Digitize Photos and Documents

If you’re like most people, you have photos and videos in digital format going back to whenever you started using a digital camera. You probably also have digital documents of various kinds stretching back even longer. But you may also have paper photos from earlier decades in albums or shoeboxes, not to mention paper documents that may have historical or sentimental value—school records, old love letters, your recipe collection, and so on.

Of course, you can (and probably should) leave those boxes of paper to your heirs. But paper deteriorates over time and is also subject to the damaging effects of moisture, heat, and other environmental issues (not to mention fire, flood, and so on), so if you want that material to be preserved indefinitely, making a digital copy is an excellent idea. Doing so also enables you to make those photos and documents more easily searchable and sharable, benefits you may well take advantage of right now.

The effort and expense involved in scanning these photos and documents is largely a function of quantity—it’s no big deal for a handful of pictures, but scanning tens of thousands of pages could take you years or cost a great deal of money. In this chapter, I spell out various ways you can tackle this task, discuss the ways the digital files should be organized and preserved, and help you consider various options for handling the original paper copies.

Take Preliminary Steps

Whether you’re looking at a single folder full of pictures or a huge stack of boxes, each with thousands of pages, your first step should be to take stock of exactly what you have and what your priorities are. There’s no right or wrong way to approach this, and every situation is a bit different. I’ll sketch out my basic suggestions, which you can adapt to your own needs:

• Separate the wheat from the chaff: Not every photo or document is worth preserving in digital form for posterity, and the more you scan, the more time or money you’ll spend. So, as a first pass, I recommend separating all your paper photos and documents into two piles (or boxes or whatever): those you consider important to digitize and those you don’t.

  I can’t tell you exactly what criteria to apply in making this decision for your own stuff, but I know I’d prioritize pictures of people over pictures of places and things, and pictures of people I know over those of people I can’t identify. Given several similar photos, I’d choose just my favorite, or the one that’s clearest and sharpest.

• Sort by type: Each type of media (photographs, slides, and documents) needs its own pile. I would further sort photographs into subcategories, such as:
  • Ordinary photos: Photos, in good condition, printed on thick photographic paper
  • Mounted photos: Anything that’s framed, matted, glued into a photo album, or otherwise attached to something larger
  • Delicate photos: Photos on thin or fragile paper (such as newspaper clippings), those that are physically deteriorating, or anything that might require special care when handling

  In addition, anything larger than roughly legal size, plus anything that’s not flat or that for some other reason might not fit in an ordinary scanner, should get its own pile (see What about Large, Irregular, and 3D Objects?).

• Sort by date: If you already know (even approximately) when each photograph or document was created, sorting each pile by date can be helpful because it will simplify the process of naming and organizing the scanned files later. If you don’t know most of the dates, or if it’s too much effort to think about it now, you can skip this step for now and come back to it when you have the digital files.
• Sort by priority: If you are looking at 20 knee-high piles of photos on your living room floor, all part of your set of photos that you consider important to digitize, you might find some comfort in one last sorting pass. For each pile, divide the items into two or three sets—for example, those that are crucial to your digital legacy, those that you’d really like to scan if reasonably possible, and those that could be dealt with at some point but aren’t that important.
• Count: Count the number of items (or pages) in each of your piles or categories. You don’t need an exact number; “around a dozen” or “two hundred-ish” is close enough. (If your piles are quite high, you can count how many items are in an inch or centimeter of depth and then use a ruler to approximate the total.) Having a count will help you estimate how long the scanning will take if you do it yourself, or how much it will cost if you pay someone else to do it for you in a way that “7 big ol’ boxes” or “12 kilograms of photos” would not.

Again, these are all just suggestions. You might find it makes more sense to sort by priority first, and then by date; or to do a single sorting pass in which you sort your photos every which way. But what you should end up with is several groups of photos and documents, which you can then tackle one at a time.

Scan Photos and Documents Yourself

Scanning photos and documents yourself isn’t complicated, although it does involve an investment of money and time.

If your items have unusual sentimental value, or are extremely fragile, and you’re nervous about shipping them off to some company across the country to handle (see Outsource Scanning), scanning them yourself is certainly the right move. You might also do the scanning yourself if you have plenty of time and you determine that the cost of a scanner is much lower than the cost of paying someone else. (For example, if you’re comparing a service that charges $0.60 per scan with buying a $150 scanner, the break-even point is 250 photos.)

Obtain a Scanner

If you’re going to scan photos or documents yourself, you’ll need a scanner! Scanners come in all shapes and sizes, but most fall into one of the following two categories:

• Flatbed scanners: This type of scanner (such as the Epson Perfection V550) operates much like a photocopier: lift the lid, place your photo or document face down on the glass, and press a button (on the scanner or in an app). A few seconds later, the scanned image appears on your computer’s screen, where it can be saved as a TIFF, JPEG, or other graphics file.

  Flatbed scanners typically have much higher resolution than docu­ment scanners (for example, 6400 dpi resolution is not uncommon for a flatbed, whereas document scanners typically top out at 600 dpi). Flatbeds can scan book pages and other items that are thick or rigid, whereas document scanners can’t. Some flatbed scanners include an attachment that will let you scan slides. On the other hand, flatbed scanners are much slower and require more manual interaction than document scanners.

• Document scanners: Designed for digitizing documents such as letters, reports, business cards, and receipts, document scanners (like the Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500) usually feature an upright design with an automatic sheet feeder. Put a stack of pages in, press the button, and watch as 20 or more sheets per minute zip through—usually scanning both sides of the page in a single pass. These scanners generally save documents as PDFs, with the option to apply OCR (optical character recognition) so that you can later search your scanned documents by content.

  Document scanners are faster and more convenient for scanning large numbers of pages. They’re fine for most photos, too, as long as the photos are sturdy enough to survive a trip through the sheet feeder and you don’t need super-high resolution. (If in doubt about the robustness of an old or delicate photo or document, however, don’t take a chance on using a sheet feeder.) But you can’t use them to scan slides, books, passports, matted photos, and other extra-thick items.

I’ve used document scanners for years to scan mail, tax documents, bank statements, contracts, and other documents; I’ve also used them for snapshots and other photos. By using a carrier sheet (basically, two thick sheets of clear plastic joined at one end), I’ve also scanned delicate and irregularly shaped items that the rollers might otherwise have scrunched into oblivion. If you have more documents than photos to scan, or if your photos are mostly of a sort that will fit in a document scanner, a document scanner is probably your best choice.

On the other hand, if you have more photos than documents; if you want to scan photos at a very high resolution to bring out as much detail as possible; if you have lots of thick or irregular items to scan; or if you want to save money (since flatbeds tend to cost less than document scanners), a flatbed might be the way to go. (Of course, you’re welcome to buy one of each, if you can afford it!)

The last time I owned a flatbed scanner was about 15 years ago, so I don’t have enough recent experience to recommend a specific model or brand. If I were in the market for one, I’d read reviews on Amazon and pick something that’s highly rated but not terribly expensive.

If you opt for a document scanner, I can tell you I’ve owned several Fujitsu ScanSnap models, and have been happy with all of them. For more options, consult the online appendixes for my book Take Control of Your Paperless Office, which contain tables comparing a great many models from a variety of manufacturers.

Scan Photos and Documents

Once you have your scanner, you’ll need to hook it up, install any included software, read the instructions, and start working your way through your piles of photos and documents.

I wish I could offer you detailed, step-by-step directions, but the steps will be completely different depending on which type and model of scanner you use, which operating system your computer runs, which software your scanner includes, and your personal preferences. I can, however, offer you a few tips:

• Find the right resolution: Regardless of what type of scanner you use, you can choose a lower or higher resolution (number of dots per inch) for your scans, up to the maximum the scanner supports. Higher resolutions give your scanned images more detail, but the higher the resolution, the longer the scan will take and the larger the resulting file will be. And, if your original photos aren’t quite sharp and detailed, an extra-high-resolution scan won’t make them look any better than a lower-resolution scan. So the trick is to find the lowest resolution that yields acceptable quality given your source material.

  In my experience, when scanning photos, 600 dpi usually provides the best compromise among quality, speed, and file size. For docu­ments, 300 dpi is usually ideal when scanning in color or grayscale, but 600 dpi is better when scanning in black and white. My suggestion is to scan a few photos and documents at each of a few resolutions—say, 300 dpi, 600 dpi, and 1200 dpi. Notice how long each scan takes; then examine the resulting images on your screen care­fully, compare their quality, and take note of how large the files are. Then decide on the setting that works best for you. (You can, of course, choose a higher or lower resolution setting for certain images and documents if you prefer.)

• Choose the right file format: Your scanner will almost certainly provide several choices of file format. You may be tempted to choose JPEG, which will usually produce the smallest file sizes, but JPEG compresses images in a way that removes information—not the best idea for archival use. As I said in Decide on File Formats, your best option for photographs is TIFF—preferably without com­pression—but PNG is a good second choice; for scanned docu­ments, PDF (preferably PDF/A) is the way to go.
• Let your scanning software help: Most scanners include software with settings that enable it to automatically deskew crooked images; crop images so that the files contain only the photo itself (and not the border or a bunch of extra white space); and apply other image enhancements, such as color correction. Experiment with these settings to find what works for you, but to the extent possible I suggest letting the software do these tasks rather than manually fiddling with each and every image.
• Get extra help with document scanning: If you’d like to learn much more about the ins and outs of document scanning in particular—including dealing with OCR and managing lots of scanned documents, check out my book Take Control of Your Paperless Office.

It may take you a while to find your groove and get to the point where you can process photos and documents efficiently. But you should eventually be able to do scan about one photo per minute, from start to finish. (You’ll go even faster with simple, multi-page documents if you use a document scanner with a sheet feeder.)

Regardless of the scanner and software you use, you’ll have to decide how you want to name, organize, and store the scanned images. I discuss all this ahead in Name and Organize Digitized Files. First, however, I want to say a few words about an alternative to scanning your own images: paying a company to do it for you.

Outsource Scanning

If the idea of buying a scanner, figuring out the software, and scanning thousands of photos fills you with dread, you might want to consider outsourcing the task instead. Numerous companies let you mail them a box of photos, slides, and/or negatives; they then do all the heavy lifting of scanning them and enhancing the digital images, provide the final product (as downloadable files; or on DVD, CD, a flash drive, or a hard drive) for well under a dollar per photo, and mail back your originals.

The Wirecutter undertook an extensive review of dozens of scanning services and compiled the results in The Best Photo Scanning Service. Their top recommendations charge between $0.39 and $0.60 per photo, although in some cases you’ll pay an extra hourly fee if you want the service to provide manual photo retouching. The article details what you can expect in terms of timing, quality, and customer service from various providers. I have no personal experience with any of these companies, but if I were looking for a company to provide this service, I’d most likely go with The Wirecutter’s top pick, Memories Renewed.

The services listed in that article primarily handle photos, not documents. Although numerous companies scan documents, perform OCR, and turn them into PDF files, nearly all such services are geared exclusively toward businesses, and at least two companies that used to offer consumer-oriented document scanning have stopped doing so in the last year or two. However, you can often find business centers (such as FedEx stores) that offer either do-it-yourself or staff-assisted scanning services, and if you have only a small number of documents to scan, that might be a cost-effective choice.

Name and Organize Digitized Files

If you scan photos yourself, your scanning software will most likely give your files default names based on the current date and time, for example 2017_01_09_21_51_00.tiff. Or it may, like your digital camera, give the files sequential numbers, like IMG_01234.png. Those sorts of names, by themselves, are nearly useless, as they tell you nothing whatsoever about the file’s contents.

On the other hand, manually choosing a name for each file that’s both descriptive and readable is a lot of work, and will leave you with hundreds of files with lovely names like 1974-November-Aunt-Ethel-station-wagon-in-front-of-Florida-house.png. Ugh. And furthermore, if you put all these photos in an app like Apple’s Photos or Adobe Lightroom, you may never even look at the filenames themselves—you’ll either identify photos visually or rely on albums, tags, or other methods of categorizing and labeling them.

I like to keep things simple, but I also like to provide myself (and anyone in the future who may look at my photos) enough information to be at least minimally helpful. So, allow me to suggest the approach used by my friend and colleague Marshall Clow, who has scanned many thousands of family photos: number your files sequentially (1000.tiff, 1001.tiff, and so on) and describe them in a separate, annotated index.

Yes, I said just a moment ago that sequential numbers, by themselves, are useless. You can make them useful, however, by creating a simple text document that lists each numbered filename along with a brief description. You can then search in that document (by name, date, or whatever other notes you include) to locate any given image. If you go this route, observe these tips:

• As you scan photos, look at them carefully and include items such as the following in your notes:
  • Whatever you know about the photos, such as the approximate date, location, and names of anyone in them
  • Any text printed on the photos themselves, including photographers’ stamps
  • Anything handwritten on the front or back of the photos
  • Comments people have made about a picture, along with who said something and when; be sure to distinguish facts from opinions
  • Questions you have about the photos (such as “Why is Uncle Ted missing from this photo of the family reunion?”)
  • Information relating to other photos (for example, in the notes for photo 1234.tiff, you might say, “I’m pretty sure this was taken at the same time as 1108.tiff and 1336.tiff.”)
• Be careful that your scanning software doesn’t arbitrarily restart the numbering (for example, after a system crash or other glitch); otherwise, you’ll end up with a confusing set of duplicate file­names. In fact, even if your software offers to number files sequentially by itself, you may want to number them manually.
• To avoid the clutter and confusion of thousands of image files in a single folder, consider dividing your images into folders of 100 or so photos each.
• If you’ve scanned both the front and back of a photo, give the two files matching names—for example, 1234-front.tiff and 1234-back.tiff.
• If you crop or otherwise edit a scanned image, make the modifications on a copy, and always leave the original file intact.
• Keep your annotated index in a safe and easily accessible place.
• Take your time, and don’t worry about finishing quickly. It’s better to scan and annotate a small fraction of your photos than none at all.

Back Up Digitized Files

In a sense, the entire project you’re undertaking amounts to making a backup of all your important data, which you’ll store in a secure, permanent way. However, in the meantime—while you’re still alive, and especially in the weeks or months before you’ve finished digitizing all your old photos—it’s important to make regular backups of everything. You would not want to lose all that work to theft, fire, or another catastrophe.

If you already back up the other files on your computer, the ones you’re creating now should automatically join your existing backups. If you don’t already have backups, there’s no time like the present to start.

I’ve written several books on the topic of backups and I don’t want to go into a great deal of detail here. I do, however, want to suggest strongly that at the very minimum, you have two kinds of backups:

• A copy of all the data from your computer, stored on an external hard drive and updated at least weekly (although daily or even hourly is even better); this makes your backup easily and quickly accessible.
• A second copy of all your data, stored somewhere else (on a second hard drive that you rotate to another location, or in a cloud backup service such as Backblaze or CrashPlan); this provides insurance against any sort of disaster that takes out your local backup.

If you’re looking for additional advice, opinions, or suggestions, I can recommend two things I’ve written:

• My article The Best Online Backup Service at The Wirecutter discusses a number of online backup services in detail and says the best options for most people are CrashPlan or Backblaze.
• My book Backing Up Your Mac: A Joe On Tech Guide is a comprehensive guide to backups for Mac users.

Decide What to Do with the Originals

Once you’ve scanned your old photos and other documents, what should you do with the originals? Once again, the answer is up to you (and it may vary from one photo or document to the next), but in general, I urge you to keep them—and even redouble your efforts to preserve them—even though you’ve scanned them.

My computer contains scans of 50-year-old (and much older) photos, and I love having them there because I can search them, post them on Facebook, send them to family members, and put them to other uses that aren’t possible with that lone, fading paper copy. One day, those digital copies will be all that’s left, and I (or my distant descendants) will be grateful to have them.

And yet, even though everyone has seen a photo of the Mona Lisa, the original still draws huge crowds every day at the Louvre. There’s something about holding (or at least seeing, in person) an actual old object that is much more meaningful than merely seeing what it look­ed like. Chalk it up to irrational human nostalgia if you will, but I like the fact that I not only know what my father’s high school grades were in 1939, I have the original report cards too! Other antique items, such as ticket stubs, theater programs, and diaries, likewise, may not have any commercial value, but they certainly have sentimental value and I’d like to preserve them as long as possible.

If you have strong anti-packrat tendencies, and your family is in agree­ment, there’s no legal or ethical prohibition against tossing (or recycling) your old photos and documents once they’re scanned. But I urge you to preserve the originals if at all possible; remember that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. (See Don’t Let Your Family History Be Tossed in the Trash, by Thomas Jay Kemp at GenealogyBank, for a fine example.)

Assuming you decide to keep the originals, I suggest the following:

• Geometry permitting, put each photo or document in an acid-free polypropylene envelope, which will protect it from scratches, skin oil, and other potential causes of damage.
• Label each item’s envelope with the filename you gave its digital counterpart.
• Store the photos and documents in roughly the same order and groupings as their corresponding digital files, and labeling them (at least by box or envelope) each group (for example, in a box or large envelope) so that someone in the future can match the originals with the digital versions.
• For maximum longevity, keep your original photos and documents in a cool, dry, and dark place—an opaque, airtight plastic box stored in a closet, for example.