sxp | 12 comments | 2 months ago
I ran into this problem recently for a family reunion where we wanted a slideshow of photos that were decades old. The best solution was to manually scan them using Google Photoscan which involves taking a 5 pictures of each photo with a phone and letting the app remove reflection, perform skew correction, crop, etc. This resulted in better photos than just using the phone's default camera software, but it still took 10+ seconds for each photo.
Does anyone have an recommendation for at home photoscanners that would allow me to drop a stack of photos into it and have it automatically scan them? I found various devices on Amazon that target this use case but they all have drawbacks like low resolution or excessive manual work. Has anyone done this with their family's old photos?
genewitch | 2 comments | 2 months ago
I then set up a "photo website" using a static photo site generator, and then uploaded the output to a racked server we have. Afaik no family members I sent the link to even looked. Oh well. I also sent the tiffs to Amazon glacier where it costs something like $20/yr to keep there.
Unless something has magically happened in the last six years, I'd still steer clear of negative scanners and flatbeds.
The Epson is soooo fast!
JKCalhoun | 0 comments | 2 months ago
darknavi | 1 comment | 2 months ago
It's janky. I had to try a few USB cables onces the original broke because a cat ate it, had to try specific USB ports, and the software is a bit rough. But the software allows you to scan both sides of photos, auto "enhance" while keeping originals, and do about 40 like-sized photos in an effortless batch.
It's also good for doc scanning!
I lend it to all my friends and family that have similar projects.
genewitch | 0 comments | 2 months ago
I have noticed in the past 4 years or so that i am throwing away "broken" USB cables at about 10x the rate of the years prior, so maybe the overall quality of cables has gone down? Even extension cables - those are "breaking" at a very high rate - and i mostly use those for wired controllers!
kmoser | 0 comments | 2 months ago
After scanning everything, my endgame was to look through all the images, copy the best into a separate folder, crop and edit them, and produce a book. I made a dozen copies of the book and mailed them to all my relatives. The original negs are stored safely away, and I have a hard drive (with multiple backups) available in the event somebody wants me to send them a scan.
Long story short, I would take the time to do it manually. Even with an automated scanner, the chances of things going wrong is fairly high, especially if your prints vary greatly in size and condition (bends, warps, etc.). Yes, it is a ton of work, but the end results are worth it. If 10+ seconds per photo is too much for you, just bite the bullet and send them out to a scanning service.
qingcharles | 0 comments | 2 months ago
Clean anything before you scan, as best you can, while being careful. I used to do this professionally many years ago, but I don't remember the products. I had a bunch of different cleaning sprays, brushes and cloths. Different sprays melt different emulsions on photos and negatives, so always test in unimportant area before use.
I would also say to keep the unprocessed original scans, before any dust/scratch removal, color correction etc, since post-processing techniques are in a rapid state of flux lately.
I was lucky enough to use one of these $25K beasts:
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/HasselbladFlextightX5.html
The problem was the algorithms for removing dust and scratches in bulk. Look up what the latest tech is there. Always color correct old photos and negatives. They will have faded in some way. Use white point and black point tools to hint the software and you'll get 95% of the way there if you can find bright white and very dark spots in a photo. If you are properly serious, then make sure to use hardware to color calibrate your scanning tool and your editing monitor. Use something like an IT8 target:
https://www.silverfast.com/products-overview-products-compan...
And something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Datacolor-SpyderX-Pro-Calibration-Pho...
Save all your originals in some uncompressed TIFF/RAW/DNG format.
JKCalhoun | 0 comments | 2 months ago
Having said that though, occasionally if there was a sheet from a photo album where several photos were glued down, I canned the whole page of the photo album itself rather than risk damaging the photos by removing them.
FWIW, if a photo album is in my care, I first go through and photograph each whole page of the photo album, turning each page in order, so as to capture the layout of the photo album, order, and perhaps comments under each photo.
I do then carefully dissect the album so as to scan each individual photo (at 600 DPI as suggested in the article) and then to permanently store the photos in plastic sleeves. Photo sleeves then go into an album that has a storage box for it.
For dead relatives, I clean up the scans, fill out relevant metadata (date, description) and upload them to findagrave.com, ancestry.com, etc. The more places I can share the photos the better they'll both find other interested parties and likely outlive me. (My iCloud of course has a complete set of scans as do hard drives about.)
(Note: use Apple's Image Capture app that is included with MacOS, maybe an Epson scanner, Apple's Photos works well enough for me to retouch, adjust the finished scan ... older versions of Photos had a better retouch tool though so I keep an old High Sierra machine around just for photo retouching.)
Brajeshwar | 1 comment | 2 months ago
The ideal flow would be having a good-quality flatbed scanner and hiring someone to scan them. (I'm in India and the cost is comfortably affordable to set up such a process.)
Recently, when colorizing and animating photos was new and fun, I animated pictures for a few of their great-grandparents. It made quite a few grown-ups cry with joy.
vishnumohandas | 2 comments | 2 months ago
Could you share the tool you used for this please? Thanks!
Brajeshwar | 0 comments | 2 months ago
Brajeshwar | 0 comments | 2 months ago
andrew_eu | 0 comments | 2 months ago
I bought an Epson ES-580 automated document feed scanner, and still am pleased whenever I use it. The workflow for digitizing them was: USB stick directly in the scanner, put ~200 same-size photos at a time in the feeder, press "Go" and it'd scan about 3 seconds per photo (at 600 DPI, closer to 1 at 300 DPI). While scanning I'd set up the next stack, and periodically copy everything from the USB stick to a NAS.
Incidentally I used to work in a film darkroom and have a bit of experience with negative and slide scanners. Even in the best cases, they're tedious and finicky. If you want to digitize a perfectly clean 35 mm and scale it up to poster size then perhaps it's worth the effort. If you want to just preserve memories, even a bad photo of a damaged 4x6 print can still mean a lot.
INTPenis | 0 comments | 2 months ago
Their app is horrendous but it allowed me to connect my phone to the scanner and when you became used to the process you could scan one photo every ~10 seconds. The only movement you did was changing the photo in the scanner and hitting the Scan button.
Until you photos have a different format. I tended to save those in one pile and do them in one go because the app was just so bad, specifically when all you wanted to do was change the format.
But this is an old method, you could do this 10 years ago in the exact same way I bet.
After the scanning I had to run a script that cropped out all the white around some of the photos. (ImageMagick convert using the -trim and -fuzz options)
wdaher | 0 comments | 2 months ago
tomjen3 | 1 comment | 2 months ago
If it disagreed with you, too bad, but it was pretty good for 99% of cases. For some reason this was a windows only thing though.
When I scanned my last pictures I brought a portable one and handfed them. It is actually not too bad, so long as the pictures are relevant to you, because nostalgia sets in.
JKCalhoun | 0 comments | 2 months ago
ahazred8ta | 0 comments | 2 months ago
asciimov | 1 comment | 2 months ago
I had the pleasure of using a Epson FastFoto FF-680W. I was very impressed with the color correction. It brought back some color prints from the mid-70s that I've never seen without their color fade.
JKCalhoun | 0 comments | 2 months ago
If you are careful about using the retouch tool to remove scratches and dust (that may have been present the negatives even) and if you are careful with adjusting levels, I am pretty sure I can say I have created modern versions of the images that are even better than the originals were.
And BTW, if you want to really up your game on some of the better photos, have a 8 x 10 printed by a lab using aye-sub printer to print to metal (aluminum). Assuming you have a high quality image, you will be blown away at how much dynamic range you can get from a metal print. Stunning. (Shhh ... I'll be making Christmas gifts this year from some of the family heirloom images.)
nerfbatplz | 0 comments | 2 months ago
random_ind_dude | 1 comment | 2 months ago
The photos are kept in albums inside plastic sleeves. What he does to preserve them is to take the photos out of their sleeves every few months and keep them outside for a few hours in a dry place. He makes sure his hands are clean and dry before he handles the photos.Then he puts the pictures back in the albums. He has done this diligently over the years.
kmoser | 1 comment | 2 months ago
random_ind_dude | 0 comments | 2 months ago
Yeah. That's plausible.
I haven't actually seen how he dries the photos. I don't think he keeps them in direct sunlight, since like you said, direct sunlight will cause the colors to fade faster.
contrarian1234 | 1 comment | 2 months ago
Temperature: A cool 65-70°F (18-21°C)
Humidity: A comfy 30-40%"
This already seems impractical in most of the world... I'm not really sure how you'd ensure that in an affordable way - and the article doesn't really offer any advice. Maybe if you get some special sleeve that keeps the inside dry, and then place the photos in your refrigerator?card_zero | 2 comments | 2 months ago
Remember, at Ente, we're all about keeping memories safe in the digital realm. Having a digital backup is like photo insurance. You wouldn't want something to HAPPEN to those photos, would you? Like maybe they could burn down. You oughta buy our service, you know, as insurance. This blog post is for informational purposes only.
Hmm, actually seems to be a free app. But a business, somehow. Ah, freemium cloud storage, right.
goodburb | 1 comment | 2 months ago
iCloud on a Mac with optimize photos off is the closest without encryption, but trash is 3-way sync with day limit and hence not a backup...
Jottacloud/Koofr/OneDrive have full featured desktop sync and infinite time trash locally but the mobile gallery is unpolished, no on-device AI search, and no encryption.
While other clouds allow 3rd-party clients, some hide and prevent the phone gallery from being synced offline when using the API. Using Rclone or others is complicated.
Synology NAS (with C2) and Ente seem to be the only ones to keep your photos portable and intact while having a true local backup, Ente being much easier to setup.
contrarian1234 | 2 comments | 2 months ago
How is any of that related to the article and their intentions with publishing it?
goodburb | 0 comments | 2 months ago
No, I don't work for ente... I posted the article here.
Parent comment opposes cloud backups for probably valid reasons, but nowhere it was mentioned in the article, the commenter altered the text, they didn't even mention using their service or "cloud", suggesting that the parent commenter is talking about cloud backups generally. I provided my feedback on using different cloud services since it seemed unfair.
Original: "At Ente, we're all about preserving memories (digitally, that is), but we know that those physical snapshots hold a special place in your heart."
"6. Digital backups Here's where Ente's expertise shines! While we're all about those physical originals, having a digital backup is like photo insurance.
Scan at high resolution (at least 600 dpi)
Save as TIFF for top quality
Store copies in multiple places "
"Remember, at Ente, we're all about keeping memories safe in the digital realm. But we know that those physical photos hold a special kind of magic. By following this guide, you're ensuring that the smiles, the awkward hairstyles, and the love captured in those images will continue to tell your family's story for generations to come."
vishnumohandas | 1 comment | 2 months ago
contrarian1234 | 2 comments | 2 months ago
vishnumohandas | 0 comments | 2 months ago
I did not know a bunch of things mentioned in the post. We've learned more from this thread. And feedback noted, we'll work on providing more information.
goodburb | 0 comments | 2 months ago
atorodius | 1 comment | 2 months ago
tobr | 2 comments | 2 months ago
lelandfe | 0 comments | 2 months ago
mkranjec | 1 comment | 2 months ago
wizzwizz4 | 0 comments | 2 months ago
kvetching | 1 comment | 2 months ago
Does anyone know of a scanner that does better than 600dpi that isn't insanely expensive? High quality photos can have extreme details that 600 dpi can't capture.
contrarian1234 | 0 comments | 2 months ago
Ex: https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Resolution-High-Rise...
(first one that comes up when I typed "Amazon Epson Scanner")