for the great info!
I love you and your videos!!
CKnobloch says:
Mridu— Thank you so much! Enjoy watching our other episodes!
Colleen - @amadisonmom says:
I've been scan scan scanning away. (My great-aunt passed away this past summer... and her boxes and boxes of albums are sitting here next to me... and waiting their turn for the scanner.) I'm happy to see I've been scanning at the settings you've suggested. I was nervous that I'm half way through and you were going to give some amazing insight I hadn't thought of hundreds of photos ago.
Here is my question. The hardest part I find about scanning is the organizing once the photos are digital. How do you find in the best? I've been re-naming each file with a date and a couple tags (ex- 1988-12-25 christmas jimmy in front of tree). It's taking FOREVER. Any better ideas?
CKnobloch says:
Colleen-- I actually don't bother naming the files anymore with anything I scan. With organizational tools like iPhoto, Picasa or Evernote for text documents, you can title and tag them so much more easily (and even geo-tag and face-recognition in some cases), so the organization goes waaay beyond what you an say in a file name. So even though the files itself might be called "SCAN0024.JPG", I have no trouble retrieving it when I need it. Make sense?
Andrew says:
When it come to organizing your photo's, google has a program called 'Picasa" which works very well. It has lots of great features for organizing, uploading (to google), and face recognition, among others. If you have a Windows PC, it's worth a look.
ScanMyPhotos.com says:
Thank you Digitwirl for this testimonial recommending ScanMyPhotos.com for photo scanning.
If anyone has any viewers have questions about the services we offer, how to ship your photos to us, which options you might need in order to get the most out of your digital scans or if you have any concerns, our professional specialists will be happy to help. Email info@scanmyphotos.com or call (949) 474-7654 and our friendly specialists will promptly help you. -ScanMyPhotos.com
ScanMyPhotos.com says:
Please visit http://www.scanmyphotos.com for further details about our leading photo scanning, slide scanning, negative scanning and video transfer services. Let us help you preserve your memories.
Cathi Nelson says:
Thanks for letting people know about http://www.appo.org. I am the founder of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers and we are a growing network of independent business owners who provide many services for our clients. From scanning old images, to making albums to custom framing children's art work - what ever our clients need we can do. The goal is to help people who don't have the time - get their family photos and stories back in their life!
Tracey Clayton says:
Great video, I'm not sure I agree with the elastic band around your photos and being based in the UK I definately would not entrust my precious memories to the Royal Mail! Once you have your photos as jpegs you can do so much with them. There is a new app out called Linea which is great for starting a family line and inviting your relatives to contribute to it, so all your family can comment and help to build the family tree - fab stuff. http://www.getlinea.com
Nancy Aikins says:
GREAT video! If this is still overwhelming, you can always find a Personal Photo Organizer at http://www.appo.org and get someone to help you through your stacks of photos.
Jan says:
Great ideas, Carly. You're a my digital hero!!! I often feel overwhelmed with organization and backup of my digital photos. With so many sources of digital photos - phones, iPad, cameras, email, MMS text messages, downloads from share sites - how can I be sure photos are all accounted for and backed up when I go to enjoy or share? Would love to see a whirl with an easy process for organizing and backing up already digital photos!
CKnobloch says:
Jan— it's a good question. I'd recommend an automatic cloud back-up service like Carbonite (just so happens we DID Twirl about it!) If it's on your computer, Carbonite finds it and backs it up, so it's an easy to way to "set it and forget it" and know that everything is backed up and safe. Watch more here.
Cindy Steed says:
Love this twirl!!! Great ideas, wonderful information!! Thank you Carly for all you tips!! Totally hooked!
CKnobloch says:
Cindy— Thank you so much!
Helena Alkhas says:
I just worked with a client who has tons of family pictures and she has just moved to a home in Southern CA (read Fires!) and we were planning how to protect her pictures and keep them for prosperity. On my follow up with her I send her your link and of course, she LOVED it!
PS: Did I already tell how I love your blog?!