Your Family Photo Collection: Safe Forever!
Organizing and managing a collection of family photos can be a monumental task, fraught with stress and fear. The responsibility of caring for what is often the only copy of your family’s photographic history can be stressful. Still, you probably realize that photographs have a limited lifespan and can even be quickly turned off by a fire or other natural disaster. So how do you overcome this dilemma once and for all?
Today, the best answer is digital scanning. Paper photographs from the pre-digital era have a limited shelf life. Heat, ozone, and light have been constantly attacking your important family treasures. The resulting yellowing, discoloration, and deterioration are often visible to the naked eye. Unless you store your photo collection in the freezer as recommended by Kodak, the aging process will continue indefinitely.
Digital scanning, however, captures your photographic image at the current quality level, in essence preserving the image in its best possible condition. The benefits of digital scanning are numerous, but the main ones can be divided into four main categories.
Preservation
Although improvements in the dyes and paper used in pre-digital photography after 1990 suggest that these photos can last 100 years or more, the same cannot be said for prints dating back to the 1980s and earlier. These photos are especially prone to fading and yellowing. As the top layer of tint deteriorates, the tints underneath are exposed to thermal deterioration, light, and ozone, ultimately leaving an unusable image. Old black-and-white photos are much stronger, and the image often remains sharp for up to 100 years. Unfortunately for these historical treasures, the paper often becomes brittle much sooner, leaving you with an unprotected photograph.
The biggest risk to our photo collections is actually generational. Photos that are in good shape today probably won’t be when our kids grow up and have the time, money, and will to scan them. Once they open those old boxes and albums, they are likely to find that a large percentage can no longer be saved. Our generation is in charge of this vast collection of photographs from the last 170 years. Like it or not, the products of the photographic age are ours to protect or they will simply fade for years to come.
Safety
All acid free paper and cold storage cannot protect your family photos from fire, flood and other natural disasters. Once scanned, you start to have affordable options on how to preserve your photos. For those of us with diligent computer hard drive backup habits, our collection of family photos is just additional information protected through our regular procedures. For the more challenging of the routine, once your photos are digitized, you can store the images on a CD or DVD. For added security, keep an extra copy of the discs in a safe or simply send it to a close friend or family member to keep. An important note is that CDs and DVDs are subject to the same short duration as photographs. For a higher level of protection, try 100-year archival CDs, available from companies like Delkin Devices in San Diego.
Another option for the long-term security of your family photo collection is online storage. Popular with professional photographers for years, consumers have started using free or low-cost Internet-based photo storage accounts from companies like Flickr or PhotoBin. Please check carefully to make sure your images will be saved in full resolution as Facebook and most social media providers offer a lot of photos, but they can actually save your images in such a small size that you cannot reproduce them to an acceptable level. quality. .
Organization
One of the most immediate benefits of digital photos is the ease of organizing your photo collection. On your computer, you can quickly create folders, copies, and slide shows. When discussing photo organization plans with my clients, I always recommend that they spend as little time as possible organizing their photos before scanning. Sorting old photos by hand is a monumental task in handling, thinking, and storytelling. Rather, viewing those same photos on your computer screen makes decision-making quick, easy, and fun.
Here is the best part; Right now, most of us have two photo collections to manage. Your computer is likely full of your recent digital images. Your closet may be even more filled with the memories of your lives. Having them all together in one place is more than a pleasure. It’s a relief!
Exchange
All my clients have something in common. They all have great pictures of people they love who have never been seen by the subject of the photograph. Before the age of email, photographs on paper were difficult to share, especially with out-of-town friends and family. As a result, we have real prizes that are not shared.
However, once your photos are on your computer, emailing them anywhere in the world is a breeze. Plus, you can make inexpensive CD or DVD copies of your entire collection in minutes. The popularity of inexpensive photo books makes sharing photos even more fun. Here the power of scanned photos becomes even more valuable. Imagine creating a “Book of Life”, combining scanned photos from the last century with your modern digital prints, showing the life of a loved one from birth until last week!
How to do it
Almost everyone appreciates the benefits of scanning. For most, there are some basic questions that need to be answered before acting.
Should I scan my photos myself?
For most people, the real question is “Will I ever do this?” Unfortunately, the answer is often that we are all too busy to do a scan job of more than a few dozen images. It is not a question of intention. This is simply a matter of time.
Here’s how the math works: A determined person with a good quality consumer scanner can generate a 4×6 scan at 600 DPI in about 2 minutes. If you have an average size photo collection of 2000 photos (roughly two shoe boxes), this puts your total commitment to almost two weeks, working full time. Most people just don’t have this amount of time available and either dismiss the possibility or do nothing and leave their photo collection at continued risk.
Are outside services available at a reasonable cost?
Recent advances in scanning technology are increasing the speed at which quality photography can be achieved on commercial-grade equipment. These efficiency improvements translate to lower prices for you. A recent review of scanning companies shows that the price of a 600 DPI scan ranges from as low as 10 cents to $ 1 at high-end companies used by professionals. Although there are quality differences, most consumers are more than satisfied with a good quality, reasonably priced 600 dpi scan from a reputable company.
It is important to consider the location where the photos will be scanned. ScanCafe and BritePix, two of the largest scanning companies trading in the US, ship your photos out of the country to save costs. If the idea of your photos going to India doesn’t concern you, you can get a good deal on quality work. Still, there are plenty of companies here in the US that are reasonably priced and are worth considering carefully.
How long will it take me to do this?
If you do the work at home, you should plan for about 40 hours for each shoe box filled with 1,000 photos. This gives you plenty of time to dust off the photos, place the photos on the glass, repack them, and verify the scans on your computer. If you don’t have a couple of weeks of free time, most scanning companies will complete your order in 14 days or less. Be careful about turnaround times if you use an out-of-country scanning company, as a response time of six to eight weeks is not uncommon.
However, the real issue is how long you need to prepare the photos for scanning. Whether you scan them yourself or hire the work done, you still need to organize and prepare the photos for scanning. This depends more on you than on the current state of your photo collection. Here are some tips:
1) Sort by size. At home or using a third-party service, sorting your photos by size will save you time and money.
2) Orient and upright your photos on the computer after scanning, not by hand before. Doing it on the computer is much faster.
3) Don’t organize your photos before scanning. Resist the temptation to put them in date order or sort them by person. You will never fully get it done and it is about four times faster to do it after scanning. Remember, on the computer, it’s just a click and drag. However, if your photos are now in some sort of order, keep them. This makes it even faster to organize electronically later.
4) Don’t get nostalgic. These are the memories of your life and going through them is a lot of fun. But, you can easily take a one-hour job and turn it into a six-hour half-done project that gets thrown back in the closet. Remembering after scanning requires discipline, but it’s worth it.
5) Carefully consider your photo albums. If the albums have pockets where the photo slides in and out, you will find that removing and replacing is a tedious job, but quick. If the photos are glued or taped together, you can choose to find a large format scanner that can scan the entire page without removing anything.
Photo scanning is clearly an important responsibility that was handed over to our generation without plan or warning. Without choice, we are the guardians of the photographic history of our society. Whether you use an outside service or take on the challenge yourself, it’s important to remember that these family treasures won’t last forever. Taking action today will preserve your family’s legacy for eternity.
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