If a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so too can your journey to organize old photos begin with a single step. If you are like me and have many boxes of "inherited photos" as well as boxes of your own photos you may wonder where to start with the challenge of getting them organized. There is no denying that converting old photos, negatives and slides to digital is the way to go. Not only are you giving your photos a longer life you open yourself up to more possibilities when deciding what to do with your photos.
Converting your photos, negatives and slides to digital does mean that some sorting must be done. As a person who can go through stacks of photos and still have difficulty discarding any (what is this a picture of, or who is this), not to mention using the delete key on my computer I understand what a difficult and daunting task this can be. Back to the idea of starting with a single step. Assess your photos and sort them into categories: old family photos, high school pictures, travel photos, family vacations, photos of your children, or whatever makes sense to you. Once you have sorted your photos into categories you will find it easier to start tossing away the photos that are out of focus, over or underdeveloped, photos that no longer matter to you, or that are just plain unattractive.
The next step is predicated by budget; which ones are you going to have made digital. If you do not have a lot of photos to convert you may decide to use a local drug store chain or a photo finishing company that offer this service. I have found this to be costly and I have not necessarily been impressed with the quality of my scans once I reviewed my DVD. A drug store franchise known for it's camera and photofinishing department charged me $2.00 a scan plus an additional charge to put it onto a DVD. As I needed to scans quickly for a photography class that I was taking I paid the price, but quickly reduced the number of photos I was thinking of using. If you have lots of photos to convert and don't require next day service a better (higher quality at less cost) alternative is to ship your photos to a company that specializes in this type of work. A few companies that I recommend are scanyourphotos.ca and digitalscancanada.ca in Canada and scancafe.com in the U.S. These companies have quality controls, they inspect your photos, clean your slides, do colour correction in some instances and some will provide recommendations on resolution before starting your work. All of these companies have tried and true shipping practices in place so that you can rest easy knowing that your pictures are in good hands. Some of these companies will even accept your photos in albums or slides in trays and they will do the sorting for you. They charge more for this service but if you don't have the time or the motivation to tackle it yourself it may be worth it.
Once you receive your DVD with your images the sky is the limit when it comes to what to do with your pictures. Photoshop Elements (the junior version of Photoshop) is a reasonably priced, easy to use program that will enable you to do colour correction, change images to Black & White or sepia, as well as create photo montages or picture collages, creativity made easy!
Many companies let you download their photo programs so that you can use their templates to create professional looking coffee table books. Some good companies to try are Shutterfly, Blurb, and Picaboo.
All offer online tutorials and easy uploading of pictures, allowing you to easily make a very professional looking coffee table book. Have a look at make-your-own-photo books.com for some great ideas and links to companies that provide these services.
No time to take on a photo book project? There are companies out there that will do this work for you at a reasonable cost. Isn't it time to take that first step?
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