Photo Organizing with Scan My Photos

Perhaps you have a pile that looks like this? Fear not, you can turn this into organized digital photo albums to share with friends and family using a service called Scan My Photos.

Several years ago, I owned 12+ photo boxes. After I sorted and purged lots of bad photos, only the very best went to a few archival quality albums. Thousands of pictures were thrown away….yes, in the trash. Even baby pictures and wedding photos!

Once upon a time, I did traditional paper scrapbooking. I said goodbye to that hobby and hello to family travel where I learned to take fewer photos. You only need a few tell the story.

Digitize and Share

Digitizing my paper photos allows me to share them with friends and family. Recently, I scanned 200+ family photos. Afterward, I posted them to Facebook and the entire family commented on our favorite memories and which cousins resembled the aunts and uncles.  Something that can’t be done with photo albums or boxes.

Admittedly, I am biased towards digitizing. Largely because I have my eye on the next generation. When I consider my son, a digital native, it’s obvious that social media and cloud storage makes more sense.

Old Photos

Do you have a box of black and white family photos tucked away somewhere? Are you unsure of the people in them? Unfortunately, photographs like this hardly ever include important details.

My Grandma Alice was a rare exception. She detailed information on photos and sorted them into envelopes for her children. My cousins and I spent hours looking through them. What a gift she left us years later. Inspired by her efforts, I scanned the photos including this info with her handwriting as well.

Little by little, I reduced and organized our family photographs into a digital repository and cloud service. Now, I have peace of mind that memories are preserved and recoverable in the event of a disaster. (Like the pipe that burst in our home!)

Would you like that same peace of mind? Here’s how.

How to Sort and Scan Printed Photos 

For printed, pre-digital photos, your first step is to gather them all in one place.  Use bins or baskets to temporarily house them. Second, set up a table where you can work for several weeks and schedule time on your calendar for this project.

1. Rough sort chronologically into broad categories (ie; High school, college, wedding/before kids, 1st child etc)
2. Throw away photos – Do not skip this step. Declutter, reduce and simplify. Be brutal and choose the best of the best. Purge blurry photos, duplicates, redundant scenery, and unknown people.  Consider if it’s worth your time and effort to scan bad photos. Less is truly more when it comes to photographs.
3. Batch scan – Scan but before you do so, refine the chronological order and create a meaningful naming convention to save files to your computer. (Ex. 2010_SusieJones_BirthdayAge10.) Beginning each filename with the year will allow for easy sorting in the future. Even if the date is an approximation, labeling it with an educated guess is better than no date at all.  Note: For photo prints, 300 dpi is fine in general; scan at 600 dpi to make sure you get all the details hidden in your prints. Scanning beyond 600 dpi is wasteful; it’ll make the files bigger without giving you any additional image detail. Plus, the higher the resolution, the more time it takes to scan each photo. Consider scanning at 150 dpi if your plan is to just share via Social Media.

Batch scanning yourself is time consuming. It’s definitely the harder way to do this. Once you’ve rough sorted and thrown away photos, I recommend using Scan My Photos.

How to use Scan My Photos

1. I prefer to use the scanning service called Scan My Photos. I love this service. (They even offer Simply Enough readers a discount! Use SE45 at checkout to get 45% off!)
2. With several boxes of 1,800 photos, I had a great experience. I opted for “Scan in Order” which was well worth the additional cost to maintain the labels I created.  The pre-paid box is good for 6 months and includes shipping to and from their facility. I found the deadline to be a great motivator. The digital photos were scanned to cloud storage for me to access and copy to an external hard-drive. 

Additional Software Tools

1. Choose One Tool – My photo software is Photos for Mac where I edit, organize and create projects. No matter which software or website you choose, strive to keep everything in one place.
2. Routinely Back-up your favorites to a cloud service.  Shutterfly, iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon Prime – the options are endless. Choose one and stick with it.  Be sure to schedule routine back-ups of your very best photos. Cloud storage is typically free up to a certain level. You can save money by keeping only your highest quality favorites. It’s important to declutter your digital life too. Just choose the system that’s easiest for you and meets your needs.

Would you like help getting started? Contact me to schedule a free consult.

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