Best way to digitize old photographs?
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I bought a scanner that could automatically scan multiple photos at once and save them to individual files automatically. That way I could do 10 per minute or so.
I looked into services but they would sort by size when they ran them through their machines so they wouldn’t come back in the same order.
This is hugely important because, with old photos, the set they’re with offer clues as to what’s in each photo. Example - if I see a bunch of pictures from a vacation in 1974 I can tell we visited my aunt and so when I see a house alone in a photo, I know it’s hers. But if you just hand me that photo by itself with no context I’ll have no idea what it is. True for more remote family members too.
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Yeah, the one principle I know is organize before you scan. The services are pretty pricey for something I can do. My thinking is do that, then do a full scanner load of multiple photos. You can always snip out individual ones you might want to send, etc.
What scanner did you get? Just a large bed one?
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I scanned about 500 photo's with a flatbed, one by one at 600dpi. Goes pretty slow, but quality is way better than 300 dpi, especially when you want to enlarge/zoom in on details.
I tried scanning with 10 photo's at a time, but I got too many blurred or partially scanned results.
It was time consuming, but I'm happy with the results. -
https://epson.com/For-Home/Scanners/Photo-Scanners/Epson-Perfection-V600-Photo-Scanner/p/B11B198011
I have this one. I used to try and take pictures only with film camera. I did save most of my negatives, and the above scanner can to negative also with photos.
Like @Wim I did the photos one by one at high settings. Seemed to work best for me.
