How (and why) to scan old photo collections (and reprint them too!).

If you have a large collection of aging photos that are perhaps several decades old you probably want to preserve them. Recently some friends started archiving old photos that date back to the early middle of last century, and I have a few of my own in boxes in the attic.

One thing is clear: No matter how carefully packed or protected, these photos are (slowly) decaying. The colors are fading and there are folds, scratches and tears.

The only way to make sure that historic photos survive is to scan and digitally restore them, but that is not enough, you should print them again. Because digital media can become unreadable, whereas old photos are almost always at least "leggible" to the human eye.

File formats come and go. Plastic degrades (though the diamond shine of CDs make you think it doesn't). I'd say the safest way is to scan, restore, and then print the old photos anew:

There is a lot of rubbish written about how digital storage means storage forever. In practical terms this is simply not true. I predict a huge loss of personal image data for this generation as their touching faith in computers is found to be false. When the computer with the prom photos has been sent to the knackers yard it'll be too late to get the photos back.

Anyway, back to scanned photos. Scan them, yes. Store them on CD yes. But make sure you print them as well. RansenScan connects you direct to the printer from the scanner, but allows you to add comments and show specific details as well:

Now a few tips for the actual scanning;

1. Make sure your scanner bed is clean, and if it isn't don't scratch it when you do clean it. Use a soft dry brush to get rid of any dust.
2. Make sure your photos are clean, but do not try to remove anything which is actually stuck on, you could ruin the photo itself. Again use a soft brush if they are dirty or dusty.
3. Scan at 300 or 600 DPI. Many old blurred photos do not gain by scanning at 600 DPI.
4. Use RansenScan to speed up the whole process. With it you can scan multiple photos in one go, name the saved photos as you please, and print them directly to your printer, with annotations if you want.

Use RansenScan for all your archive scanning requirements!