Scan and digitize your printed photos

Almost everyone carries a cell phone with an amazing camera, and digital photography makes it easy to capture, edit, and share your pictures. Preserving these photos is as easy as uploading them to your cloud account, or if you don’t want to pay a monthly fee, saving them to a fast external SSD. 

But what about your old, printed photos? There is something wonderfully nostalgic about looking through old photo albums, but sharing and preserving them can be a challenge. Even something as small as a spilled drink could mean they are lost forever. 

The answer is to digitize your photos. You will still have the printed photo, and it will also be safely backed up to your hard drive. Scanning your old photos also makes it possible to share them with friends and family around the world. 

It’s the best of both worlds. Here’s what you need to know.

You have a few different choices when it comes to digitizing your photos, but there are some pros and cons to consider.

Phones often have very good cameras built-in, but they are not the best device for scanning your photos. There are a few things to note:·     

• Getting the best quality scan means keeping everything steady. That’s hard when you are holding a phone.
• You will have to take the photo in the open, such as on a tabletop, which means you may get light reflecting off the photo which can spoil your scan.
• The photo might be bent from age or storage, so getting a good flat image can be difficult.
• Your phone software may not be able to save the image in a good quality format for long-term storage.
  

1. Open the Notes app on your iPhone and create a new note.
2. Tap the Camera Icon and select Scan Documents.
3. Position the photo on a flat surface and the app will automatically detect the edges and capture the scan. You can also manually capture it by using the shutter button.
4. Adjust the scan by cropping or rotating if needed, then tap Save.
5. Once you have scanned all the photos, tap Done.
6. To share your scanned photos, click Share and choose how you would like to save your photos. We recommend saving your photos to your Files App to then transfer to an external SSD.
   

Flatbed scanners are your best bet for a good quality scan.

• Flatbed scanners keep the image flat and still during the scan
• They have covers to stop any light impacting the scan
• Scanning to a computer often means you have a wider choice of file formats to use.
• Flatbed scanners will be able to produce the highest resolution scans 

Flatbed scanners will take longer to scan each photograph, but they provide the best quality results. Visit the user manual of your scanner for instructions on how to scan photos.

It’s important to make sure you are using the right settings to scan your old photos. This is your opportunity to create a high-quality backup copy, so it makes sense to get the best image you can.

Resolution: Images in printed magazines typically print at 300 dots per inch (dpi), so this should be your minimum. Scanning in higher resolutions will create a higher quality image and give you more options for editing and cropping later.
Minimum: 300dpi
Recommended: 1200dpi or higher 

Color or Black and White: Color photography did not become common until the 1960s, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself scanning black and white photos. You might assume that a black-and-white photo should be scanned in black and white, but this means you may lose all the subtle shades of gray in the source image. Scan all your photos in color to get the best results. 

Color Depth: Color Depth refers to the amount of color information available in the picture. 8-bit color is common—that’s how most TVs display colors. You may have heard of 10-bit color, or HDRI, which includes more data, giving richer colors. Scan your photos in 16-bit color if possible. This gives the best possible results and can produce more colors than the eye can see, making it ideal for archiving your photos.

JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) and PNG (Portable Network Graphics) are two of the most common image formats. They are ideal for sharing images online or on phones, but they are not the best option for long-term storage. 

• JPG compresses images with a lossy algorithm, which means that data is literally discarded from the image to save space. That makes JPG an unsuitable format to preserve old photos. 
• PNG images can use lossless compression, meaning they don’t discard data, but they are not commonly used for archiving images. 
• TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is the best option to preserve old photos. It is widely used and saves your scanned photos in the best possible quality, but can produce large files.
• JPEG is best for web use and situations where storage space is a concern, but not ideal for preserving original photo quality.
• PNG is great for images needing transparency and where quality preservation is important but may result in larger files.
• TIFF is excellent for archiving and professional use, providing the highest quality, but at the cost of significantly larger file sizes.

Use the guides on your scanner to keep your photograph straight. Close the lid to keep the image pressed flat against the glass, and to stop light leaking in, which can spoil the scan. 

If your scanner supports it, make a quick preview scan to check the color settings, alignment, and to check the output. When you are happy with this, do a longer scan in full quality.

Staying organized is the key to storing your images safely. Create folders on your computer to group your scanned photos. Use whatever makes sense to you so that you can easily find them again. 

You might choose to group them by the year and month the original photos were taken if you have this information. 

Use a sensible filename to help you find the image again. Include the year and date if you can as this will help you organize and sort your photos. The filename might not be long enough to store all the details you want to record, but don’t worry, you can use image metadata to expand this.

Metadata is additional information stored within the image, which is not part of the photo. For example, images can store information on the type of lens used, or the bit depth.You can use metadata yourself to store extra information in the image file—just like how people used to write notes or dates on the back of photographs.To edit image metadata on Windows, follow these steps: 

1. Right-click on the image file and select Properties.
2. Click on the Details tab.
3. In the top section of the Details tab, you will see an entry for Comments.
4. Click on this, you will be able to enter extra details under the Value column.
   

You can store your scanned photos on an internal hard drive, but a portable hard drive has the benefit of keeping your precious photos separate from your computer. This way, if anything happens to your computer, the external hard drive and the photos will still be safe. 

Crucial ambassador Paris Visone gives her tips on how to back up and save your photos effectively so that you never lose your files.

Once you have scanned your photos, you have the option to edit and tweak your images to remove any scratches, or correct faded colors. If you do this, always work from a copy of your scan. 

Remember to keep an untouched original version of the scanned photo safely in a separate folder so you can return to these without scanning the image again. 

Scanning your old photos is the perfect way to preserve those precious memories, and with Crucial external hard drives, you can keep them safe for every generation.