digital photo books questions

[Momto6inIN]

I am a digital scrapbooker and I love my Forever Artisan software for that purpose. But for my next project I am needing something more streamlined and easy and fast than messing with Artisan.

My mom gave me an external hard drive of ALL the photos she and my dad have taken over the years that she scanned. Seriously, like well over 2000 photos. Some are vintage photos of her parents and grandparents, some are photos my dad took when he was serving in Vietnam. some are pictures of my kids - all kinds of time periods. And when she scanned them in I can't tell what process (if any) she used to come up with file names, but they are not sorted in any way, shape, or form. I think after scanning that many photos she was just done with the project - and figured if I wanted to do something with them I could have at it, but her responsibility in preserving them for posterity was done 😃

So I am trying to sort them roughly by category. Vietnam, Past Generations, My Childhood, My Kids, etc. There are tons of duplicates and tons of just plain bad photos that I can purge as well. Not sure if or how I can further sort them by approximate date, since many of them aren't date stamped and even if some of them are, it's probably the date they were scanned, not the date they were taken. (Or I assume so?)

But once I get that done, it seems like such a waste to just keep them on a hard drive where no one will ever look at them. So I'd like to make printed photo books of them, one for me and one for Mom. Assuming I could somehow get the photos in order and renamed with file names in some semblance of chronological order ... what photo book program would let me upload photos and arrange them on the pages in order for me? I do not have the mental bandwidth to design each individual page like I do with my own scrapbooks, I'm behind enough as it is.

Any recommendations???

[J-rap]

I've used various sites, and prefer some over others for their themes and artistic flair.  But I do find that Shutterfly is pretty straightforward, and if I'm remembering correctly, they give you the option of placing your uploaded photos in an album for you, so you don't even need to figure out where to place them.  I'm pretty sure you still have the option to go back in and change things around, but that might be a nice starting point when you have so many pictures?

[TheReader]

Picaboo will also do that for you, if you select that option. We've been delighted with their quality over the years. Just sign up for coupons and wait to order until you get a good one, because the extra pages cost will kill you otherwise.