A few weeks ago I told you about my father and his move to a seniors apartment. As he prepared his home for sale, my sibling and I had the job of helping him sort through the things in his home. As I live the closest I drove out several times a week and my dad and I went through each room and decided what would be kept, what would be given away and what would be thrown out.
I especially wanted to be with him when he went through the family treasures (as I would call them) as I wanted to be sure that no photos or family history information was thrown away. I’m not saying he’d do that but he’s not quite as sentimental as my mom was or I am. I’m sure my husband would cringe each time he knew I was going out to my dad’s because there were a few occasions that I came home with a Jeep load.
One of the collections that I got was all the family photos. So that means every photo that my parents took or had, I came home with. It’s not that my brothers weren’t interested it was because they knew that I’d take on the task of sorting and scanning all the photos and then giving them access to them once I was done.
Scan Your Photos Month
September is “Scan Your Photos Month” and it couldn’t come at a better time. Did you know 1.2 Trillion photos were taken in 2017? 300 million are uploaded to Facebook every day and 574,500 are uploaded to Snapchat and Instagram every minute. What does your photo collection consist of?
So what’s the solution? Well for me it’s making a commitment to scan this new collection and get them stored. (I didn’t tell you that I had already managed to have all the photos I had before, scanned and stored digitally, now I’m back to where I use to be.)
So starting September 1st I’ll be setting aside time each day to scan some of the photos and I’d love you to join me. How can you do that? Well, you can sign up for the Save Your Photos Month email. Each day you’ll receive an email with a tip on how to organize, scan and store your photos. (don’t worry once the month is over you won’t receive any more emails unless you decide to sign up for the Hound on the Hunt blog to hear about upcoming challenges). Somedays will have more info than just the tip and some days maybe include discounts on items found at Shop the Hound.
Join I’m Getting My Poop in a Group
Why stop there? Let’s make this a party so please join our Facebook group; I’m getting my Poop in a Group where you can find other folks who are doing the same thing. Cheer each other on and offer suggestions. You may want to find an accountability buddy in the group that will help you stay on task. Be sure to post your progress.
But what’s a party without presents so we’re having a draw where we are giving away. (News of the draw will come later but here are the prizes)
- First Prize – $100 gift card from Shop the Hound (valued at $100 US)
- Second Prize – Forever Historian (valued $79.95 US)
- Third Prize – Vivid-Pix RESTORE Software ($49.99 US)
- Fourth Prize – Photo Organizing Made Easy: Going From Overwhelmed To Overjoyed (Paperback) $14.99 US
Join me for Save Your Photos Month and start scanning those photos and “Getting Your Poop In a Group”.
Note; If you sign up after September 1 you will receive the tips for 30 after you sign up but the absolute last day to sign up will be Sept 30th. All special offers in our emails will be available for 30 days after they are offered. The contest closes on September 30, 2018
In the case of the second, third and fourth prize; if you purchase any of the prizes we give away in our contests, we will credit you for your purchase.
I have scanned boxes full of photos and documents. Don’t forget to scan vital records too. I also found and scanned travel documents, passports, naturalization certificates and even individual family census records from the old county where it was done as a card listing the members of each family. It did not include unrelated people living in the same house. For example, on my grandparents’ record for 1907, it listed my grandfather, my grandmother and my father who was an infant with their ages and their address. My father was the firstborn so it was the first such record of the family. In 1908 they came to Canada so the 1911 and the 1921 censuses are the next records. Military records overseas also included spouses, wedding dates, children’s name and birthdates on the soldier’s record. Unfortunately, in many cases I only inherited copies of pictures on regular paper and also slides and negatives. Sometimes those are the only versions. My brother in the last few months of his life scanned over 300 negatives found in the basement of the farmhouse. Some are not the greatest but I have been working at improving the quality. He was dedicated to this task so that his family – children and siblings, even cousins, could have these rare family pictures.
Xenia, up until receiving this last collection I had scanned all my personal photos. At that point, I didn’t have any mementos but now I do so I will be making the same effort as you described of scanning absolutely everything. It won’t be completed this month I’m sure but I think the important thing is to have a plan and start working toward your goal.
I LOVED Picasa! It was so easy to store, sort and edit my photos. Very user friendly.
Storing everything on Shutterfly now, but I miss the tools to edit my photos.
Anything out there as easy to use as Picasa, and as affordable?
I found a scanner program online called ScanSpeeder for $30. Once you tell it what scanner you are using you can scan multiple photos and it crops each one separately AND it makes 2 copies of each photo. One is jpg and one is a tif for archiving. But you can also tell it you only want jpg’s or only want tif’s.
There is a place to tell it which folder you want it in and what to call the photos. Example: Grandpa Fred’s Album, then each photo will be called Grandpa Fred’s Album 1, then Grandpa Fred’s Album 2 and so on.
It also straightens the photos if they are slightly crooked.
I got a large format printer/scanner and I can fit quite a few photos on it, really helps with the scanning time.
Thank you for the info on the program. I will check it out.
I have thousands of pictures in “Picasa” and about a month ago started loosing pictures. Google wanted me to do the new Google but no luck getting on.
What is a good program to use?
Thanks
Thomas
Thomas, I’m a Forever Ambassador so I use Forever Storage for my cloud storage and I use Forever Historian when I work with my photos on my computer. The storage cost more but I know that I own my photos for my lifetime plus 100 years. So I can give all my family access to view and download (if I want) and I can also bequeath my account to anyone I designate. So even if Forever.com went out of business it’s backed by a fund to preserve the photos for that time period. They guarantee that my photos are stored at full resolution with no compression and that they will be updated over time with the latest technology.
You can find out more at Forever.com
I must have thousands of photos I would have to do. Is that something that is doable? I would love to scan them and preserve them that way. This sounds like a way to do what I want, but at the same time almost overwhelming! I need help in getting this started!
I totally understand it, when you have thousands of photos it can feel overwelling. I think the important thing to remember is that there are no deadlines. You do your photo scanning at your own pace. Be proud that you’ve decided that this is something you want to do and take the first steps to start the process.
Does ReStore work on all versions of MACS now? Really hoping it does, and if not yet, will it be soon?
Yes RESTORE does now works on both PC and MAC