Recommend Me a Way to Scan Old Photos

activ8newbs on 01/08/2020 - 13:42

Hello Ozb

Seeking some advice/recommendations to help scan a LOT of old printed photos to backup on Google Photos

My extended family and I have a massive collection of old photos in albums in our garage.

We're wanting to scan them and convert them into digital media to safely store them.

We're hoping to all gather around one weekend and collectively work through scanning all our photos whilst reminiscing old memories.

Can someone please recommend a way to do this? They're all mostly standard photo siZe, but some really old pics might be odd sizes.

I'm thinking of something like a smartphone app so we can all pull out our phones and contribute.

I guess the requirements are:
- quick processing between images so we can churn through lots of pics
- smartphone app so everyone can contribute
- good quality conversion
- since there are going to be 15+ of us family members, ideally would like to be a free app….i.e. wouldn't like to pay $10 per download per person just to scan pics. So free app would be helpful!
- easy to use app so my old uncles and aunts can use it too

Any recommendations greatly appreciated. Thankyou

Computing

Comments

  • BuyoTheCat on 01/08/2020 - 13:52
    +11

    there is really only one realistic way. a flatbed scanner.

    using mobile app is just using your phone's camera. result can be good dependent on the user's knowledge on how to light it.

    if you are in melb, ill scan a batch for you.

    • robbyjones on 01/08/2020 - 14:00
      +1

      I second this. We looked at alternative ways and they either weren't going to be that effective or it was cost prohibitive. We used a scanner, took forever but we scanned 3000-4000 photo's and categorized them in several ways so if you are looking for a certain person or a certain event you can easily find them and share just the photo's you want.

    • jimbobaus on 01/08/2020 - 14:02
      +1

      I did heaps a while back
      having a flat bed that you can operate without touching the computer helps ;)
      least then u can just push the button on the scanner and send each file to the computer :)

    • activ8newbs on 02/08/2020 - 09:56
      +1

      Very kind of you!

      Thanks for offering. Although I live in Sydney.

      Thought that counts. Thankyou for the offer

  • thatonethere on 01/08/2020 - 14:06
    +1

    I did this recently with the in laws. We had 3 people and a scanner.

    1 person to load in the photos into the scanner, one person to operate the scanner, one person to grab the output files to load into google photos (adding some metadata - eg date). The face id thing in Google Photos is quite good too once you name some faces.

    If you can sort the photos roughly by year that helps as you can bulk change the date on the photos to "be that year" which helps looking at them later.

    If you don't mind the base quality you can load unlimited photos into google photos. You don't realy notice unless you have a fantastic scanner that can scan at massive DPI.

    • activ8newbs on 02/08/2020 - 09:55

      Hey! Thanks for the advice! I guess this is a similar approach to what I would take.

      Can you please advise how you change the metadata?

      I imagine id have to do each photo one by one… Is this the right instructions?

      1. Open flat bed scanner (person 1)
      2. Place one photo (person 1)
      3. Press scan button. (Person 1)
      4. Wait 4 seconds to scan (person 1)
      5. Open flat bed and remove the newly scanned photo from Flatbed (person 1)
      6. Put that photo back into the album it came from (person 2)
      7. (Simultaneously after step 5) Person 3 looks at image on computer and adds metadata… (HOW?) (Person 3)

      …

      1. Once metadata is updated, click and drag into Google Photos

      How do I add the data in step 7 and teach Google Photos to recognise the old faces?

      Thanks!!

      • thatonethere on 02/08/2020 - 20:54

        For each photo you can open up extra details and add description. The web interface tends to have more options than the app.

        Google figures out the faces… sometimes it asks you for help.

  • Melb69 on 01/08/2020 - 14:15
    +3

    I hope OP isn't in Melbourne as that gathering should not be happening.

    Just get a flat bed scanner and scan the pictures at the highest res. Get two back up drives. Keep 1 and give the other to another relative to keep and scan their pictures when this mess is over.

    • elgrande on 01/08/2020 - 14:21
      +3

      not true.. scanning old photo's is one of the exemptions.

      • [Deactivated] on 01/08/2020 - 14:23
        +1

        u forgot <sarc> tag

        • Forfiet on 01/08/2020 - 15:03

          He thought he had jv's exemption for the sarcasm tag :P

    • activ8newbs on 02/08/2020 - 09:57

      Thanks for the suggestion. I wonder why this has down votes? I guess this is the best option so far

      Anyone able to shed light on this option?

      Seems quick and free and intuitive? And quality seems good enough?

      • 87percent on 04/08/2020 - 10:03
        +1

        Photoscan is decent, but it often leaves shadows on the pictures (especially if they're a matte finish)

  • lram99 on 01/08/2020 - 14:45
    +6

    If you are in NSW, you can try Officeworks - they have a fast scan to CD - I am very happy with the process - cost was around $8 for a CD which cud hold around 500. I have tried the North Ryde branch and the Castle Hill Branch. You cud go on a week day to avoid the rush in the shops. Do call ahead and make sure their equipment is available.

    Once done, You could store a copy in cloud..

    • mskeggs on 01/08/2020 - 15:16

      Is this the self serve system? All I can see on their website is A4 document scanning.

      • lram99 on 01/08/2020 - 17:16
        +6

        I searched Officeworks website without success - but I called the North Ryde and they confirmed that they do offer a self service for scanning photos into CD's. It used to be a Kodak CD/DVD machine - but was different the last time that I used (sometime in April - May 2020).

        So, while their website is unhelpful, their phone service is more reliable - and you can call your closest branch for better info.

        • mskeggs on 01/08/2020 - 17:23

          Follow up post of the month! Thanks.

  • timmof on 01/08/2020 - 14:54

    One alternative is if you have a DLSR / tripod, then once it's set up, it's much faster than a flatbed, especially if you tether the camera to lightroom / capture one. More of a hassle though to get right, and requires a bit of a learning curve, so a flatbed is probably the best way to go.

    Note that you dont need to crack the resolution up more than 300-400DPI - even a good flatbed wont pull more than this from a print, and you'll just end up with larger files and the scanning taking long. Experiment with a couple of prints if you need to. (I struggled to accept this until I did a few size by side prints - practically, you can't tell.) There's also plenty of youtube content on this.

    Also don't get sucked into zooming into a pixel level magnification. Even when touching up / restoring photos, that's overkill, unless you're blowing up a print to a reasonable large size. Viewing on a screen at normal zoom levels and you wont see a difference. (Also, given you're uploading to google photos, unless you're paying for the storage, google will shrink them down with the free / unlimited plan anyway.

    Good luck.

  • mskeggs on 01/08/2020 - 15:18

    Has anybody got a recommendation for an auto feed photo scanner?
    I’d be happy to buy one and resell on eBay when done, but a quick google didn’t show any reasonably priced options.

  • CheapandUsed on 01/08/2020 - 15:28
    +2

    Couldn't imagine doing a large collection on a flatbed or worse, a smartphone app. That would take many weekends even with a large family helping.

    Have a look at the Epson fast photo
    https://www.epson.com.au/fastfoto/

    Quality will be good enough and if you find ones you want in extra high quality then you can pull those aside and do them in a higher resolution.

    Don't forget to get the description and notings from the back of your physical photos!

    • OzFrugie on 02/08/2020 - 00:26

      Dat price doe.. is this the only product on the market with that function?

  • Iangh on 01/08/2020 - 15:37
    +1

    If you would like to see what b/w looks like in colour https://colourise.sg/ is pretty good.

    • vikvance on 01/08/2020 - 16:36

      Amazing website.

      Thanks.

  • Bourb on 01/08/2020 - 15:44
    +1

    I had about 100 old photos that I wanted to digitally store in iCloud, so I basically photographed each one with my iPhone 8 Plus.

    If you can find a spot with nice lighting, and where the iPhone is not reflected on the original photo, then the result isn't too bad.

    A bit of editing in the iPhone Photo App and you have a digital copy of your photo ready to upload to iCloud or Google Photos.

    Perfect - no
    Good enough - yes

  • FoxJump on 01/08/2020 - 20:31

    Can you program in c# in windows 10 uwp ?
    If so I can send you the code to an app I wrote to help me scan my family photos.

    I used 3 cheap MFP (Canon mx726) printers with a flatbed scanner on them. Each connected via usb to a computer, depositing pics on a shared disk. Then the app lets me monitor them as they come in. The scanner splits multiple photos on the flatbed into different files.

    It was fun and effective

    • OzFrugie on 02/08/2020 - 00:28

      Can you share the code (and instructions if you dont mind) with me please?
      Ta

      • FoxJump on 02/08/2020 - 11:45

        Okay. I don't mind. PM me an email. If you turn it into a formal app, please put my ozb handle in the credits :). I never bothered appifying it because it did it's job for me and I didn't want to spend time figuring out the rest or providing tech support.

        Basically, setup the canon scanner to scan multi images. And because it's connected via usb to a computer (each scanner to one computer and configured to place the output files to a location accessible with the one computer running the app) the driver on the computer does the splitting and orienting. It works 90% of the time by splitting your photos correctly.

        Then my software just watches some folders to see JPEGs coming in. Then when a new set arrives it displays them in three columns, one for each scanner I had.

        The app helps me to quickly display the just scanned pictures so I can confirm that the ones on the platen were correctly separated oriented and scanned. Because sometimes I may put 4 photos but only 3 come through, as an example.

    • activ8newbs on 02/08/2020 - 09:59

      Thankyou for offering but I guess it wouldn't be of use

      Thankyou anyway. I appreciate it

      • FoxJump on 02/08/2020 - 11:48

        I guess the simple take home message is that some multi function printers with scanners can allow you to place several photos on the platen, hit scan once, and have multiple files, one for photo, be created.

        In my experience with the canon mx726 is if scanning via wifi the splitting happens on the device, required two passes of the scanner and isn't as good and can't to more than 4 photos. With USB to a computer, the computer driver does the splitting so only one pass is needed and I managed to do upto 7 small photos in one go.

  • BuyoTheCat on 02/08/2020 - 12:22
    +1

    have the venerable Epson V700 that I use for scanning negative and slides. Sometime I have to scan 5x4 or 8x10 negatives.

    That is a higher end scanner, you do not need that. I think most scanners will do the job for you. Maybe even a $50 printer scanner.
    Perhaps look for second hand printer scanners.

    The epson scanning software can detect that there are multiple pictures and create seperate files for each photo.

    In a nutshell, this is usually how the scan will work with most software.
    1. place as many photos as you can fit on the scan bed (at most 4 4x6 inch)
    2. do an initial scan. This will take a few seconds and show all the photos on the bed in the preview window of the software
    3. select the individual photos by making a selection box around each photo.
    4. click to do a scan. The scanner will then start to do serious work. This process will take longer (how long will depend on what resolution and dpi you set)
    5. each selection box will be 1 file on the drive that you specified to be save to.
    6. profit

  • Noblejoker on 02/08/2020 - 12:39

    We found it wasn't easy or safe to pull the photos out to scan and that the albums didn't lay flat for a flatbed
    We bought one of those hand-held 'wand' scanners to do old photo albums
    One of this type https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=handheld+photo+scanner&ref=nb_…
    Buy for less than $100 and sell for $50 = cheap

    The resolution isn't awesome but good enough for Google storage and fair sized prints
    The scanner comes with SD card slot or usb so you can do multiple photos before connecting to storage
    One person scans all their albums - Can do scans in front of the tv or something
    Don't need fancy lighting etc - just balance album on your knee or set up a card table
    Person 2 can connect sd/usb to pc then check straighten/crop and upload.
    The next family member takes the scanner and repeats

    Lazy/Busy person option would be to find a service that does it for you or raise a job on a Task app or Gumtree
    If in metro Syd there will be someone who does it for sure - be sure they are trustworthy before you hand over the photos
    Good luck

  • CandyMan on 02/08/2020 - 12:42
    +1

    If you have the negatives buy a negative scanner
    Chances are if you kept all those photos you might have kept the negatives too

    • Noblejoker on 02/08/2020 - 12:43

      Good call - yes a negative scanner is awesome and fast - although don't buy a machine - plenty of services to scan negatives inexpensively

  • bumblebeetuna on 02/08/2020 - 21:32
    +1

    Have you not tried the Photo Scan in the Google Photos app? It's really pretty good. And free.

    It takes five shots to make a glare-free photo. The quality ought to be as good as your phone camera. And unless you expect to print them in the future, flatbed scanning is probably overkill.

    In Google photos (online), you can select multiple images, and date/time shift or edit location in bulk. Those two are really the only metadata that are useful for most people.

    If multiple people are helping, as long as they have a google account, the images can easily be shared and copied to other libraries.

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