Digitizing Old Photos

[joelsgirl]

I want to make some of my childhood photos digital, but I'm not sure what the most efficient way to do this is. I don't want to send off a box of printed photos and have them made digital; I want to do it myself. Surely someone in this group has some experience here. Is there an app? Should I use a scanner? Or can I just take a photo of the photo? What's been your experience?

[HavaDrPepper]

I have scanned a lot of mine using a regular scanner. Many were done in the mid'90's and saved in 72dpi so not really that great for scrapping. Over the years when I have wanted to scrap them, I have scanned them again with better settings since I still have the photos and had better scanners.

At one time I also had a little photo scanner that I could feed them through. I used it for all my square photos from the 60's and 70's. It did a decent job and I have been able to clean things up in Paint Shop Pro when I scrapped them.

I also had a lot of negatives from the 60's and 70's. I did send those out for digitizing since most were not the standard size of negatives. A few years ago I bought a negative/slide scanner and worked on the slides I had as well as a lot of the 35mm camera negatives I had. Kept me busy the first year I retired!

Some photos I have multiple digital copies of because they were also in the negatives I scanned. But the one thing I have found is that by me doing it myself, I can make sure the coloring is correct. Not all digitizing sites are careful about that. I had a batch of negatives scanned with a green tint even though they had supposedly been through quality control. I sent those same negatives to another company and the colors were much better. And, then there were the scans that had the banners with large words backwards by the first company!

So I guess I would recommend to do it yourself if you want control over how the photos look.

[LynnZant]

About ten years ago I scanned a TON of photos with my printer/scanner/fax machine. It took so long to get high resolution, and then I had to digitally cut each photo out of the larger scan. I would just use my phone if I had to do it again keeping each photo separate.

[Lidia G]

I scan all my photos on my Canon printer and I've been pretty happy with the results.

[aussiegirl]

Like the others, I usually use scan them using my printer. But if I am in a real hurry, I will take a good quality photo of one that I need with my phone or Canon camera. Either way works, but taking a photo with the camera/phone adds one extra step because I then have to upload it to my computer. But sometimes the quality can be better taking an actual photo. I would play around with both ways and see what you like better.

[craftytam]

I use a flatbed scanner. It's given me the best quality for both negatives and prints. It can be time consuming. If you're scanning prints, you can put several on the bed at a time and then divide them in PSE.

[rach3975]

I second trying multiple ways. My old photos have different coatings, textures, and degrees of glossiness depending when they were from and how they were originally processed. Different ways seem to work better for different coatings. I haven't had any luck with a scanner app on my phone--my best results seem to always be a photo of the photo or a scan with my real scanner.

[Kiana]

I scanned in all of my MIL photo albums for my husband and then cut them out using PSCC

I also did my family's old photo albums from my mom the same way.

It worked very well for me.

[allyanne]

I use an Epson Perfection V600 Color Flatbed Scanner, and I am very pleased with it. You can place several photos on the bed and it will automatically cut them out for you! It also does film & slides, and while it CAN take a while to do high-resolution scans of these, it does a fabulous job. I have also sent old rolls of film to a company to scan for me. I prefer doing it on my own, because it is cheaper in the long run and I have more creative control. I've had the scanner for maybe 8? years now, and it still works perfectly. I think it's around $300 on amazon right now. Sounds like a lot, but it pays for itself over time.

[clucaswvu04]

I have done a lot of old family photos & always scan in pictures we are sent (like in Christmas cards or for announcements). For the cards, I usually take a picture of them with my phone because I know I'm not going to likely want a large print of it and most of them are good prints now that are clear.
For the old family photos, I use a scanner (I had a flatbed one but usually just the printer/scanner combo now) and set the dpi to the highest it will, I add multiple photos if they fit and scan. Yes a bit time consuming but it does a good job. I often will do it while working on other things so while it takes a bit for each scan I'm getting other things worked on