During quarantine, one of the bright sides of being at my parents' house for an extended period of time was that I could tackle longer term projects. One project I've been meaning to do was to gather all of family photos from the last ~35 years and go through the process of scanning, uploading, and organizing them all.
Why?
- During a move in 2008, a number of our family photos were ruined from liquid damage and I wanted to avoid that outcome in the future as much as possible. Family photos are one of those things in the house that cannot be replaced with any amount of money.
- With my family living all over the world, I wanted to a central location online for them to access family photos. We have Google Nest Hubs and Chromecasts set up as Google Photos picture frames for my parents and family members, and photo gifts from Shutterfly are an easy gift when holidays come around. More simply, we just want to be nostalgic when we're together so having these photos on our phone just makes sense.
Tools used
The Process
- Gather all photos from around the house This included finding all miscellaneous containers of photos and albums scattered throughout the house and removing photos from some old and beaten up photo albums.
- Scan photos using the scanner This scanner was about ~$50 from Amazon and really made it easy to scan photos at 600 DPI quickly. While my parents owned a printer with a flatbed scanner, I think it was worth investing in dedicated device to speed up the scanning and lessen the need to edit/crop photos. Scanning took place over multiple "sprints" where I would decide to tackle one box or album and have Netflix or Hulu in the background to keep me entertained as I scanned.
- Fix orientation and update the created date I noticed with the scanner, it struggled if I placed photos in landscape as there was some distortion caused by the feeder. I decided to scan all photos in portrait and fixed it using the built in photo tools in Windows. I also used a utility called EXIF Date Changer to update the created date of photos. I didn't do it specifically for each photo but batched them into larger events or event by decade. For example, all of my brother's baby photos were set to 1985 while my baby photos were set to 1993. That way when looking through the Google Photos album, photos were ordered generally by when they took place and not when I scanned them in.
- Upload to Google Photos and OneDrive This was pretty straightforward using the file upload utility from both services. I use Google Photos for the person search and album sharing features and I use OneDrive for the high res backup since I have 1TB of storage through my M365 subscription. I also created one backup to the Western Digital NAS located in the living room.
- Move physical photos into storage box system I found this plastic photo storage box set at Michaels and it really made it easy to subdivide photos into categories and store them safely. They are advertised to store up to 1600 photos which I think is accurate but I recommend buying multiple since one nearly full box is very heavy and I worry about the handle holding up to the weight. As I was placing photos into boxes, I used the label maker to create categories and place the sticker on the spine of the box.
Conclusion
This photo archival project has been one stay at home project that has been a relief. Now that our photos are scanned and backed up in multiple locations, my family and I have the assurance knowing that these priceless memories are both safe and accessible.