Bring Memories of the Past Into the Digital Age
Do you have mountains of unlabeled boxes filled with old photos hidden away in the back of your closets or attic? Me too. The sorting-through-photos-project looks overwhelming and, honestly, it can be. You probably have generations of family and friend photos that you feel you must keep, but you don’t know where to begin or what to do with the ones you want to keep. One answer is to put them back in the box and walk away (Come on! You can do better than that!). Another is to put them in a photo album(s), which quite honestly, takes a lot of time and afterwards takes up a lot of valuable shelf real estate. The last alternative I’d share is to digitalize your photos. According to Joanna Stern in a recent Wall Street Journal article, there are really two routes to digitizing old photos: You can either a.) source some specialized hardware, roll up your sleeves and do it yourself, or b.) outsource the project. For me, that’s a no-brainer- I’d outsource! But no matter what route you take you must make a at least a first pass through the photos- getting rid of duplicates, blurry and out of focus images. If possible, sort the photos by years.
After that, if you are a do-it-yourselfer, here’s Ms. Stern’s advice:
Photographs and prints are the easiest to do yourself. The most efficient route? Invest in the $600 Epson FastFoto FF-680W scanner. Put a stack of photos—even Polaroids—in the tray and it scans them in bulk, a photo as fast as every second, sending them to your computer via USB or Wi-Fi. Epson’s software helps with assigning years to each of the photo’s metadata and has simple color-restoration and editing tools. It’ll even scan the backs with the fronts, to preserve any writing or time stamps that are visible.
Don’t want to spend that much? iOS and Android apps like Google Photoscan or Photomyne’s Photo Scan App let you use your smartphone’s camera to capture the photos. Find a table with good light and point and shoot—without getting your hand-puppet shadow in the way. The apps will automatically crop out the surface. Just set aside plenty of time and give priority to the most important images, since you have to go photo by photo with this option.
If any of that sounds like a headache, just ship your photos to the pros at services like ScanMyPhotos.com and Memories Renewed. Gather your photos, organize them by year, get some bubble wrap and pop them in the mail. ScanMyPhoto will even send you a prepaid label and shipping box. The services will then digitize them, giving you options to get them on a DVD, USB drive or cloud download. The companies send back the originals. You are then free to give the photos away to family and friends, frame what you want, toss the rest and enjoy the nice cleared out space.
Good luck and happy organizing!