How To Convert Your Old Photos Into Digital Pictures

Photographs have the unique ability to help us remember special times and capture how things used to be in the story of our lives

. Often times, we have boxes of old photos that sit in storage because we want to keep them protected from the elements. But now with digital photography, it's now easier than ever to protect your favorite old photos. So, find out how you can start making copies of your most precious photos to ensure that they'll always be around for other generations to enjoy.

Get Organized

Getting all of your old photos digitized may seem like an enormous job but it can be a lot easier if you start out organized.

The best thing to do when digitizing your old photos is to pick an angle of attack and then go for it. For example, you may find it's easier to work first on family pictures or maybe it might be easier to start with the oldest pictures by year. No matter what you choose, you'll find that if you take an organized approach it will make finding pictures on your hard drive a whole lot faster. And, by doing it this way, you'll also end up having your pictures nicely organized.

Next, you want to create a folder on your computer that will represent your photo library. If you keep your photo library nice and organized from the beginning, it will make your job of finding images really easy. Really, it doesn't matter how you organize it, you just want your pictures organized so they are easy and fast to find.

Get Gear

If you want to digitize all of your pictures, you're going to need a good quality scanner. Scanners come in a wide range of prices and quality levels so think about what you want before you start looking. Scanner quality is mostly related to its scan resolution so try to find one with at least a 1200dpi. Any photos you scan at a resolution of under 1200dpi are going to suffer from serious loss of quality if reprinted. A good quality scanner can cost between $150-$300.

Another thing to consider as an extra safety precaution is to look for an external hard drive for backing up your digital library. When it comes to digital images, your only real security is having lots of backups for multiple layers of protection. One of the worst things you can do is scan hundreds or thousands of photographs only to lose them due to a hardware failure.

Time to Start Scanning

Once your photos are lined up and your folders are organized, it?s time to get scanning. First thing you want to do is look at how many pictures you have in each section and break them up into smaller manageable sections that you can do in a single sitting. Simply by spending a few hours each night, you'll soon be able to put together your digital library without having to dedicate a few weekends or vacation time for your photo project.

As you go through each picture, be sure to make minor corrections at that time and save the major restoration work for another time. There will be plenty of time to edit images later so try to keep focused scanning and organizing them otherwise you may never finish. Instead, concentrate on things like cropping, rotation and saving the image in the right folder and keep on scanning.

If you don?t have the time to scan images yourself, you may consider outsourcing the digitizing process to someone else. Talk with someone at your local photo store that you trust or look at online services that offer this service.

Digitizing your favorite old photos doesn't have to be an overwhelming ordeal. All you need to do is create a plan of where you want to start and then make a little progress each day until you have all your pictures scanned and organized on your computer.

by: Autumn Lockwood

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