The estimated reading time for this post is 14 minutes
The Wonder of Tech is honored to welcome Gary Braley back as a guest author. In the digital age, taking pictures has become easy but organizing them has become challenging. Many of us have accumulated a massive amount of photos without a clear plan of how to organize them, risking that all of our photos could be lost to future generations.
Gary’s experience with technology and photography gives him insight into the best ways to organize your photos to make sure that you’ll be preserving your family photos for future generations. By following his suggestions you’ll be able to transform your chaotic collection of digital photo files into a meaningful collection to share with family members for many years to come.
[note] Also see Gary’s previous Wonder of Tech article: The Mobile Tech Revolution after Five Years – Is Unfriending the Latest Trend? [/note]
_______________________________
We all cherish the few photos we have of generations past but how much time do we give to preserving the pictures we take today? Previously, the cost and difficulty of taking candid shots means we have a sparse record of what our grandparents looked like as youngsters – except an occasional family photo when they gathered around the dining room table on a holiday.
Today it’s easy and nearly free to take pictures by the thousands and show them to friends and family around the world. However, we rarely print photos so we won’t have the “shoebox” to pass along as our ancestors did – barring fire or flood. This article is aimed at helping you create your own digital shoebox.
This project is as much about history as photography. Think about viewers 75 years from now when Grandpa, the esteemed Dr. John (your family name goes here) is in poor health and preparing to log out for the final time. A snapshot of “little Jonny” sitting on his tricycle does not tell much of a story.
There are two ways to add to the story: context and narrative. The picture would be much more informative if it showed context – maybe including the yard where Jonny played or a couple of his friends or siblings. Or maybe a service station in the background showing the price of a gallon of gas!
Our history should include both photos and text so it is important
to add commentary to our image collection.
We often separate images from text because our computers have taught us to do this; we have word processing programs and photo editing programs. We often do what we criticize previous generations for doing – we don’t even put the names of the people on our pictures. Any narrative we can write that gives meaning to a photo will help –
“this picture was taken just before Uncle John was awarded the Noble prize”
or
“this picture was taken just before Aunt June was sentenced to 10 years of hard time for knocking off the local Piggly Wiggly“
– you get the idea.
Family Tree
For family photos, a family tree will help answer that age-old question – “just how am I related to little Sally who is the great grand-daughter of cousin Steve?” There are many family tree apps and web sites but no matter which one you use, or even if you do it by hand, you’ll only be saving images of the trees because the programs will likely vanish in a very few years. Most of us have encountered the dreaded “can’t open the file because the required software cannot be found” message.
Quality is more important than quantity. Think about those well-meaning relatives that accumulated boxes of family history with no organization that will make it usable for the next generation.
A hundred good images are better than
a thousand undocumented, sometimes duplicated poor ones.
Getting Down to Business
Preparing for future generations is not an easy task. In this section I’ll describe the eight steps you can take to make it happen. This may seem a daunting task at first but you don’t have to do it all at once and you have the choice at each step of going to any depth that you can handle.
1-Decide what pictures to keep
Keep in mind we are talking about a file of archived images separate from your personal collection. You will go through your collection and pull out images worth saving for the future.
First, ignore all the pictures of “Mt. Whatever” and the famous “hidden falls” if there is no personal connection in the picture. These images will be available via the year 2100 version of Google.
This doesn’t mean you should delete them from your personal collection or any social media or photo site; it just means they should not be in the long-term collection you are saving for future generations. Of course if someone in your photos is a better than average photographer, including some of her pictures will be important.
For family members this may be the hardest part. We have two or three pictures of our great, great grandparents and we wish we had more – but how many more – maybe 50 but not a thousand! Since babies and young people change faster than older folks, you’ll keep more of the early years than the thirties or forties. But since everyone is different, you’ll have to decide for yourself what and how many to keep.
2-Collect photos from relatives
You’ll certainly add value to your collection if you ask family members to send you some of theirs. If you do this project right, you could cause others to create similar collections to vastly improve your family memory collection.
3-Scan prints and slides
For me the age of digital photography started in 1999 – the year I purchased my remarkable 1.3 megapixel 3x zoom Olympus marvel for only $800. I never looked back or took another film photo again.
No matter what age you started we all have
our own slide/print/negative collection to contend with.
To deal with this, you need access to a decent quality scanner and you need to take the time to learn to use it well. Make sure you scan at high resolution; a 72dpi image looks just fine on the screen but will make a terrible print. If you scan prints, they should be at least 300dpi and slides at 1,000dpi. (dpi = dots per inch)
4-Decide what format to use
Since the word “format” strikes fear in the hearts of most people, I’ll make it simple – use JPEG (sometimes written JPG). This format is ubiquitous so it’s a good place to start. But
ONE BIG WORD OF WARNING ABOUT JPEG
Every time you make the slightest change to a JPEG image and save it you lose some quality. So, if you intend to crop (you probably should) or alter the contrast of an image make as many changes as you can at one time before saving the image. For the purists and more adventuresome, you might try PNG, TIFF or PSD (Photoshop).
If you do use JPEG, make sure you set the Quality to “best” or “highest” or whatever value is at the top of the scale each time you save it. This will maintain the image quality at its highest possible value.
High quality images have one drawback – they produce larger files. As storage costs continue to plummet this is less and less of an issue. The reason I recommend JPEG is that file sizes are smaller than other formats and its widespread use means its long-term future (or the future of its successors) is bright.
5-Edit, organize and describe them
Since you’ve eliminated the really bad photos in step 1, you only need to edit/improve the better ones at this stage. The biggest improvement will be to crop the photos to focus on the subject.
There is no best way of doing this – from one photo you might end up with a close up of a person’s face or that same person shown by his “new” car or an even wider view. In fact you could save two or three versions of the same picture.
Almost every picture could benefit from a slight change in brightness or contrast.
It is not cheating to alter the picture since the original
might have looked different with a slight change in camera settings.
One of my favorite discussions centers around what is the “real picture” and what changes would be considered fakery (Photoshopping) and what would be acceptable “improvements”. (I see a future blog post coming!)
The good news is you don’t need Photoshop – currently leased for $700 per year – to make these and many other changes. Mobile devices have hundreds of free and low cost image editing programs that work just fine – more than desktop PCs or Macs will ever have.
My best recommendation from this point on is to try and take better pictures from the start – don’t take a photo of little Jonny just as a bus drives in front of him. Of course if the bus runs over him and he’s clearly in a cross walk, a picture could make good evidence at the trial – so use your judgement.
This brings up one of my pet peeves – with all the great cameras we have, we take way too many poor pictures. Most people could benefit from learning more about their camera – no matter the make and model – and work to create better pictures right from the start.
Each image should be clearly labeled – names of key people or the group/event and year. This is where image processing apps fall short – it would be nice to add a sentence or paragraph to an image that could be easily viewed or printed with the picture.
At the very least each picture should be uniquely numbered so it can be referenced in narrative (discussed below).
Size matters but shape doesn’t
When you crop a photo, you’ll immediately be confronted with the question of image dimensions – often stated as aspect ratio and image size. As a general rule, you should never reduce the image size by shrinking the file size. But you can change the image aspect ratio.
Normal prints today are 4×6 just because that’s been
the common photo shape for many, many years.
If you were to crop an inch off one side of a 4×6 image then make another 4×6 print one of two situations will occur; the photo will be stretched sideways to make it fill the frame and 1/6 of the picture will be cut off at the top or bottom.
We run into this all the time when someone starts with a standard 4×6 image and tries to print it at 8×10 or 5×7, etc. The image will be cropped to fit in possibly undesirable ways. Alternatively you will see a 1/2 inch bar at the sides of the picture replacing the one inch you cut off.
The good news with our digital images is that aspect ratio is almost irrelevant – why? We’re only fifteen years into digital photography and we rarely print our photos; how many prints do you think your descendants will print a hundred years from now?
Any shape you make a photo today will likely display quite well with their unimaginable technology. The 35mm negative that got us into this predicament will be a very distant memory. That negative has the same 4×6 aspect ratio.
The files should be saved into clearly labeled folders – not just kept in the photo program on your device. You will eventually want to create backups and a good folder system will be necessary to do that.
Make sure you think about the folder names and include at least your name, the years included and a few other words. All folders should follow a similar naming convention. Of course folders can contain sub-folders. An example name might be “BRALEY-Gary-1990-1999-?????” Sub-folders might be made for individual years, people and/or special events.
6-Write the narrative including a family tree
A good family tree or trees will help immensely. No matter how you choose to make this tree – using an app or pen and paper, you will want to save an image of it (highest quality JPEG of course) and a text (.txt) version if available, in the corresponding folder.
You should also write narrative to accompany the pictures in the folder. While you should avoid keeping too many photos, you should not worry about creating too much narrative.
Narrative is the key ingredient we’ve been missing and text files are tiny compared to the average image file. That’s what’s often been missing from our family albums – the story behind the pictures. This narrative should reference photos by number and also be stored as txt and JPEG files in the folder with the photos.
Collecting pictures is the easy part; there are cameras and apps that will take a dozen frames a second.
If you are thinking about the future, throwing out the vast majority
of what you take and documenting the remaining ones is critical.
7-Decide where to store them (hint – not on Facebook or Picasa!)
You may post pictures to a dozen social sites but that is not where your real collection should be housed. There are way too many reasons why those collections may be lost or inaccessible and they are typically not organized with future generations in mind.
The collection I’ve been discussing should be stored first on your local PC, Mac or tablet computer.
While many pictures will be taken with a smartphone, these miniature devices
don’t work well for the editing and organizational work I’m recommending.
8-Decide how to back up the files
Backups should be multilevel. An external hard drive or flash/USB drives are good first choices. You need to guard against several levels of “threat” – a PC problem that crashes your disk, a fire or flood that destroys all computers and peripherals in your home and finally a loss of the cloud service you’ve been told was the perfect place to store things. If you have a safe deposit box, saving a flash drive copy of your hard work there once or twice a year might be a good thing to do.
We have no idea what the future will bring in terms of data storage so files will gradually need to migrate to new media – with unimaginable capacity, speed and lower cost if current trends continue.
The first hard drive cost $36,000 per year to lease and would have stored one digital photo! It weighed a ton and had a 4.4 megabyte capacity. You can see how far we’ve come! You can read more about the IBM RAMAC 350 here: First IBM Hard Drive.
CDs and DVDs are potential storage devices but these are gradually being phased out. While JPEG file formats will be readable for many years to come, it is likely DVD drives will disappear soon – many PCs are shipping without them today since software can be downloaded and movies are streamed.
If you do buy a computer without a DVD drive, I suggest you purchase an external drive so you can continue to make and read CDs and DVDs. I still have a 3.5 inch external drive that works just fine! There is nothing wrong with having an external drive; it means you have one but don’t have to carry it with you all the time in your laptop.
9-Make sure others have access to the collection
Finally, you need to make sure several people
can access your collection in case something happens to you
This includes a description of your “system” and passwords needed to access the files. You could also make a copy of your files and give them to a family member who shares your enthusiasm for preserving family memories; just another level of backup.
Conclusion
Since this my first attempt at describing this process, I’d really enjoy hearing your feedback. I’m sure it can be improved so I welcome your suggestions. Please tell us in the Comments section below how you have preserved your family photos in the digital age.
_____________________
About Gary Braley:
Gary Braley has worked as an information system developer and independent consultant in aerospace and health care. He worked on the guidance system for the Apollo lunar lander and led the development of medical information systems that were installed in hospitals across the country including the National Institutes of Health. He has published numerous articles and lectured frequently at conferences in the US and abroad.
Gary received a Master of Science degree in mathematics from Ohio State University. He currently speaks and writes about mobile information technology. Gary can be reached at [email protected].
→ You can sign up for his monthly newsletter here: Gary Braley Newsletter
→ Find his blog here: Technically Speaking
→ Gary’s website is: Gary Braley Website
*******************
Collage photos via Flickr Creative Commons (edited), courtesy of:
Family Tree illustration via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Hiking Artist
Mt. Rushmore photo (edited) via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of College of William & Mary
Family Pictures photo (caption added) via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Michael Jesson
Good advice, Carolyn and Gary. And, naturally, we can help once folks are ready to display the pics IRL in a unique way. 🙂
Hi James, Yes, Gary did a great job of helping us understand how to manage our digital photo files. We can easily become overwhelmed with the vast number of photo files stored on our phones and computers. Gary explains how we can make the task of organizing our photo files manageable so we can have meaningful photo memories for future generations.
You’re exactly right, James, WeMontage is another wonderful way to preserve our photo memories for future generations and let us enjoy those photos every day!
Hi Gary, and welcome to Carolyn’s blog 🙂
I loved the way you described everything in detail, especially the JPEG part of it, as I didn’t know that each time you save an image on JPEG the quality reduces! I guess I need to be more careful in that aspect.
I wanted to ask what should one do if one has old photo albums- can the pictures on that be saved or preserved too in some ways? Yes, I have taken pictures of those and tried to save a few but can never get the same quality, and I want these pictures as in the good old times they never had the Internet or the high-tech cameras 🙂
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead, both of you 🙂
HI Harleena –
You’re right – one of the additional problems is incorporating old photos from a shoebox or album. The only way to do it well, is to use a scanner. You can buy one or have it done by a professional service. If you have transparencies, you will need a scanner with a transparency adaptor. Take pictures of pictures yields very poor results.
This is a laborious process so it makes a good case for culling your collection before you begin. Keep the originals for your personal and immediate family use and scan only those that have long term (very long term) value.
A project like this is not easy to initiate but once you have the system set up and running, keeping it updated should not be difficult. And it should give you peace of mind to get a handle on your short and long term digital photo needs.
Thanks
Gary
Hi Harleena, Gary’s right, scanning photos can be a laborious process but perhaps you could get your girls involved in this family project. They can help you choose the photos to preserve and help you with the scanning.
Just think, someday their children will benefit from the work that you do together. You can talk to them about the importance of the project and share stories of relatives whose pictures you’re preserving. Just think, someday they may be sharing those same stories with their grandchildren!
Great pointers on the digital storage. Eventually people have to make the transition, so it is good to have the information out there.
Your right Sandra – people need to make the transition but I wrote this post because I’ve seen almost nothing addressing the problem in all the articles I read – about technology and photography.
I’m glad you found it worth reading and discussing.
Thanks
Gary
Hi Sandra, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, just as we transitioned from vinyl albums to digital music files we’re transitioning from film to digital photo files. If we lose a song in the transition it’s not a big deal, but if we lose a precious family photo, well that can be tragic.
Gary’s helpful suggestions here can help people make sure that future generations will be able to see the photos that we cherish today.
This problem is going to get worse. I have huge amounts if digital photos before I ven start to scan my container of old analogue photos.
1. I move all phone photos to my mac and immediately delete on the phone ( this means you shouldn’t get duplicates).
2. Immediately delete bad or duplicate photos. If you don’t do it then you will never do it.
3. Crop or fix the colour on your favourites ( and I can’t make up my mind whether or not to keep the original as well as the modified)
4. You need a good directory naming convention I use names like ‘family 2014’, ‘Mary’s graduation’, ‘Christmas 2014’ etc. about twice a year I copy to hard file. I used to write to CDs – I have boxes . One day they will need to be copied also.
5. Still looking for good cloud service – suggestions welcome.
6. Still looking for a good search facility that can at least do it by date of photo as 95% have no description.
Thanks for the article……..
Thanks Greg – all very good points.
Number 2 is the most difficult for me. I’ve always had an interest in photography and it is sometimes “painful” to decide that some are not worth keeping – particularly in the age of (almost) infinite storage of our zeros and ones!
I don’t have any best cloud service to use for photos – yet. I use a variety for a number of purposes but many are business related – Dropbox and iCloud being my favorites.
Thanks again and I hope others can chime in with suggestions.
Gary
Hi Greg, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Thanks for detailing your methods of preserving photos. You’re right, if you take care of duplicates and bad photos immediately after you take photos your job of preserving important photos will be much easier.
For cloud photo storage I recommend Flickr which gives you 1 TB of photo storage space for free. Flickr also does not compress photo files so you can store your photos in HD quality if you’d like.
You can read my review of Flickr here: Flickr – The Solution to Your Photo Storage Issues
Greg, after thinking about your quandary about saving originals and “corrected” images, I think I’d discard the originals. If you are merely making “cosmetic” changes that improve the quality of a family photo, I’d go just with the final result. If not, you’d need to explain why there are two different very similar pictures.
Gary
Hi Gary and Carolyn,
Well, a really good post.
Some days back when my PC crashed. My brother was in a state of shock cause he would lose his pics of around 2 GB. But by god’s grace, the PC was repaired and the pics wasn’t lost. After that we uploaded it to Box ( you may say Google Drive cousin) and now nothing can happen to them. They are stored online. Now, no fear of losing the back up.
Thanks Anurag –
By sheer coicidence I had my first ever disk catastrophy two weeks ago. My rather complex backup system – 30 years of PC use including videos, photos, etc. etc. – saved the day but not without some trauma. I hear way too many laments from those without any backup that lose it all with a single device failure – including those with many “precious” images stored only on their smartphone.
There are so many free and low cost cloud based services available today that no one should lose it all when a single device fails.
Gary
Hi Anurag, Wow you and Gary got very lucky. I have read stories of people who have lost precious photos because they lost their phones or their computers crashed and they didn’t have a backup.
I’m so glad you were able to retrieve your photos and that you’ve instituted a backup plan. Sometimes it’s the near misses that spur us to take precautions and back up our files!
Thanks for sharing, I found old family photos that i’d like to preserve and keep as family heirlooms before they fade or be destroyed in some unforeseen circumstance. this helps.
You’re right Jhinny – disaster involving our photos is a looming threat. You also mentioned fading and most people don’t realize that all photos on paper or film will fade to nothing after a period of time no matter how hard we work to preserve them. The good news is digital images can be preserved forever if we just manage to keep track of the zero’s and one’s involved – they don’t fade! Old photos from as far back as the civil war are only being preserved because they have been digitized.
Thanks for writing
Gary
Hi Jhinny, You’re very wise to preserve these family photos now. I’m so glad that Gary’s excellent article was helpful to you. Thanks for taking the time to let us know!
Hi Gary, Thank you so very much for this important article that helps people understand what they need to do to preserve their family photos for future generations. So many of us have a massive collection of digital photo files and we feel overwhelmed at the prospect of weeding through the files.
I really like your point about saving the ones that matter most and not the ones that can be found on Google. You’re right, it’s better to have 50 quality photos than a thousand photos that need to be sorted.
This article has been extremely popular today and I know you’ve helped a lot of people deal with this issue, Gary. Your solutions help not only Wonder of Tech readers, but future generations as well!
Hi Carolyn,
As is often the case, my ideas on this topic came out of necessity. I have the usual collection of digital and analog images in disorganized, mostly unlabeled files and folders. When a friend ask me about the long term issue two years ago, I realized I had never seen any detailed discussion going beyond current immediate solutions involving CDs and DVDs.
This approach was developed based on the idea that there really are two distinct collections based on two distinct audiences – our immediate friends and family and those in the future we will never know in person. To the latter group we will be one family of hundreds of ancestors and we can’t expect them to be enthused about our ten thousand “marvelous” photos 🙂
Keep up the great work on your blog. I know it is of benefit to readers of all levels of experience and interest.
Gary
Thank you for your kind words, Gary. You are always welcome here at The Wonder of Tech! :-bd
I have been saving both images and video of my niece since she was born that I intend to give to her when she is old enough to appreciate them. She’s 2 now, so I have a while to go.
The thing that worries me is the media or device that they are saved to. About 10 years ago I saved a bunch of images and other content to a CD. Today that same CD will not play on any device or computer. I don’t know what the deal is.
Also, all these image and video formats that we take for granted now I keep wondering if they will still be compatible and work years down the road. Probably for a while, but what about in 50-100+ years, who knows. I hope so.
Hi Ray,
You’ve brought up the single most important issue we face with preservation of information and images. We can be absolutely certain that any media we use today – CD, DVD and yes likely even hard disk drives will not be around in a hundred years. With old photo technology it was impossible to separate the image from the media. When the printed picture (media) was damaged so was the image. And every copy that was made was degraded. It was a losing battle.
Digital technology allows us to separate the image – just a very long string of zeros and ones – from the media. So, in theory we can transfer the image to the latest – probably biggest, probably fastest, probably cheapest thing we’ve ever seen. As an example one of my three terabyte hard drives has the capacity of 7 million of the floppy disks my first computer used. That means we have to work hard to move those images up the chain to the next media including the cloud. It is very likely that much of what future generations store will in fact be cloud based. We’re certainly headed that way today and dropping DVD/CD drives from our computers.
File formats represent the stumbling block. Even if a disk or tape can be read by a device, the files may not be usable by any installed or available software. The process is not going to be easy and few people would call it fun. Carefully culling our collection so the quantity is manageable will be an important first step. In the case of your niece – that is a very special image collection and in the long term – very long term – that collection will be culled as well. I have exactly that problem with my family members. What will be enjoyable to share for twenty years and what will be enjoyable a hundred years from now?
Thanks Ray for raising the difficult question of unreadable media – we have to face it like it or not.
Gary
Hi Gary,
Totally agreed, In today’s digital age we collect our all photos online specially on Facebook which I don’t like. I generally store all my photos on Google drive and can share it with selected people only. 😉
Hi Pankaj,
We’ve all gotten the “sharing” part down to a science. If you don’t like the offer of one service, there are a dozen others waiting in line and the amount of “free stuff” they offer is incredible. Those free business models are likely to fail from time to time so it is important to track your providers so the service does not “go dark” and you lose everything. Even major players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are facing problems because so much of what they offer is free or cheap. That’s the way to get into a business – give away a lot of product – but at some point stock holders start getting itchy – particularly after a multi-billion dollar IPO.
Thanks Pankaj for writing and I’m glad Google Drive is working for you.
Gary
Hi Gary,
I guess you’re totally right, Big giants like Google, Facebook etc. can stop offering free services. There are few examples as well, Google stopped “Google Reader” which was offering free feed reading solution. I’m sure you’re aware that millions of people were using that service. So, Its probably better to choose any specialized and professional service provider for preserving and sharing your photos.
Hi again Pankaj,
Free certainly can have long term costs. Online services can come and go very quickly – a Wikipedia search shows a listing of 88 products discontinued by Google since 2006 – 35 in 2014 alone. It’s true that some of these were rolled into other products but that generally involves a learning curve or migration process if files are being stored. It seems like the Internet/Web is just one big experiment with as many or more failures as successes. Since the Web component is only about 20 years old, I guess this is not surprising.
Gary
Thanks Gary to informing us about process of storing family pic. But few month back I don’t relay on online service to store family pic I usely take backup my regular external hard drive but one day when I plug it on computer it won’t dectact I am in kind of shock I tried several times but no use I have 10 GB photos and there is no backup then I contact to a person who repaired it from that day I relay relay on online service to store photos now I backup on two place one is online and other on my hard drive
Hi Gary,
Welcome to Carolyn’s blog and thanks for this great post.
I have exactly 33 photo albums and I kind of stopped putting pictures in them only because everything went digital and most people were just sharing them through the computer instead of sitting down and looking through an album.
I’m of the old school though and I love my photo albums. Last year we had a family reunion and I spent weeks scanning old photos to put on a presentation since it was the 25th anniversary since my grandparents had passed away. It played on the the big TV all day but that was a heck of a lot of work. To go back through all my albums, well I don’t see that happening at all.
I do have all of my digital pictures on first it was CDs, then it went to DVDs and not it’s on my external hard drive. I just bought another one just for all my photos plus I have another backup system that backs up my hard drive and then Carolyn suggested I also keep them on Flickr. So they are actually in about three to four different places just in case.
I don’t really like them on a digital drive though because it’s just hard to look at them when we want. Oh well, that’s what we’ve come to.
Thanks for sharing this information though and great job with this post. Hope you both are having a wonderful week.
~Adrienne
Thanks Adrienne,
It sounds like you’ve been into photo preservation (and organization) in a big way for some time – 33 albums + digital images – wow.
It’s unfortunately true that with the blessings of low cost and ease of distribution of digital information we are losing the art and craft of earlier media. Many of my friends comment on how much they enjoy the feel of an old fashioned book or newspaper – just as you enjoy your album collection. I’d be interested to know what kind of filing system you’ve developed for your hard drives full of photos. I also wonder what methods others have come up with for showing off those photos. I have an Apple TV connected to our television set and I can stream anything to it from my iPad and iPhone. That capability will only get better when tablet memory capacity grows sufficiently to accommodate many more photos – and videos.
As an aside, vinyl record albums are still being produced and some number of people still enjoy listening to them on real “record players” – technology that many people would have thought was dead in the 1980s. Maybe photo albums will be in style longer than we think 🙂
Thanks again for a great comment.
Gary
I started when I was in high school Gary and I have them dated. I’m annoyingly organized but I do love flipping through the albums.
I just started putting them on CDs at first so I have them by occasions and dates. Still not the best system but it’s all I knew how to do at the time. I can at least find what I’m looking for under the occasion. I liked my albums in the order though that things happened period.
This is a good thread. To add to previous post: one other thing I also do (and it is a bit expensive) is every time I upload to my mac I print the best examples. It may be a bit retro but a wadge of 4×6 glossy photos of family and friends is never far away. IMHO it is more social than handing someone a phone.
Question, when scanning old negatives is there an easy way of figuring out the right way up? I have scanned mirror images several times in error.
That’s a good point Greg – just because everything’s going digital doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy old fashioned photos – particularly since they are so inexpensive. Our refrigerator is covered with photos of friends and family! And occasionally giving special prints to special people seems like a more significant gesture than merely sending something by email.
And to your second point about slide scanning – I have a note taped to my scanner that says “shiny side down”. If you look closely at a slide you will notice one side is shiny and the other is dull. So try the “shiny slide down” rule and see what happens. Good luck and thanks for a good question.
Gary
Hi Carolyn, Its a great idea to store store the pictures of family and friends digitally. As now we all have moved towards the digital world and everything we see in now more technology friendly instead of the old big cameras that click your black and white picture. But most of the times if you see those old pictures now it rejuvenates that time again with colorful memories.
With everything going digital one can edit there pictures too and re-design them also with software present in the market. And storing them to retain for long is another thing to look for. Yes you are right that its not a good idea to store them on Facebook. Burning a Disc is an option to go for which is safe and easy to tore as many CD’s or DVD’s you want. Just like we used to store them on a Photogenic paper.
Regarding this post from Gary, I have to say that he has done a lot of effort in writing this. Its huge but interesting.
At last I have to say that the links you have provided for the websites and blogs for Gary are not working. May be there is some problem. hope to see it resolved soon 🙂
Have a great time !
Thanks Aditya
I appreciate your comments. In particular the one saying that my article was “huge” 🙂
When I started writing the issue just became more and more complex and I’m happy that Carolyn allows me to write as much as I want. We think today that everything has to be in 140 character snippets but there are many subjects that do not fit that “texting model”.
Thanks again.
Gary
Hello Gary,
I am glad that you have written everything covering the issue. Also, if the message was not conveyed properly won’t make an impact on other. Usually, no one wants to read and know about something that is not complete. So, really appreciate your inputs.
Hi Aditya, Thanks for letting me know about Gary’s links. I’ve corrected the error so his links work now.
Gary delivers both quality and quantity with his articles which is why I’m always delighted when he offers an article to The Wonder of Tech!
With this post I guess everyone will surely know what Gary delivers Carolyn. It is a much descriptive and quality post indeed.
Hi Aditya, I am not exaggerating when I say that I am honored to have Gary here at The Wonder of Tech. He always delivers quality. 🙂
This is actually a great tip for those who have lots of priceless photo memories that happens only once in your lifetime. Even if you attempt to recreate them again, the photos you will never be the same. Personally, I love taking pictures, whether on my smartphone or on a dedicated digital camera. At least once a month or when I am not doing anything, I choose some of the more memorable pictures I have taken within the month and back them up on the cloud as well as on an external hard drive that I have.
Hi Kevin, That’s great you’re taking steps to preserve your treasured photos, backing them up locally and in the Cloud. You’re very smart to be filtering them frequently so you don’t have to deal with thousands of photo files later!
Hi Kevin,
You’ve taken the first “giant step” toward maintaining a long term file – you select and store your best photos. We’d all have less of a problem if we’d been more selective about what we keep and what we toss. With the gigantic hard drives it’s so tempting just to keep them all and deal with it later 🙂
Thanks for writing
Gary
In my view storage part is the mist important part of preserving photos. We can keep our family photos in a cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive. Any way very informative post.
Hi Rahul, Yes, Gary did a great job of covering the most important parts of preserving your family photos. I’m glad you’re backing up your photos to the Cloud, Rahul!
Thanks Rahul,
It’s going to be exciting to see how the cloud evolves. Corporations are making great use of cloud services but most of us have barely tapped the potential. There are even cloud apps that help you track your other cloud apps – in case you run out of free storage on one and want to use others. I’m sure the “feature wars” among the various cloud vendors have just started. And certainly the amount of storage they offer is likely to increase significantly!
Thanks again for writing.
Gary