6 Steps Before You Scan Old Photos

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Have you got old family photos that need to be preserved? Now is the time to preserve and scan old photos for future generations. In this post, I will discuss 6 steps that you will need to take before you scan your old photos.

If you are passionate about your family history then you will want to be prepared before you begin scanning your old family photograph collection.

So, please read on.

Where are all your photos?!

We all have them. Photographs spread all over our homes, in cupboards and drawers, in shoeboxes, and probably up in the attic or down in the basement too.

They may be sealed away in either envelopes or boxes, or maybe not even stored but are loose and gathering dust.

If you are passionate about your family history and preserving your ancestors’ memories and stories then you will need to act now.

Take the time to do this now before your old photographs completely fade or disintegrate.

You will be heartbroken if this does happen to you.

Discussed in this post:

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1. Find All Your Photographs

The first step in this process is to find all of the old family photos that you have around your home. These places as I have explained could be anywhere in your house.

They could be in any room and they could either be carefully stored away or not.

Search your home thoroughly!

So, have a thorough search around your home. You may be surprised as to where these photos are kept.

It is surprising what we find around our homes when we decide to have a clean-up. You may also be amazed at the level that the photographs have degraded to.

Don’t be disheartened this though as I will cover what resources are available to restore photos in a later post.

You need to take the time now to preserve these photographs before it is too late.

You want to do this so that your ancestors are remembered and their stories and memories are preserved for generations to come.

It’s important to pass something on to your children at least. Isn’t you?

2. Clean Your Photographs

After you have found all of the photos around your home then you will need to clean them. This is important to do as any dirt or dust on the photograph will show up when you scan them.

A clean picture will mean that a sharper picture can be scanned.

Cleaning best practices!

You can do this by using a microfibre cloth. This type of cloth will help lift the dust off the photograph.

You will want to be gentle though when handling the photograph.

Before you start though make sure that your hands are clean and free of lotions and perfumes.

You will not want any oils or residues to make contact with these photographs as they will have a damaging effect on them.

You may be thinking to yourself about wearing gloves.

However, despite white gloves appearing in this post, you may be surprised to know that you do not need these at all.

You may be doing more harm than good by wearing them!

Let me explain.

To wear or not to wear gloves!

In the first place washing your hands thoroughly will ensure that no damage will be done to your family heirlooms.

As your hands are clean then there are no oils to pass onto the photograph.

If you do wear gloves then this will affect your ability to lift your photographs and handle them.

You will not be as dexterous as you would be if you were without them. Wearing gloves may even result in you bending your photos.

The gloves you wear may also leave small fibers that will attach to the photographs and as a result, do damage.

Gloves can also absorb moisture and this can then be transferred to your photographs as well.

3. Organize Your Photographs

Once you have found and cleaned all of your photographs then your next step will be to organize them. Now, why should you do this I hear you say?

Well, it’s simple really!

You do not whack any of your ancestors here, there, and anywhere into your family tree do you?

No, you follow a pattern.

You start with yourself and then move up the tree, one branch or line at a time.

You work logically.

Organizing your photos is important because:

You can tell how many photos you have for a particular ancestor, and
Whose picture is missing from your family tree?

You could ask your relatives to help you with this by inquiring whether they have photographs that they could give or lend to you.

They could then help you with photos of ancestors that you may be missing.

Or, they may even have better quality photographs than you have.

4. Prepare Your Scanner

You may think that once your photographs are cleaned and in order then you can start scanning. Well, I’m afraid that you’re not quite ready just yet. There are a few more steps to go until you are ready.

You have already found and cleaned your photos of any dirt by using a cloth.

What is the point of taking the time and care to clean your photographs only to use a dirty scanner?

No point at all is there?!

Any dust or dirt that is on the scanner will show up on the scanned picture.

After you have cleaned your scanner you will need to become familiar with how it works.

If this is the first time using your scanner then I recommend you to read the manual.

Make sure you understand all the different settings.

Another good tip is to conduct a few tests with your scanner so that you know how the different settings will affect the scanned picture.

Most scanners have their editing software so do these tests first to become accustomed to them.

You will kick yourself if you realize only afterward that you could have done a better scan by changing a setting.

5. Decide On A Naming Convention

By this stage, you have organized your photographs by a family member. There is therefore no point undoing this hard work by naming your scans as image001, image002, image003, and so on.

By doing this you will not be able to easily find a particular ancestor that you are after.

So, how should you name them?

My approach when filing any material about my ancestors is to break them down by branches, (or surname).

So, for each different surname in your family tree, you can have a different folder for each of them.

If you have more than one ancestor with the same name then you could add their birth year to help differentiate between them.

There’s a problem though …

The problem though with this approach is where do you put the women in your family?

Either the folder with her maiden name or her married name?

You could decide to put the scanned picture into both folders.

Rather than have two copies of a picture, (and wasting storage memory), you can put the photograph of a female ancestor before she was married within her parents’ folder.

Then if you have photos of her when she married and afterward you can put her in the folder with her married name.

Of course, you may decide to use a different naming convention than me.

And that’s OK. Whatever works for you!

It doesn’t matter as long as you can find any particular photo that you are after without any problems.

You want a system that you are comfortable with.

6. Decide Where To Store Your Photographs

By now you have done some testing and thought of how you are going to name them and organize them on the computer. The last step then is to consider where you are going to store your scanned photographs.

Trust me, you want to think about this before you start scanning.

Different choices for you!

You may decide that you just want to store them solely on your computer.

However, you would be foolhardy to do just that.

What would you do if your computer crashes and you couldn’t retrieve your scanned photos?

You’ve probably spent hours upon hours scanning your old family photos. The heartbreak that you would feel I could only imagine if this happened to you.

You would have to re-spend that time scanning and scanning again.

Make duplicates!

So, why not make duplicate copies of your scanned pictures onto various devices besides your computer?

You may even want to store your photos in separate folders or drives on your computer.

That way if you are working on a picture and make a mistake at least you can rely on the original backup.

Options that are available to you include portable drives and flash drives, as well as the cloud.

The term cloud simply means “over the Internet“.

Popular cloud services include Amazon Cloud Drive, Dropbox, and Google Drive, (which I use).

My Final Thoughts

Hopefully, after reading this post you are now more aware of the steps involved before you start scanning your old family photographs.

You want to do this phase of your family history justice so that the memory of your ancestors lives on.

So, I do urge you to prepare yourself before you start to scan your collection of old photographs.

You do want to be wasting your time if you haven’t done it right, to begin with.

Or, waste your time if you lose all that hard work due to your computer crashing.

Photographs are a great way for people to connect to the stories you have told about them.

By seeing the individual you do feel more connected to them, they are family after all.

Further Guidance!

If you require further help please head on over to Make Use Of. There you will find the 3 Best Ways to Scan Your Old Photos.

Brian shares with you why you should be scanning your old photos, as well as how to scan them at home, how to use an app, or use a photo scanning service.

Thank You and Please Leave A Comment

I hope you enjoyed this post which helps you with the steps that you need to take before you begin to scan old photos in your collection. If you have any questions or comments then please leave a comment below.

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