Scanning Old Photos for Archive

thnewton · May 19, 2004

Hi Folks -

Is there a product out there -- a scanner or scanner add on -- that allows you to take hundreds of old old photos (different shapes and sizes) and easily scan them to high resolution images. I guess what I'm looking for is a flexible, gentle, document feeder that would allow me to quickly archive my extended family's quickly deteriorating collection of old snapshots.

As for scanners, since I only have room for an all-in-one device, I'm considering the HP Officejet 7130 All-in-One (C8389A) for about $400.

Thanks for any help or advice!

wxwax · May 19, 2004

Good question, Newt. Any takers?

gubbs · May 20, 2004

Probably not any help, but I ended buying an Epson 3200, although it doesn't have a feed, the time it takes to scan at high res and the fact that you really need to review each scan means that it probably wouldn't save you any time. It also came with an 8* 35mm slide/negative frame and frames for medium and large format negatives.

I've done a couple of hundred of my Dads old slides and quite a few prints from family albums, the colours need some work as the slides are 30 years old and the photos are at least that. Its a very time consuming but enjoyable job. If you want to see some, let me know and I'll post few examples. There's some great cars and fantastic haircuts too!

Cheers

Jon

gus · May 20, 2004

Not that ive seen & i have asked about. Im in the middle of doing my entire familys B&W's & there are thousands of them. If you find out then for gods sake let us know here !

They were all dirt poor farmers but for some odd reason they took a lot of pictures..my grandfather developed them. I still have his gear downstairs.

This was in the early 1930's....the more i look at it the more i see the Waltons

Andy · May 20, 2004

i don't know of one. last year, i sorted thru 15,000 photos after my mom died, and scanned 1500 of them. by hand. a long, long, labor of love, but they're all there in my smugmug galleries now... and i made slide shows set to musice and more, and burnt it all to cd and dvd for the whole extended family.

i searched last year for what you are looking for, and found that elbow grease and sticktoitiveness were the only tools out there ....

good luck!

pathfinder · May 21, 2004

thnewton wrote:

Hi Folks -

Is there a product out there -- a scanner or scanner add on -- that allows you to take hundreds of old old photos (different shapes and sizes) and easily scan them to high resolution images. I guess what I'm looking for is a flexible, gentle, document feeder that would allow me to quickly archive my extended family's quickly deteriorating collection of old snapshots.

As for scanners, since I only have room for an all-in-one device, I'm considering the HP Officejet 7130 All-in-One (C8389A) for about $400.

Thanks for any help or advice!

I just read an article this afternoon about this task - It seems that you CAN GANG SCAN photos with Photoshop CS. Just put several photos on a flat bed scanner - like the Epson 3200 or so, and go to File - Automate - Crop and Straighten Photos. This command in Photoshop CS will let you scan numerous photos at a time without bothiring to align them - PS CS will recognize each photo seperately and rotate them correctly and allow each individual file to be saved seperately. So.... If you own Adobe PhotoShop CS and a good flat bed scanner, you can scan multiple prints at a time.

I am not aware of a consumer type device for automatically scanning stacks of photographs.

fannest · May 22, 2004

HP5000 and HP5300 scan 25 pictures in a stack
The HP5000 and the HP5300 have automatic document feeders which allow batch scanning of pictures. I used it for pictures from wallet size to 6 by 4.

It can't handle very small sizes, and I wouldn't trust it with very old or fragile pictures. It wouldn't process any of my old Polaroid pictures.

I scanned 1500 pictures using the HP5300 in November. About 3/4 were done in batch, and the rest were individual scans that the machine wouldn't handle, or I was afraid to try to send through the feeder.

The biggest problem with tis batch processing is that you inevitably get dust on the glass. You need to clean the glass between batches, but inevitably, the pictures deposit dust and particles, and the scans become progressively dirter.

I was very unhappy with this dust, so I bought a Microtek Scanmaker, with digital ICE software, which does automatic photo restoration. It removes scratches, dust, and even repairs if a picture is not too badly torn.

Malte · May 24, 2006

Andy wrote:

i don't know of one. last year, i sorted thru 15,000 photos after my mom died, and scanned 1500 of them. by hand. a long, long, labor of love, but they're all there in my smugmug galleries now... and i made slide shows set to musice and more, and burnt it all to cd and dvd for the whole extended family.

i searched last year for what you are looking for, and found that elbow grease and sticktoitiveness were the only tools out there ....

good luck!

Wow, that's quite a feat. I'm up against something similar with my dad's collection. How did you screen them, were they mostly positives? Is there a quick way to screen negatives? What scanner did you use?

Malte

Scanning Old Photos for Archive

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