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We reach! I also am the avid family photo archiver (I scan them, tag them, release them). The oldest photo I have is a tintype of a young girl around 1882 or

We reach! I also am the avid family photo archiver (I scan them, tag them, release them). The oldest photo I have is a tintype of a young girl around 1882 or so. She is maybe two years old — and is my great grandmother. I never met her, she had died before I was born. But I have studied her in the photos going all the way back to that tintype of her — somewhere in Missouri. Photos show her with her sisters and parents not long before they died, working in the fields, married to my great grandfather, with her children. Her children become adults and at some point it is clear that the daughter's role has reversed and she is taking care of mom. Great grandmother is soon old and so frail looking. And then there is a photo of the headstone for her. It has been a little sobering, as "photo historian" for the family, seeing the arc of lives lived and now gone.

username135 2y ago
Mind sharing your process? While my parents are still around, I want to digitize the hundreds of photos they have of the previous generations while we can still identify them. It seems like a daunting task!
- jmathai 2y ago
  I considered sending the prints to a company that scans them. I was in LA at one time and toured their offices. Ultimately, I decided to use Photo Scan (an iOS app by Google - not sure if it’s still around). I grouped photos by general time range and bulk added date/time and location information - knowing it wouldn’t be perfect. It wasn’t terrible and I got a couple hundred photos scanned in a weekend. Highly recommend this or another method.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  It is a daunting task. I've been at it for years. I have a EPSON flatbed scanner and use Apple's Image Capture to scan them in. Smaller photos (3 x 5 or smaller) I scan at 600 DPI, larger (5 x 7 or larger) maybe 450 DPI or so. I'm trying to capture enough detail that I could reprint them, perhaps even larger than the original, and not have reached the pixel level. I pull the scans into Apple's Photos and immediately tag them all with "Family Photos" keyword or similar to make finding them easier later. Then it's adding keywords for who is in the photo (if I know). If anything was written on the front or back I type those in the Description. If I know the date I change the date of the photo. If I don't know the date at all I also keyword the photo "Wrong Date". If I know the year I set the date to "1/1/YEAR". If I know the month and year (some Polaroids would print this on the border of the photo) I set the date to "MONTH/1/YEAR". Sometimes the photo was labeled as someone's birthday or on Christmas so I can get the day as well. Finally, I also edit the photos — adjust levels, remove scratches, etc. Again in Photos. I tend to only spend significant time on the important photos, or ones I like. But as you said, daunting. Nonetheless, I can export the photos and send them around to family, post to Ancestry.com, etc. And all the metadata is retained on export. I have retouched many photos such that I was able to print them and have a photo that was better than the surviving print (possibly even a touch better than the print when it was new). It has been worth it for me. I have observed the changes in consumer camera quality, figured out who people are who were strangers to me before (I can recognize many now when I come across a photo I had not before seen). A family photo I restored, my great grandmother is top-right (probably end of the 19th Century): https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2020/137/22136538_9c3c4e3a-f41d-4b26-87e1-3e252ec4aea3.jpeg https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2020/137/22136538_9c3c4... And her again, in a tintype from about 1880 (sadly someone seems to have folded it in half in the 144 years since): https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2019/113/19923761_0888502b-9b82-4f86-afd6-c824ffbf7d4d.jpeg https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2019/113/19923761_08885...

username135 2y ago

Mind sharing your process? While my parents are still around, I want to digitize the hundreds of photos they have of the previous generations while we can still identify them. It seems like a daunting task!

jmathai 2y ago
I considered sending the prints to a company that scans them. I was in LA at one time and toured their offices. Ultimately, I decided to use Photo Scan (an iOS app by Google - not sure if it’s still around). I grouped photos by general time range and bulk added date/time and location information - knowing it wouldn’t be perfect. It wasn’t terrible and I got a couple hundred photos scanned in a weekend. Highly recommend this or another method.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
It is a daunting task. I've been at it for years. I have a EPSON flatbed scanner and use Apple's Image Capture to scan them in. Smaller photos (3 x 5 or smaller) I scan at 600 DPI, larger (5 x 7 or larger) maybe 450 DPI or so. I'm trying to capture enough detail that I could reprint them, perhaps even larger than the original, and not have reached the pixel level. I pull the scans into Apple's Photos and immediately tag them all with "Family Photos" keyword or similar to make finding them easier later. Then it's adding keywords for who is in the photo (if I know). If anything was written on the front or back I type those in the Description. If I know the date I change the date of the photo. If I don't know the date at all I also keyword the photo "Wrong Date". If I know the year I set the date to "1/1/YEAR". If I know the month and year (some Polaroids would print this on the border of the photo) I set the date to "MONTH/1/YEAR". Sometimes the photo was labeled as someone's birthday or on Christmas so I can get the day as well. Finally, I also edit the photos — adjust levels, remove scratches, etc. Again in Photos. I tend to only spend significant time on the important photos, or ones I like. But as you said, daunting. Nonetheless, I can export the photos and send them around to family, post to Ancestry.com, etc. And all the metadata is retained on export. I have retouched many photos such that I was able to print them and have a photo that was better than the surviving print (possibly even a touch better than the print when it was new). It has been worth it for me. I have observed the changes in consumer camera quality, figured out who people are who were strangers to me before (I can recognize many now when I come across a photo I had not before seen). A family photo I restored, my great grandmother is top-right (probably end of the 19th Century): https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2020/137/22136538_9c3c4e3a-f41d-4b26-87e1-3e252ec4aea3.jpeg https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2020/137/22136538_9c3c4... And her again, in a tintype from about 1880 (sadly someone seems to have folded it in half in the 144 years since): https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2019/113/19923761_0888502b-9b82-4f86-afd6-c824ffbf7d4d.jpeg https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2019/113/19923761_08885...