How To Digitize Old Photos

Do you have tons of photos sitting around that you wish you could digitize? It’s easier to digitize old photos than ever before. We’ll tell you how to get started.

Yes, that’s me, probably around 5 years old.  There’s a lot you can tell about a person in a picture…or perhaps, in this case, my parents!  LOL!

I think if I had a bedroom like this today, I’d get a headache!  Perhaps it was this room that gave me my cheery disposition!  See?  Seeds were planted long ago!  

If you have a bunch of pictures that were taken before the “digital age,” there’s never been a better time to digitize them.  There are so many resources available. 

Do you have shoeboxes full of photos?  Getting them scanned in can be easy.  The more difficult ones are those in photo albums and those old turn of the century or before pictures.

Digitize Old Photos

Before you digitize old photos, you need to decide whether you’ll do it yourself or pay a company to do it.  You may even decide to do both. 

It may be easier to scan photos in a photo album yourself rather than take them all out and send them with all of your loose photos into a company.  This way you can “preserve” the order of photos in the photo album better.

Here are Your Scanning Options:

1.  Buy a scanner.  With today’s highspeed scanners, you can scan loose color photos in seconds.  According to PC World, 300 dpi (dots per inch) is fine for most photos for viewing and sharing. 

If you prefer to get the finest of details and want to print larger pictures, scan at 600 dpi.  Anything beyond that just makes the files bigger without gaining further advantage.  Besides, the higher the dpi resolution, the longer it takes to scan each photo. 

Not sure which scanner to buy?  Here are some suggestions for the best photo scanners available.  For the DIYer, this is the best solution.

2.  Use your phone camera.  An easy way to “scan” a picture is to snap a picture of your picture.  Easy peasy.  Yes, this indeed works, but you typically will get a glare from the flash. 

The picture will also show the background behind your picture, such as your desk, table, white piece of paper, etc. 

You’ll need to take more time to edit and crop each picture if you want it to look good.  Easy, but not a good finished product.  If you want to try this method to digitize old photos, here are some camera photo scanning tips.

3.  Use a phone app.  Google ScanPhoto and other apps are possible solutions to digitize old photos.  Google ScanPhoto takes seconds to “scan” your picture.  You basically take one picture than move your camera to match the 4 dots that appear on your picture, as directed by ScanPhoto. 

The result is a perfect cut of your picture with no additional background.  ScanPhoto works great for a quick post to a social media account but the resolution tends to be poor.  A quick fix but poor long-term solution to digitize old photos.

4.  Use a scanning service. The Internet is full of scanning companies who will scan your loose pictures.  A company like ScanMyPhotos, has been around for 20 years, located nearly in my backyard in Irvine, CA. 

They’ll send you a 11″ x 8.5″ x 5.5″ box to fill with your pictures (can fill with nearly 1,800 photos).  Send it back and they will scan them all and send it back in 300 dpi True Color for $278.95, including shipping your pictures along with the DVD back to you.

If you’re nervous about mailing your photos, you can go directly to ScanMyPhotos in Irvine, CA, if you live nearby. 

If this price sounds high to you, just for kicks, I visited Costco.com to see what their pricing would be for 1,800 photos.  I did the math and their price came to over $576!  Yikes.

5.  Use an in-home scanning service.  If you live near Los Angeles, I found a photo scanning service that comes to your home and brings everything they need (including their own table, scanner, and light) to scan and digitize old photos for you. 

They can scan loose photos as well as go through your boxes and photo albums to delicately remove, scan, and replace your photos.  Their price is $95/hr and they require a 2 hour minimum.  Frankly, this sounds like a great deal.

I had hundreds of pictures scanned in years ago.  I paid a friend who had access to a highspeed scanner.  I decided to scan them in at 300 dpi.  As I rarely print pictures, this seemed to be a good decision. 

Who knows in the future as digital picture frames become bigger.  Perhaps 600 dpi would be a better longer-range strategy. 

But for me, 300 dpi was the best choice considering how expensive storage space was when I had them scanned.  Today, storage space is cheap.  You can buy a 1 TB drive for $100.

My friend who scanned my photos was a blessing to me, as she went through all of my husband’s and my photo albums, scanned each picture, and placed them back in the album. 

I am indebted to her.  Today, our family has tons of old pictures to enjoy along with our newer ones.

You may want to pay your kids to scan in the pictures from your photo albums.  It would be a great opportunity to teach them some family history and geneology at the same time.

After you scan in all of your old photos, now the fun begins!  Stay tuned for next week’s article on how to transform old memories to enjoy today into your daily life.