OT: How are you storing/organizing your old paper photos?

[Moneywatch]

My beginning of the year project is to deal with 2 large plastic bins of old family photos from the 1980s to 1990s. I have sorted out and pitched about 75% of these photos. Before I go further, I like to get this forum’s collective wisdom on this project.
All of my digital photos are on iCloud. There are some old family black and white family photos that I would like to keep for the family. Would love to know what our forum members are doing to keep yesterday’s treasures for the future.

[bjf]

I would digitize everything you want to keep. The paper and chemicals aren't going to last forever.

[FlashUNC]

Buy a scanner, some beer, and block off an afternoon.

[Dino Suegiù]

If you do not want to buy a (good) scanner, any good graphics house, etc will scan the images for you, on a much higher quality machine.

If there are any of the paper originals that are really worth still keeping, then even though it wouldn't reverse any contamination from 1980 or so to today, good archival envelopes and boxes are pretty inexpensive from companies such as Light Impressions, etc. for future storage.

[pasadena]

This is a solid recommendation.
Also, if storing digitally, there is the risk of inevitable hard drive failure or cloud storage issues.

I store old photos in photo albums, and print photo books off digital images. Otherwise, it never gets looked at.
Hard drive just becomes a virtual shoebox where images get lost.



If you do not want to buy a (good) scanner, any good graphics house, etc will scan the images for you, on a much higher quality machine.

If there are any of the paper originals that are really worth still keeping, then even though it wouldn't reverse any contamination from 1980 or so to today, good archival envelopes and boxes are pretty inexpensive from companies such as Light Impressions, etc. for future storage.

[Dino Suegiù]

This is a solid recommendation.
The local graphics house is definitely worth the cost (especially if one has to buy a new (cheap = lousy; good = $$$) scanner) just to do the job at home any decent justice.

Also, if storing digitally, there is the risk of inevitable hard drive failure or cloud storage issues.
https://forums.thepaceline.net/images/icons/icon14.gif Very true. That aspect and danger cannot be over-stated.
iCloud, Dropbox, etc are OK as a 3rd resource, preceded by hard drive #1 and external back-up hard drive #2. I would never trust iCloud, Dropbox, etc, as primary storage.

I store old photos in photo albums, and print photo books off digital images. Otherwise, it never gets looked at.
Hard drive just becomes a virtual shoebox where images get lost.
Another excellent suggestion. The book solution is really a good one, and makes the overall tedious archiving job more creative, fun, personal in creating the subjects/topics and then designing/organizing them.

[JSL]

This is a solid recommendation.
Also, if storing digitally, there is the risk of inevitable hard drive failure or cloud storage issues.

I store old photos in photo albums, and print photo books off digital images. Otherwise, it never gets looked at.
Hard drive just becomes a virtual shoebox where images get lost.

Opposite experience here. Photo books rarely get looked at, so we scanned and put all of our favorite photos on digital frames in a few rooms. Nothing better than a frame that randomizes a few thousand photos in the background while you're making dinner. Passive entertainment

[AngryScientist]

Opposite experience here. Photo books rarely get looked at, so we scanned and put all of our favorite photos on digital frames in a few rooms. Nothing better than a frame that randomizes a few thousand photos in the background while you're making dinner. Passive entertainment

i second this.

digital frames set to random shuffle are pretty nifty, especially when you have a wide range/variety of photos.

[oldpotatoe]

My beginning of the year project is to deal with 2 large plastic bins of old family photos from the 1980s to 1990s. I have sorted out and pitched about 75% of these photos. Before I go further, I like to get this forum’s collective wisdom on this project.
All of my digital photos are on iCloud. There are some old family black and white family photos that I would like to keep for the family. Would love to know what our forum members are doing to keep yesterday’s treasures for the future.

Altho I understand the digital/cloud/hard drive type 'storage' advantages..nothing quite as neat as adding the pix to below and sitting with loved ones around, to leaf thru 'hard copies' of old pictures..

For Christmas this year I gave wife and daughter-in-law photo albums, loaded with 100 or so 'family' photos..they both cried...:)
I store old photos in photo albums, and print photo books off digital images. Otherwise, it never gets looked at.
Hard drive just becomes a virtual shoebox where images get lost.


AGREE

[MikeD]

I would digitize everything you want to keep. The paper and chemicals aren't going to last forever.


Better use optical disk. Magnetic media has the shortest lifespan.

I've got boxes of photos and slides in a closet that I haven't looked at in 30 years. This is something I need to do, but just never got around to it.

[gavingould]

Better use optical disk. Magnetic media has the shortest lifespan.

as someone in the IT field, it's not quite that simple. there's a large range of variability in material quality, manufacturers, and how the media is stored (temp, humidity, direct sunlight exposure, etc.)

if you really want to save something long-term, use multiple media, multiple copies, don't store them all in one place.

[nublar]

Photoscanner - Epson V550 at minimum. I was able to get one off Craigslist for like $50

[Hindmost]

I appreciate and read these suggestions with great interest. Can anyone provide more specifics about secure image generation, storage, and sharing?

I am apprehensive about the choices having seen so much technology become obsolete and the various conditions of web-based storage and access.

[jtakeda]

Buy a scanner, some beer, and block off an afternoon.

Better yet find a friend who has a scanner, buy two cases of beer (one for them one for you) and block off an afternoon


Does your city have a tool lending library? They might have a nice scanner to check out.

Ps. If you happen to find the negatives in the boxes of prints you can do this easier

[deechee]

Go figure, unrelated to this thread, I was about to order one of these
https://www.irisusainc.com/extra-large-photo-keeper-kp-xlpho-violet
and empty out the photo albums sitting in a box.

After retirement, my dad scanned our dozens of slide carrousels. Definitely did not take an afternoon, probably more like weeks/months. 80-100 slides per x at least 50 wheels... and slides are so finicky. The old paper ones, you want to clean them before scanning etc.

Regarding obsolescence, the easiest thing is copying my photo folder to every large hard drive when I replace it. As others said, the cloud + local copies. Yes, free cloud services come and go, but I think google & amazon are here to stay. Both have free accounts depending if you have accounts with them. Amazon is free unlimited storage at original size. I haven't actually done it yet, but one of these days...

[Keith A]

Very timely question for me. We are discussing this right now in our family and haven't figured out a solution for us yet. I like the photo scanners that can do a stack of pictures, but these start around $500.

Does anyone have an idea of what companies charge for this service? This might be the best way to go since once we are done with this process, we wouldn't have a piece of hardware that we don't need anymore.

[mmfs]

No direct experience, but options here:


https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-photo-scanning-service/

[xtheendisnearx]

I have an Epson v600 scanner. It scans in decent quality for the price. I would recommend scanning them and storing them on an external hard drive. If you have the negatives you can always scan them on the V600 as well. Thats what i use for my film photos.

[fkelly]

I store the photos that I want for reference purposes or to share on my web site in a bunch of photo albums. I wouldn't recommend my specific approach to anyone who is not computer obsessive, but for what it's worth it's a Drupal site and uses a photo album module named Juicebox.

I process the photos from my camera or cell phone into Adobe Lightroom. When they are touched up there, and captions added, I export copies into a bunch of jpg directories and create albums using the Juicebox PC product then export those to the web site and create albums there. So, I can share them. Thus, there are at least 3 copies of each photo with a backup onto an external drive to boot.

Historically, I have scanned a few "reference" photos, those I really wanted to keep but scanning is too labor intensive for me to do on a large volume.

Disk space is cheap and getting cheaper at an astronomical pace. There is no excuse any more for not keeping multiple copies ... as long as you keep track of what's where.