One question that comes up frequently in the context of downsizing to move aboard is what to do with old photo albums? No one wants to throw them away. In fact, most of us would love to take some with us, except for that space problem.
Scanning Before Cruising
Before we left to cruise the first time, I went through all our old photo albums. I scanned our favorites — several thousand of various family members, trips we’d taken, houses we’d lived in and so on.
It was a big job, using a flatbed scanner and doing one at a time. Even though I had what was, at the time, a “fast” scanner, it still took several minutes per photo to scan it and save it.
Yet it was one of our best downsizing moves — I am so glad to have those photos with us. I keep a number of them on my phone. It’s surprising how many times as I’m talking to someone I pull out a photo to show the boats we raced on or a trip we went on. And every so often we play them on the laptop as a random-order slideshow and reminisce. And some people keep a digital photo frame (Amazon) to display a revolving selection.
Scanning them also means that I was a lot less nervous about putting all the old scrapbooks into a storage unit. I know that should something happen to them, I’ve got copies. Just to be sure, I keep two backup sets:
- one on an external drive. This is the successor to the one I have (a 1TB drive now costs just $50), and
- one in the cloud (Carbonite, DropBox and Microsoft OneDrive all work well; they have very slight differences)
New, Faster Scanners
The good news is that there are much faster scanners available now. And better software automates a lot of the process. The other option is to send the photos to a scanning service but they are expensive at about $1 per photo. And there is also the risk of losing photos in the mail.
Karen, a reader, and I had a couple of notes back and forth about “what to do about photo albums” a while back. She wanted to tell me about the photo scanner she’d gotten. It made the job much easier than she anticipated.
The Epson FotoFast FF-640 (Amazon) has a photo feeder. It handles up to 30 photos at a time. And each scan takes about 1 second each — plus detect if there is writing on the back (and if so, scan it). This includes organizing the photos and even sending them to an external drive and/or cloud storage. To top it off, the software with it will automatically restore images — fixing faded colors and so on. Karen said it did an excellent job on her photos.
It’s not a cheap scanner. But it makes the job enough faster that I’d say it’d be worth the price if you have a number of photos — and it’s still less expensive than using a scanning service.
IMPORTANT: I haven’t personally used this scanner as I did all my old photos years ago. In addition to Karen’s liking it, however, I notice that it gets good reviews on Amazon.
Scanning Tips
Several things to note about using the scanner:
- Don’t mix photo sizes in a batch. The document feeder works well but photos will feed crookedly if they don’t fit snugly in the paper guides. This is more likely to happen when you mix different size photos.
- Photos that are curved from storage don’t scan as well. It’s because the center will be a little further from the glass. If you have a bunch of photos that weren’t in albums and are curved or cupped, flatten them as best as possible. Put them in small stacks with weights on top (books work well).
- You cannot scan slides or negatives with this scanner. You must scan slides and negatives with a . flatbed scanner with a special attachment.
Admittedly, it’s still not an afternoon project. You still have to take the photos out of their albums and so on. But it’s no longer a “dreaded” job.
One reader wrote to ask about the app Photomyne. We used it to back up about 3500 on Amazon Dropbox and Google Cloud in case a company goes out of business or drops the service. Slides worked great too.
If you’re starting to plan your moving aboard and casting off the dock lines, this is a great project to take on early in the process. Later you’ll be tying up all sorts of loose ends. You won’t want to take the time for it when you’re already busy. But I guarantee that once you’re aboard you’ll be glad you did it.
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Carolyn Shearlock says
Great! We had one when we lived ashore and loved it. Don’t have a good place to display it on Barefoot Gal, but my laptop is usually out — or Dave’s iPad — so that’s why I use them there.
Carolyn Shearlock says
My photos all came out easily, so that wasn’t a problem in my case (actually, part of my problem was photos falling out of albums). Like you, I put the albums in big plastic totes with secure lids that latch down. I didn’t add desiccant as I figured the desiccant packs would stop absorbing long before I got the bins out of storage, and I knew that the lids weren’t totally airtight (I was after protection from any rain in case of a roof leak). We also used a liberal number of D-con mouse/rat poison packs in the storage unit to keep critters from nibbling on albums.
Carolyn Shearlock says
I put them in covered bins in a storage unit with some other sentimental pieces we were keeping.
Cindy Miller says
As hard as it was to do, I actually threw them all away in a dumpster, at the marina we were in living at. We do not have anything in storage.
Carolyn Shearlock says
You can donate them to thrift stores or sometimes Scout troops have a use for them. See if there is a local scrapbooking club. Sometimes retirement homes want them. Maybe even teachers at a nearby school for a class project. There are all sorts of ways to re-purpose them!
Greg Cantori says
Yes we use Photomyne for over 3,500 photos so far and back them up on Amazon Dropbox and Google Cloud’s in case a company goes out of business or drops the service. Slides worked great too