How to Digitize Old Photos

Prepare Your Mind

If these are your own photos, scanning them is not a mechanical process. It is mental overload. Sometimes, it is emotional overload. A photo is not a piece of paper. It is a memory. It is a record of what used to be, and how things are not that way anymore. It can truly be an emotional rollercoaster. Try not to blend that mental experience with the mechanical process below.

If you have the capacity to compartmentalize, you should be able to skim past emotional triggers, knowing you will address them later. Thank God for that. He encourages us to honor our emotions, but not be controlled by them.

If you are not a compartmentalizer, this is an excellent opportunity to exercise that mental muscle. While scanning, you are bound to find pictures of a deceased loved one and get distracted by nostalgia. You might find a fantastic picture that demands a flurry of correspondence with your friends.

These experiences are far more important than a scan project. As such, they will pull you away from the task. You’ll find yourself stepping over an unfinished mess, which soon gets put away for that proverbial rainy day that never comes. This failure is simply because we underestimate the mental work.

Postpone the mental work. You will have far more freedom to experience that after the scan. The scan project will not be looming in the back of your mind. The mess won’t be making you miserable. The pictures will already be scanned and sharable when nostalgia grabs you.

Give your brain and heart their own appointment with these pictures. Schedule it for AFTER the scan. The scan should take less than a day, so you don’t have long to wait.

Prepare the Scanner

1. Buy a high-speed scanner. My instructions here go with the Epson FastFoto FF-640.
2. Install the scanner software and set the scan settings to color, single-side, jpg, 300dpi, scan output to a new folder you created for this project. Name it something super obvious so it doesn’t blur in with all the other folders on your computer. Happy Scan Day is a good name.
   1. A note on dpi. This means “dots per inch.” The computer will create 300 color dots for every square inch of the photo. If the photo was taken with a digital camera at that setting, and printed at that setting, then that is all the color dots it has to offer. If you reprint your scanned picture, it will look exactly the same. If you try to magnify it, those 300 color dots will simply stretch like a stamp on Silly Puddy. What you get is a blurred-out picture.
   2. However, old-school cameras produced much higher resolution, and this was preserved in the old darkroom development process. The scanner can zoom in and record up to ___ color dots per inch. But you have to tell it to do that. You also have to be prepared for the larger file sizes, which will slow down your computer and hog up your storage space.
   3. For now, finish the rest of these instructions and we’ll deal with your special, old photos after the big job.
3. Set your Windows File Explorer view to List view.

Prepare the Photos

1. Separate your photos into events. For me, this means a mountain range along the baseboards.
2. If an event contains more than one-size photo, combine each size into a separate stack. You want the scanner’s bumper rails to hold them all straight.
3. If a photo is duplicated in different sizes, such as school photos, just scan the largest one. You can resize it down, but usually not up.
4. Inspect every picture for ANYTHING stuck to it, be it adhesive, dust, mildew, glitter… All of these will get lodged on the optical glass and create a line on every subsequent scan. Adhesives and mildew can be cleaned off. Scratches are permanent. If a photo does not pass inspection, leave it out for a flatbed scanner.
5. If you see handwriting on the back of some photos, don’t worry. We will catch that later. For now, we will only scan the front sides.

Scan the Photos

1. Drop your clean, CLEAN, did I say clean? stacks on the scanner hopper face-down, top-down, no more than one inch thick at a time.
2. Slide the bumper rails (okay, paper guides) in to hold the stack straight.
3. Press the scan button.
4. Wait for your computer to finish digesting the batch.

Check the Scans

1. Double-click on the first picture and check it for scan quality.
2. Click the next arrow and compare your scanned batch to the physical batch one picture at a time. You want confidence in your scanned copies before moving on. You also want confidence in the scanner glass. If it gets dirty from one of the photos, you will see a line in your scans. The only way to remove that line is to clean the glass and re-scan. So catch it before it happens.

Name the Scans

1. When you are confident in your scanned batch, highlight them all in the computer.
2. Right-click the batch. From the context menu, select Rename.
3. Type date of the event to the degree you know it, in this format: YYYY-MM-DD. Be sure to use zeroes to maintain two-digit months and days. This will cause your photos to always display in chronological order, even when Windows sorts them in alphanumeric order. Many photos have a print date stamped on the back. This is rarely the exact date of the event, but it will get you close. If you don’t know the exact date, type only what you know. For example, if you only know the decade, type 1980 and drop the rest of the date.
4. After the date, add a short description of the event. Be careful not to change the .jpg extension. Then press Enter. Windows will rename the entire batch with your new date-stamped description, with numbers in parenthesis to separate each picture.

File Your Photos

1. Right-click in a blank space in the window that holds your photos.
2. From the context menu, select, New, then Folder.
3. Type the name of the folder with the same name you gave the photos, then press Enter to save it.
4. Select all your photos, then click the batch and drag it to their new folder.
5. You should now see your Happy Scan Day folder looking empty again, except for the new folder that now holds your first stack.

Replace and Repeat

1. Return your scanned stack to its place in the mountain range.
2. Grab the next stack and repeat the cleaning and scan process.
3. It’s a good idea to open the scanner and wipe down the glass between each batch. Those little microfiber clothes for eyeglasses are best. Notice that this scanner has two glass plates to clean, one in the cover and one in the base.
4. Clean and scan and clean and scan until you reach the end of your mountain range.
5. The next step will be to catch that handwriting on the back of some of the pictures. However, you’ve done a huge job already. It’s probably time for your next meal. You absolutely deserve a break, and dessert, too! I highly recommend decompressing before moving on.

Preserve the Backsides

1. Return to the first stack in your mountain range. Flip through it and pull out any that have handwriting on the back.
   1. Please don’t throw that away. Please. Even if you don’t care about the information, someone is bound to care about the person who wrote it. You get a feel for that person in their handwriting and in their choice of what to write. It brings them to life a little bit, which means the world to someone who wants to know them.
2. Collect all pictures from that stack that have writing on the back.
3. There are multiple ways to save the backside. The choice depends on your future needs. It’s not a major decision because either way is easily converted to the other.
   1. All picture files are single-side files. You can create two picture files – one for the front, and one for the back. You can give them both the same file name, but add the word “back” to the backside.
   2. A PDF document file can hold multiple pages in one file. You can create a PDF document with the front and back of your picture. I will proceed with this process since you already know how to scan them separately.
4. Set your scanner program to save as a 2-sided PDF with each page being a separate file. Make sure the resolution is 300dpi and the file is saved to the same Happy Scan Day folder. If you can’t find the separate file setting, then scan them one at a time.
5. Place the photo(s) on the scanner face-down, top down.
6. Press the Scan button.
7. When your computer is ready, rename the file with the same name that the original got. Be careful not to change the .pdf extension. The different extensions are the only way your computer can know how to open the files. The different extensions also allow you to use the same base file name for the same picture, but with different formats. Press Enter to save the name.
8. You should now see your Happy Scan Day folder holding only other folders, and now this one PDF file. Drag that one PDF file into the folder with its companions. Double-click that folder to see them all nestled together. You should see the .pdf file right after the .jpg copy it matches. Click the back or up arrow to get back to your Happy Scan Day folder.
9. Repeat with the rest of your backsides.

Preserve the Antiques

Photos that were taken with film contain much more resolution than digital pictures, especially the black-and-white ones. You can zoom in to the tiniest detail on those oldie goldies, or blow them up into a poster. But in order to do that, you have to scan them at a much higher resolution. It’s a simple change in the scan settings. However, your computer will likely freeze up just trying to process all that data. Moreover, it will use up your storage space in no time. Don’t bother with it until you have an actual use for a picture. Meanwhile, store them safely and let that decision have its own day.

Clean Up Your Mess

If this is your first time digitizing photos, you should save the originals until you are skilled at digital file storage. There are several things that could cause you to lose your scanned copies, and you need to establish a secure system. Meanwhile, drop each stack into a baggie and leave it open. Drop all those baggies into a box. Write Scanned on Happy Scan Day YYYY-MM-DD on the box, close it up, and shove it in the back of a closet. Not the attic, not the basement, not the garage, not the trash. They need to be cool and dry. Their future fate is a whole other project.

Now celebrate a job well done.