Using "real" photos?

There is a service that will scan all your photos for you. For $49.99 they will scan up to 1000 photos and for $99.99 they will scan even more. All are scanned at 300dpi.

If you still have the negatives, I would go ahead and use the photos. You can use the negs later for reprints.

April Mommy to Abby (10-02)

I use my "real" photos. I figure that putting them on a scrapbook page, as long as everything is acid/lignin free, is about as safe as I can get them. Besides I don't really have the space to have both albums and photo storage.

I think as long as anything touching the photo is acid/lignen free, the original should be okay. What you could do is, scan one envelope at a time. The photos aren't going anywhere, are they? :-) So, break it down into smaller chunks. Scan one envelope, and then you can use the originals in a LO. You'll still have the photo scanned for archival purposes. One good think about scanning the photo is, you can use photo software and 'fix' any issues with the photo. Then you could print the 'fixed' photo, and use it if you like it better than the original.

My Mom has a box of older photos...well...2 boxes actually. One box is our family pictures, starting when Mom & Dad got married in 1964. Three kids later....plus 3 grandchildren...you can imagine the number of photos she has. The other box is old, old, old family photos of my grandparents, great grandparents, etc. These photos go back 4 or 5 generations! Definately a heritage album in the making. I'm hoping that this summer mom and I can start some scanning and coping these really old photos over to CD. Then I can bring them home, play with them here, make copies of 'fixed' (if need be) photos onto CD again, then give those to Mom, too. A lot of work, but those really old family photos are precious to me because I've heard so many stories about those people. I don't want the photos lost forever!

Sorry for the babbling! LOL

Status report:

I've been sorting tho old photos. I've got 6 photo boxes of 'em. What I've found is that many were done when "double prints" were pretty standard ... so I've got two of each. Woohoo!

A lot are just culls. Our digital cameras now sure do yield much better photos!

A lot of images that I like are ones that need some work. I'm sure I can fix their bad tints and crookedness in my editing program, so I'll be scanning those anyway.

I do have negatives for most of the ones I took. Ones that were given to me I'll just scan.

Now that I'm deep into this project, it isn't so bad. The worst part is getting them dated. I've resorted to comparing my son's development between envelopes of prints to sort them in rough order, then the Christmas photos (which are very recognizable) mark the years. I could have saved myself a lot of work if I had just dated the envelopes as I got them over the last 25 years! I also wish I'd known a few memory-photo tricks like:

- Always take a group shot at a special event

- Get a picture of an identifying sign on trips (hotel, park, etc)

- Switch off photographer duties so you don't wind up with no shots of yourself or husband

- Let yourself be photographed, even if your hair isn't combed or you've put on a few pounds

Working madly, Gina

I've been doing the same things with my 32 years of photos. I've had to compare sizes of children, how many were in the group shots, what kind of clothing they were wearing, and even background (remodeling of the house). It seems I kept more info on the remodeling projects with the house than I did with the photos. One good thing that I did was to take a shot of the children in front of the tree every year. That really helped. Good luck with your sorting. Sandy

I'm so glad to hear the sorting is going better than planned. Thank you for the reminders on the photo tricks! I am real bad about being the one who takes the pictures, which means future generations will either think I drifted off the planet, or I was never there at events. LOL

Several years ago, my mom was sorting through photos. I remember her trying to figure out if the birthday was mine or my sisters and having a hard time figuring it out. My sister and I are 5 years apart, but we look a LOT alike. Mom used the number of candles on the cake, the cake decorations, and where we were to figure out who it was.

Don't feel bad. My mom read an article that stated that the cling albums of the past are damaging to photographs. All our family pictures were in those types of albums all 65 years of them. LOL. I told her MOM TAKE THEM OUT ONLY IF THE PAGES ARE YELLOW!!! /did she listen NO. She took them all out and didn't keep them in the year order they were in the albums. so now she has the daunting task of figuring out WHAT YEAR THE PICTURE WAS TAKEN. In the album was journalling as well which is now lost.

It took her 2 years but she managed to put all the photos in some sort of album that was archivally safe.

LOL Kate