Need some advice.

[TNNurse]

I have been going through photographs. I have a significant college reunion this fall. Yes, I will confess, it will be 50 years. Yikes.
I am of course not finding the ones I want, but have looked through boxes of photos. I have many old family photos, very old. Some from my grandparents as children, so before 1900.

I cannot afford to digitize all of them to save. I would like to know the current best way to make photo scrapbooks. So many had pages that destroyed the photos, they are stuck forever. I want to organize some for my husband's family as well with actual labels.
Are there better systems now??

I know from experience that if someone goes across photos without meaningful names or labels they go away. But those we can identify can be treasured.

Having watched music and movies go from cassettes to CDs and DVDs to everything digital, I still want to preserve some of these photos in a book that can be seen without technology.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Phoenix61]

1. Not sure how tight money is but you can get a scanner for $100. nt

[jmbar2]

2. Scan them

You can buy cheap printers for under $100 with scanners. It creates a digital copy of the photo which can then be imported into word documents, powerpoint slideshows, etc. You can resize the pics, and sometimes enhance them with the image features of MS Word/PPT.

Your results can have many uses, such as helping relatives who are experiencing memory loss. Create picture books of their lifestory to help jog their memories of better times.

Have fun - this is a worthwhile project.

[5X]

3. Most printers also scan, some better than others

could be used to digitize more than one picture at a time if they will fit on the glass.

[MerryHolidays]

4. I would get a scanner first of all

Scan in all your important photos and save them digitally.

There are tons of places where you can upload photos to create a physical book. For example, here's Costco's offering: https://www.costcophotocenter.com/photo-books

[wcmagumba]

5. You can even use your phone to take pics of pics, quality suffers a bit from a scanner but

you can move them from your phone to a pc with a simple OTG cable (about $3) or email them or save them to google drive (they give you 15Gb of storage space for free...When my scanner quit working I saved many documents this way and still have them...

[Nictuku]

8. I can vouch for doing it with your smartphone

In some cases, it seems as if the color is better! So many of these old paper photos are fading with each year.

So I have a couple of tips: Lighting: You want to be in a well lit area, but you have to position the camera in a way that you are not casting a shadow on the photo, and are not getting a glare. I try to fill the screen as much as possible with the photo.

Once you have taken your photos, then you will want to transfer them off of the phone, to a computer, and it is always a good idea to have another backup (flash drive, or other external drive). Nothing lasts forever, and after 10 years or so, you may want to copy them again to a new device.

I used to scan photos, but it just took forever, and they all had to be trimmed down. Using the phone just worked, and now I have a copy of all these photos. I can put them up for a screen-saver and enjoy all the memories.

At any rate, good luck!

[csziggy]

6. For my old family photos and for the negatives I use archival storage pages

Made from polyethylene – NO PVC (polyvinyl chloride). Since I have hundreds of them, I ordered in bulk from PrintFile.com but they are available all over.

Since some of the antique negative are medium to large - over 3"x5" I use photo pages for them. Since they are made of the same material as for negative storage pages, this works fine. There are pages made for 35mm film, too. There are also pages for storing slides, but I bought archival slide boxes to put those into in the interest of saving space.

The photo pages come in different configurations and sizes so measure the most common size prints you have and buy the appropriate size. PrintFile also sells pages with archival inserts if you want to make "artistic" arrangements of your photos - you attach the pictures with photo corners or archival mounting squares.

Then I put the pages into loose leaf scrapbooks - those big 12"x12" ones - my sister finds them cheap at thrift shops since the whole scrapbook craze is pretty much over.

[spooky3]

7. I agree with the scanner advice and would add

That if you can fit it into your budget, look for a scanner that will enable you to scan them quickly without damaging them. For example, flatbeds are very slow and tedious if you have lots of things to scan. A scanner with an auto feeder can scan high quality images very quickly, but a poor quality feed mechanism or one that you don’t check to clean often enough won’t help.

[LakeArenal]

9. I'm sure that I'm a dinosaur but...

I’d scan them to a flash drive.

You probably have a friend with a good scanner to get you started

[TNNurse]

10. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I am working on a plan.

[Quakerfriend]

11. I used phone to photograph each pic

As recd by Nictuku above.
I would just add that I found that organizing all of the pics into categories beforehand really helps.
Also, take the time label each jpeg with a brief description once you have them on the computer, if you do save digitally. I had pics of great grandparents etc- I made files of pics taken in chronological order for each individual & then separate files for group pics etc.

I also took pics of special family art work, their homes, businesses etc.
Good luck!
It’s a massive job but, so worthwhile.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Cheap scanners are not always good scanners, but will do the job. If the pictures are still around..

the best ones can always be scanned with a better one in the future.

You've got more storage than you can imagine in the cloud. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Dropbox, Flickr... and many more. Add them up, and maybe pay a few bucks for one or two of them and you've got terabytes. And the cloud is really safer than local. Or at least a good backup for that external drive you bought that doesn't work any more.

What I got for my mother years ago was a "picture frame" that had a memory and a screen. You could load it up with jpegs and it would put on a slide show while hanging on the wall.

Anyway, you will spend some time on this, but it will be time well spent.