SKL Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) I've been cleaning, yay! I dug out an old box with photos and a couple old VCRs that are important to me. I want to get them transferred to digital format. Does anyone have any suggestions of who would be a good provider to do this, or what I should look for? ETA: I should probably ask what others do with their old prints. I would actually like to get rid of mine and just have them all digital. But if that is impractical, then I need to find some better way to store them - without taking up a lot of space. Well, I guess there is always the old-fashioned system i.e. photo albums, but eventually those break down, and they take up a lot of space per photo pack. So, what other ways do folks organize / store photos? Edited February 22, 2021 by SKL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pen Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 I would probably just digitally photograph the photos then burn to CD. VCRs I think there used to be machines that could transfer from vcr to dvd— Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) When we transferred our wedding videos, we borrowed a friend's VHS to dvd machine. You might ask around and see if anyone locally has one you could borrow. For the photographs, what I've done with older family photos (where they're very irregular and hodgepodge) is scan and edit. If they're especially nice and you want very high res scans, that's the way to do it. If the pictures are pretty similar and in stacks and sort of average, you might be just as happy sending them out to a scanning service. They won't use the most high res, but it doesn't matter, kwim? And that way it will be done. Doing those really high res scans is very tedious and slow. The scanner itself is not that expensive, but it's just the time. Edited February 22, 2021 by PeterPan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) Animoto is really terrific if you want to turn out an extra special product. Upload the pics, choose music, select a filter/theme, and it does the magic. Edited February 23, 2021 by PeterPan 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klmama Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 Huh. You mean we're supposed to do something besides leave them in the original envelopes, stuffed into a large box with no organization whatsoever? Who knew? 😀 3 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fairfarmhand Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 My mother in law died. It was very very soothing for her boys to sit on the sofa, flipping through old albums. So if you toss some of them, you may want to keep the best of the best and slide them into albums. I really feel that sometimes the tactile part of our brain is less satisfied with digital experiences. Me and my kids often sit on the sofa with albums on our laps, looking at photos of when they were little; it helped on hard days when my oldest was going through a rough patch to have physical photos to touch and hold when I couldn't touch and hold her. YMMV.... 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted February 22, 2021 Author Share Posted February 22, 2021 35 minutes ago, klmama said: Huh. You mean we're supposed to do something besides leave them in the original envelopes, stuffed into a large box with no organization whatsoever? Who knew? 😀 That's where I am. Photos from before I had a digital camera. Of course I originally planned to put them in photo albums, but now it seems like a time suck. Maybe I'll change my mind though. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J-rap Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) All the ones I put together into albums, I'm just leaving in albums. They take up one giant plastic container, but it is what it is. I'll probably enjoy looking through them over the years, and my kids will probably enjoy looking through a few of them when we're gone. They can decide what to keep of them. Any others -- ones I never even bothered to put into albums, I'll either throw away, or pick out just a sampling to keep. (I'll toss them in the big plastic container along with the albums.) I don't plan to digitalize them though, unless they're really special. (Most are just typical family photos that one would take over the years.) When my dh and I were first married, we spent several years living in the Middle East and those are all on slides! I did bring them to a professional company to digitalize those, and I'm glad I did. I now have them on my my computer but also on CD's plus memory sticks. I just spent several months deciding what to keep of my parents' and my grandparents' albums. I took some special photos out and framed them. I'm keeping quite a few of their albums though as family heirlooms. I honestly don't know if I'll ever look at them again, or if my kids will. My kids might be glad to have them someday. If not, they can get rid of them. I think digitalizing thousands of old photos would just be a waste of my time. Most of them will not be looked at again, and would probably be even harder to find if they're in massive digital files. Edited February 22, 2021 by J-rap 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kassia Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) 41 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said: My mother in law died. It was very very soothing for her boys to sit on the sofa, flipping through old albums. So if you toss some of them, you may want to keep the best of the best and slide them into albums. I really feel that sometimes the tactile part of our brain is less satisfied with digital experiences. Me and my kids often sit on the sofa with albums on our laps, looking at photos of when they were little; it helped on hard days when my oldest was going through a rough patch to have physical photos to touch and hold when I couldn't touch and hold her. YMMV.... That's a good idea to keep the best for albums. Three of my four kids love looking through old photo albums and they share them with their significant others (those who have them). But they do take up an enormous amount of space. I don't know what we're going to do with them all and we keep accumulating more since I still print and put in albums. Maybe I should go through them one by one and only keep the best. Edited February 22, 2021 by Kassia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1234 Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) One of my pandemic projects was going through all of our photos. I threw away a lot and sent some off to relatives in case they wanted them. I put together a large photo album for each dc. The albums each hold 600 photos so they both have room to add to it as they want. Their photos are just from their birth to present. I had a third large album that holds pictures of dh and I growing up and pictures of us and our little family that I didn’t include in the dc’s albums. I’m not a fan of having them all digital because I like to look through the books. So, we now only have those three photo albums, a small wedding photo album, and all of our baby books. They take up only a small space on our bookshelves and it feels nice to have it done! Edited February 22, 2021 by Joker2 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theelfqueen Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) I'm gonna tell you my honest opinion. Now I'm a scrapbooker who is a big believer in documentation! As I said - just an opinion - No one will access your digital photos. Your kids will, in all likelihood, never look at them again if there are no physical prints. Maybe they'll search for something specific but most will not be easily accessible. Can you honestly imagine logging into your parents computer and going through all their files in addition to all the papers in their office, etc.? Now imagine sitting on the couch digging through a photo box or flipping through an album, maybe with your sibling. This most-photographed generation has the least printed photos. Digital is better for decluttering and space management but actual printed photos -- people gather around and share and talk about. I definitely think paring down unnecessary extra copies (and if you're my like my mom -unending photos of trees, deer and rocks) and organizing photos is the way to go- but getting rid of all physical prints, I think you'll regret. Digitizing and printing photo books might be the best compromise. Then you have a physical copy hopefully with documentation (who, what, when, where, etc.) ... Edited February 22, 2021 by theelfqueen 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
***** Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 4 hours ago, J-rap said: just spent several months deciding what to keep of my parents' and my grandparents' albums. I took some special photos out and framed them. I'm keeping quite a few of their albums though as family heirlooms. I honestly don't know if I'll ever look at them again, or if my kids will. My kids might be glad to have them someday. If not, they can get rid of them. This is where I am at, the pictures are pretty cool. There are just so many, I have to figure out some way to let some go. 5 hours ago, J-rap said: All the ones I put together into albums, I'm just leaving in albums. Could you share album types that have worked well for these kinds of projects? 18 minutes ago, theelfqueen said: I'm gonna tell you my honest opinion. Now I'm a scrapbooker who is a big believer in documentation! As I said - just an opinion - No one will access your digital photos. Great insight! And their letters, postcards from long ago...it is history after all. And look carefully in the backgrounds of pictures. Sometimes that is more interesting or has meaning to some than the actual subject. Such as, oh, look how the neighborhood used to look, or I remember that _____what ever happened to it?! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted February 22, 2021 Author Share Posted February 22, 2021 I was thinking of making some books out of my digital photos. They would also be pretty easy to share with my kids digitally, once my kids have a grown-up computer. Actually ... this might be too ambitious, but my thought is to make a series of geography lessons using trip photos. You would think that kids who have traveled 6 continents would be food at geography, but apparently that is not always the case. 😛 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 Just remember that digital data can go "poof." Hard drives can/will fail eventually. Redundancy is vital. Photos serve as back-ups--of a sort--as well. For those who like the idea of scanning old photos and then doing image editing on some (to make them look their best), the fantastic Affinity Photo program (that is similar to Photoshop) is now on sale for the ridiculous price of $25. Not a month. Scanned photos always take a little love (if quality matters). Bill 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditto Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 All of mine are in a big old army trunk. That is where they have been for years and where they will remain. Even the thought of doing anything with them makes me want to take a nap. The only issue is that the trunk is now full so what will I do with future pictures. No clue. In case it isn't obvious, I print all pictures. I don't do digital pics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katilac Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 3 hours ago, SKL said: Actually ... this might be too ambitious, but my thought is to make a series of geography lessons using trip photos. You would think that kids who have traveled 6 continents would be food at geography, but apparently that is not always the case. 😛 That would be amazing! You should do at least one. ((and we did map work for years, but my kids and I still have appalling geography skills)) But I do agree with theelfqueen that digital photos rarely get accessed and are very easily lost. You can store quite a few photos in a pretty small space (and there's nothing wrong with a box!). Go through the photos and toss any that are duplicates, near-duplicates, blurry, or scenery that can be found via interment images. This is going to sharply reduce the number of photos you have! Take them out of the original envelopes, they are poofy and waste a lot of space. You can store them in photo safe envelopes in a photo safe box, or just in the photo box with dividers, or just in the box if you want to be all wild and crazy. You can also buy little plastic photo boxes if that's more your style (they're very easy to transport that way, and less worry of water damage and such, but honestly mine are all in regular boxes). It's great if you scribble a date on the back, preferably with a photo safe pen, but DO NOT LET THIS DETER YOU FROM PURGING AND SORTING THEM. Accessible photos with no date or ball point pen dates are wildly better than inaccessible photos that you will date 'someday.' Also, trying to date photos can be a fun and challenging game in the future (and does it really matter if your kid was 7 or 8 in the pic?). Digitize the really priceless ones. Do not digitize them onto CDs. It is 2021, people, the year that CDs disappeared but covid did not. Seriously, CD drives are getting rare. Just digitize them to the cloud or a drive or preferably both. I do some scrapbooking when I have time, but I also do a fair number of boxes, particularly for memorabilia. Like I have a box of Disney souvenirs, tickets, luggage tags, and so forth, and it is all just thrown in there. No way am I sorting and scrapping it, but I'm willing to have a box so we can look back and see how cheap Disney World was when we went in 2006, and what the paper Fast Passes looked like, and how many times my kids made us stand in line for Cinderella's autograph over the years 😄 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
history-fan Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 I would keep the photographs, like mentioned above sometimes the digital gets lost. If you decide to scan them you can organize them on google slides or a program I use is videoPad which is really user friendly and you can do a lot with it. If you google how to convert vhs to digital there are many how to videos. I have done it many times myself it is really very easy. With the photographs I think putting them in year order in a photo storage box would be great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsie Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 My solution--have DH retire; let him take care of pictures. We will see how well it works 🙂 DH did retire and has started working on this. We had a bunch of boxes by year of pictures from when the kids were young. Then we had pictures on disks, Then we had them on our phones...The sheer number of pictures is amazing. It would literally take days of round-the-clock viewing for us to ever go through really look at the pictures. He has realized that a lot of what we have are duplicates (from back when we got two prints from film) or from when we have backed up phones/computer files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlsdMama Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 5 hours ago, theelfqueen said: Digitizing and printing photo books might be the best compromise. Then you have a physical copy hopefully with documentation (who, what, when, where, etc.) ... I’ve had the opposite problem as the OP. I’ve had to print tons of pictures for children as they get ready to graduate for their parties! Just this weekend I sorted pictures into shoeboxes for each kiddo, but I noticed a ton of repeats, bad prints, or shared sibling pictures. The idea of digitizing those and having books made is truly a great one that hasn’t occurred to me. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Momto6inIN Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 I'm a scrapbooker too, and we never look at photos on devices but we look at my printed books all the time. Most of my pre digital photos are in paper scrapbooks. When digital came along, I took a picture of all those album pages and they're backed up to the cloud in case of fire, but I didn't convert the paper books to digitally printed books. I just stopped making paper albums and started printing digital album pages instead. (Maybe someday converting those papers albums to digitally printed albums will be a project, but not yet.) I did have some photos not in albums and also some videos. Legacy Box is veeeeerrrrry pricey, but it was worth it to me to ship it all off and have it all come back on a flash drive. My mom scanned all her pre digital photos and gave them to me in an external hard drive. It was something like 1200 photos!!! I have no idea how long it took her to scan all those photos but it was probably a reeeeeeally long time. I wanted to display them, not keep them on a hard drive, but I didn't want to take the time to digitally scrapbook them like I do my own photos because the sheer number if them was so overwhelming. I ended up using Forever Auto Book because it automatically arranged the photos into a book for me. It took me just 1 Saturday morning and afternoon to get them all uploaded and in books and ordered and now I have all her photos in books to display and look at. All that is a long winded way if me saying that I'd do whatever and pay whatever to get them both digitized (for safe keeping) and in a book of some kind, either a traditional album or digitally printed (for enjoying and looking at). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beth S Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 I can't resist chiming in. Photos are my love language. They are the first thing I'd save in the event of a fire. However, our cheap, flat-bed scanner scans 4-at-a-time, & I enjoyed slowly scanning (& reminiscing). Part of the joy of having photos is looking at them, and scanning them allowed me to look at them. This was a Quarantine project. We've also recently cleaned out both sets of parents' homes. I put all the surplus photos in a photo box, & it was super easy. I scanned the ones that were unique. Easy to sort into sub-categories, & doesn't take up much space. Creating Photos books = too complex of a project for me. Google Drive (or similar) = I upload all the pix, and can share that digital album with my kids & siblings. I have to keep hosting it for them to have open access, but it allows for comments and has been a fun way to share with others. Also, I use ScanCafe to transfer slides to digital files, if you desire. I also transferred our home video from VHS to DVD and then to digital format (& uploaded to Google Drive). I view it as a hobby, and love to reminisce with them! Best wishes as you figure out what works for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonfirmath Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 On 2/21/2021 at 10:24 PM, SKL said: I've been cleaning, yay! I dug out an old box with photos and a couple old VCRs that are important to me. I want to get them transferred to digital format. Does anyone have any suggestions of who would be a good provider to do this, or what I should look for? ETA: I should probably ask what others do with their old prints. I would actually like to get rid of mine and just have them all digital. But if that is impractical, then I need to find some better way to store them - without taking up a lot of space. Well, I guess there is always the old-fashioned system i.e. photo albums, but eventually those break down, and they take up a lot of space per photo pack. So, what other ways do folks organize / store photos? Photo albums or digitize and throw away are the only options I see. Maybe digitize and make photo books? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 For the pictures that you digitize but don't have time to turn into books, remember you can also throw them into folders to use as the screensaver/slideshow for your computer. You can also put them into a video which then displays as your screensaver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theelfqueen Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 Most of the photo book companies have auto fill options- put all the photos you want to go in a book in a folder and tell it to auto populate... super quick, less organized but still a great wa to make your photos more accessible. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anne Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 I’ve been following this with great interest as I also have a billion photos waiting for something to happen to them.... Which photo book companies do you like? Anne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Momto6inIN Posted February 24, 2021 Share Posted February 24, 2021 I like Forever, but I'm most familiar with them because I use their software. About 10 years ago when I got into printing digital books, snapfish and shutterfly had pretty limited options for creativity with your pages and their quality of printed books wasn't as high, so I went with Forever. Nowadays that might not be true anymore, but I stick with Forever because that's what I know how to use well now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
history-fan Posted March 6, 2021 Share Posted March 6, 2021 I just noticed that Clea and Joanna of “the home edit” just posted about this topic on their website. They offer tips that may be useful. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherry in OH Posted March 6, 2021 Share Posted March 6, 2021 On 2/21/2021 at 10:24 PM, SKL said: I've been cleaning, yay! I dug out an old box with photos and a couple old VCRs that are important to me. I want to get them transferred to digital format. Does anyone have any suggestions of who would be a good provider to do this, or what I should look for? ETA: I should probably ask what others do with their old prints. I would actually like to get rid of mine and just have them all digital. But if that is impractical, then I need to find some better way to store them - without taking up a lot of space. Well, I guess there is always the old-fashioned system i.e. photo albums, but eventually those break down, and they take up a lot of space per photo pack. So, what other ways do folks organize / store photos? If you just want to store the physical photos in as little space as possible you could get some archival photo storage boxes. You can add dividers for a little more organization. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matrips Posted March 6, 2021 Share Posted March 6, 2021 On 2/23/2021 at 1:55 PM, Anne said: I’ve been following this with great interest as I also have a billion photos waiting for something to happen to them.... Which photo book companies do you like? Anne I’ve only used Shutterfly. It was what I started with many years ago and just stuck with it. I like the 12x12 size. I can fit more on a page and the photos are bigger to look at. (Old eyes here I guess) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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