Slashdot Mirror
To Digitize or Not Digitize the Family Photo Album?
animys asks: "In the last few years, we have begun to witness the inevitable shift from 35mm cameras to high resolution, cheap, consumer oriented digital cameras; with this, the move away from a tangible photo album has also ensued. This change has obviously left many families with huge amounts of developed pictures and albums. For reasons of preservation and usability, some families would like to convert their previously taken pictures to a digital medium - yet many have hundreds or even thousands of pictures. What type of tools can the DIY'er use to make this process easier? Beyond the obvious scanner and graphics package, is there any good quality software that can augment this arduous and possibly over-daunting task?" What about folks looking to do the opposite? Most people take decent care of their albums, and the pictures are always viewable regardless of the changes in technology. What options are there for those folks looking to make near-picture-quality hardcopies of their digital photos for inclusion in their albums?
I have my own photo albums hiding under the coffee table. Its easy to pull out when you want to talk about something, and its very intimate. But to say, hay lets go up to the computer room, or let me get my laptop, is not as nice.
I still have my photos in digital format on CDROMs for safe keeping and for use on my website. But that will certainly not replace the old photo album. Plus think of the pictures handing on the walls in your house with all the children and such.
Gotta have both dude.
I'll chime in and say that on the Mac, iPhoto is really a killer tool for organizing photos.
and the picture books that you can create with it are nothing short of impressive. handing one of those out to my cousin from the picture i took at here wedding as really impressive.
(pretend there's something witty here)
Somewhat related, once you get all of those pictures digitized, the best tool for keeping track of them is:
http://gallery.sourceforge.net/
Apache+PHP and you're ready to go. Gallery is the best photo gallery/organizer package I've seen.
digital copies are great, but the archival properties of photographic processes ensure that they will make your pictures last far longer than whatever current technology you will need to convert from in 3 years.
A colour laser print will look decent, and should last if you laminate it. These services will be fairly cheap, and should be available at the local large photocopy shop.
For a nicer picture, if I recall correctly, sublimation printing produces an image that looks a lot like a photograph, but I haven't seen the output from a sublimation printer in years, so my memory could be off.
Lastly, you could just make a printout at fantastically high resolution and re-photograph with an ordinary camera to get a photo that will last decades or longer with minimum fuss. Be sure to use a tripod for this, as small movements will blur the image.
Lastly, the most practical solution for the future is probably just to carry both digital and analog cameras. Use the digital camera for most things, and take a handful of old-fashioned pictures for the images you want to be there for your great-grandkids to see.
As mentioned above, I haven't followed the higher-end printing options for a while. Does anyone have more up-to-date information on this?
I've done pretty much all of my converting to digial format, and as long as you have a permanent archive (burn them to CD-R), I'm not worried about "losing" them.
I've messed with a bunch of web-based photo albums, but the best software I've found to date is "Gallery" (http://gallery.sourceforge.net).
It's very simple to set up and use, and does most of the work for you. Best part, the source it GPL'd
If you like, you can see my set up here:
http://www.briandowney.net/gallery
-brain
I'm not a digital imaging expert, but I faced the same problem and the way I am plannning to solve it is to use my epson 1240u scanner to scan pictures in (it can scan two pictures in as separate images in one scanning pass) then use a photoshop macro to do some post-processing to get the colors right and to save the files. I would have preferred to use the scanning software to scan the colors right in the first place but there is no way to change the default scanning settings for the auto-scanning function (that I know of). :(
A least for any future pictures you may take.
Kodak Picture CD. You're still stuck paying the insane developing fees and a little extra for the cd - but you have both physical and digital copies of your pictures with no work involved.
I have recently seen a rise is "Distributed" online family albums. With things like Yahoo Groups, and whatever MSN's is (I refuse to get a passport account), families and friends are adding photo's to the same "virtual album" from all over the county. That is the "major revolution" I am seeing in the area.
What I find even more interesting is techies arn't always the ones setting them up and using them. A lot of people who can barely use a digital camera are getting in on the act.
Not sure if this helps or not, but places like Yahoo Groups work great for setting up albums with a short term storage outlook.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Try out these people:c le/0,1713,BDC_2462_1223422,00.html
http://www.lifepics.com
or read this article about them:
http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/business_plus/arti
Also, this isn't a shameless plug, I'm in no way affiliated, just what I've seen recently.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I'd like to see a worldwide snapshot database combined with post-911-level pattern recognition routines.
Upload your grandmother's album and find out: Who is that standing there at the beach with Dad and Aunt Edna in 1952? The database project would be able to figure it out.
What a boon for genealogists.
(And, yes, a problem for people with something to hide about what they were doing in 1952 or who their ancestor was in 1876. But it's going to be a transparent society anyway, and we're going to have to get used to it.)
If any of you think that a digital photo is going to be around 10,no 5 years from now without having faded out you're an idiot. Digi-pics don't last worth squat.
Obviously, you have to scan the pictures and unless you're more interested in preserving the pictures now to stop analogue degradation, you will probably correct any color defects which have already occurred. So yes, you want a scanner and a graphics program. Use one with macro or scripting functions. But other than that, a good archive is a lot of non-automatic work: Classifying pictures, entering dates, comments and maybe keywords, finetuning colors, etc.
When all "raw" data is on the computer, presentation is almost automatic. Thumbnail- and website generators are a dime a dozen and the choice is mostly according to personal preference.
There are several ways to do this, beyond the color inkjet/dye sub solutions. I've seen a number of photo shops that offer instant printing from disk/flas memeory/CDs. The results are satisfactory - it looks like a regular print, and cost competitive with color printers. I personally use a CF card and transfer the prints from my PC to it via a USB cardreader. A card and reader can be had for less than $50. I like it over CDRs because transfer times are faster, and with a $10 PCCard adpater, I can use it with my notebook as well.
There are online services that let you upload images and then order prints, I've used OFTO and liked the results, but its just as cheap and faster to run to my nearest chain camera shop.
Finally, Kinkos can make poster size copies on various media, including foamboard and canvas. They tend to be expensive, but offer some interesting printing options.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If you have lots of slides and negatives and want them into digital format - I would use some service, there are several companies doing scanning and restoration of photos. This is quite a good subject - what will happen as we're moving from regular photos to digital - will the grand children have anything to look at? Paper has a quite nice user interface, world's oldest picture is almost 200 years... and doesn't need cd-rom drive or spesific software to look. Should we be concerned? It's very easy to destroy hundreds or thousands of digital pictures, but with proper cautions the quality of pictures won't be affected by time.
I've used Gallery for creations of lesser importance. It seems to have the features you'd want/need to organize a family album.
try ezprints.com or ofoto.com. they both do a terrific job, are reasonalby prices, and use real photographic paper.
VueScan is a really great scanning package for Linux GTK, MacOS, or Win32. Cheap, too.
My dad stores his pictures in a huge online archive for private photos. This site allows him to "organize" his pictures in some manner, and order paper copies of a chosen selection for a relatively small amount of money (cheaper than paper photos, and with indistinguishable quality). Apart from the price of the paper copies, the archive is completely free to use, and you can upload an "unlimited" amount of pictures. I don't remember the name of it at the moment (besides, it only targets the Norwegian market), but I'm sure there are more such services on the net.
The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out.
I bought my first digital camera when they were still relatively new and quite expensive, and immediately started keeping a record of my life (something I wouldn't do with the hassle of a film camera)- which is great when I want to tell far-away people about the time I had to abandon my car in Canada, but pretty lousy when I want to show them at a party or whatever.
My fianceé just got a very nice consumer-oriented film camera, which we're now using at least as much as my very nice pro-sumer digital camera (which is nice enough that it can make very attractive prints up to 8x10), and probably more. Why? Cause the pictures we take with hers we have around for all time, or until the paper degrades. We can look at them whenever we want, in any room of the house, without having to stare at a screen--without having to zoom out or resize the picture to make it all viewable! If the power's out, or the computer's off, or we're sitting outside, we can still look at the real albums.
Having the tactile feedback of handling a photo album adds to the experience, too, you know? It increases the "reality" of the experience.. the computer is more like a slide-show.
If anything, I'd want to find a way to cheaply convert a digital photo album back to the real world. Right now it's too expensive. Any suggestions, anyone? those consumer color printers don't do the trick, that's for sure..
A little over a year ago, I took all my photos from various years at camp and decided I wanted them digitized.
I had over 200 photos to scan on my newly purchased, but definitely consumer-level Umax Astra 3400.
Over the course of a month, I would lay 3 or 4 photos at a time on the scanner, and scan them in 600dpi so I would never have to scan them again! Then I spent many hours sepearting the pictures and removing dust, spots, etc. that my have cropped up on the photo anywhere between flaws in the object in frame to possilbe dust lying on the scanner, and saved them individually, one-by-one.
Further, I used a Photoshop action to convert and save the photos at various other resolutions, so I could just quickly look over photos if I wanted to but didn't need all the detail available with the original scanned pictures.
Again, this took a little over a month, working mostly on weekends, and I was pretty burned out, as far as scanning stuff goes, for a very, very long time after, but it was well worth it...and soon after I bout a digital camera! I'll never have to do that again!
I do honestly think the key though was to take the time and scan at a very high resolution in the firstplace. Not only will this offer the same or (sorta) better quality (depending on how you look at it) than the original print, but it should also withstand time...at least to the point of whatever better equipment comes out won't matter a whole lot because you've already scanned your photos at "more than adequate" resolution.
I just have to say ACDSee, greatest software ever!
I'd be a little concerned about having the ability to access digital pictures 10 or 20 years from now because of changing standards. I can look in an old picture album and see pictures of my great-grandparents that were taken over 60 years ago.
How likely is it that I'm going to be able to read a CD-R I've burned with my family pictures 40 years from now?
Don't opt for the negative scanner for a flatbed.
For approximately $400 you can get a mid-range
2400dpi film/slide/5x7 print scanner from HP
(HP S20). That said, there are many other models
out there, with higher scan resolutions for
negatives.
Your biggest obstacle will be dust and scratches,
so be patient. (If I'm not mistaken some scanners
have built-in spot correction...)
The question was: how do you make the process of scanning thousands of pictures in easier? Editor, printing is not a big deal. The original question is far more interesting - I don't really feel like individually placing 2500 photos on my flatbed scanner. Is there a hardware device to quickly scan photos?
Photos fade, tear, warp, discolor and get soggy. I have personally begun building an archive of family photos by scanning them. I am using a HP 5300C scanner, not complete crap but its definately not a professional scanner but it gets the job done. I figure something is better than nothing.
I tend to save two copies of each image, one exactly as it is scanned, the other corrected and repaired if necessary.
I have found one piece of software that is fairly nifty, the Canon Zoom Browser EX that came with my Canon G1 digital camera. It lacks some of the features I wish it had and sure it has a very foofy interface but it works well for previewing a couple thousand images and organizing them.
I personally wish that there was a standard and widely used way of tagging each picture for archive and retrieval purposes. It would be nice to tag each picture with the date and names of people or scenes depicted in them. The ability to pull up every picture with great great great grandpappy in it would very handy. As it is now I have to name every picture with the date and the people depicted, then sort them into some arbitrary folder that more directly relates to me than to the overall family tree.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
Skip over the Scanning of the actual photo, and get a negative scanner.
They work faster, better, and have some automation to them. Unfortunately, most 35mm negatives are chopped into blocks of four, but that will at least 1/4 your time spent monitoring the machine.
If you switched to the newer APS film, the negative scanner can run through the whole row.
Here is one that does both 35mm and APS. There are also other reviews on that site of different models.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I recently started scanning pictures with the intent of creating an HTML-based gallery on a CD that could be passed around.
The best gallery creator I found was Curator. It takes directories of pictures and creates static HTML from arbitrarily-customizable templates. You can create description files for each picture and have them incorporated into the pages. The templates are written in a combination of HTML and Python.
Creating the templates takes some doing, but after that, everything's dead simple.
Go to Eurofoto I recently had some 2.3MPix pictures developed there (on real photo paper) and the results were excellent. You also get 10 free pictures when you sign up.
Though, there are number of points:
1. If the time doing all the scans, or maybe if buying a scanner is unwanted, you can pay someone who has a very high quality scanner to do the scans for you.
2. Make sure the photos are scanned in a satisfing resolution (i.e, like 2400x1600, using 3 bytes per pixel).
3. Make a lot of digital copies of the albums. Put these copies in different locations.
4. Use different storage medias (tapes, CDs, Internet file servers, hard drives), so in case one of them ceased to be exists or ceased to be supported when new hardware doesn't read old media in the not so far future, you can always try the other mediums. AFAIK, burnt CDs may become unusable after 50 years even if not used.
5. Save the original albums, just in case, so that your old 90 years old grandmother wouldn't need to tackle your Linux box in order to browse the photos...
0x2b or not 0x2b, the answer is -1
What we need is a cheap device in to which photos or negatives can be fed en masse. I think negatives would be better as I'm sure there will be fewer problems with colour reproduction. Scanning photos with a flatbed is slow, time consuming and annoying. Does anybody know of a solution?
Personally, I'm not ready to give up physical photos. I think they're the best presentation medium. Certainly the most universal. Most of the suggestions that people make for moving digital pictures in to the physical world don't result in the same quality of production.
What does it take to print a digital picture on photographic quality paper/card with a matte or gloss finish and comparable picture quality to tradition photos? How much does it cost?
When digitizing my photos, I've found Gimp to be really helpful. Especially the image->colors->curves (although this takes practice and patience) and image->color->levels. The levels auto button does an excellent job, although sometimes I still have to manually tweak it. The clone tool has also proven useful. And gimp is open-source, free, and available for windoze users too.
Also helpful are some of the scanner tutorials out on the web. My scans improved considerably after reading just one. I wish I had read it before I bought my scanner. I would have bought a different scanner if I had.
A Dye-sub (or related technology) is the way to go. It looks damn good (much better that than the best inkjet) and it's as archival as a normal c-Print. But getting a lot made is costly, around $15 (I think?) at one of those kodak stations at your local one-hour, or $30 for a Fujix print. The best way to go is to get one of those Olympus printers for $700, it will pay for it self quickly if you have a lot of prints to do.
A major reason for buying my digital camera was because I could take more photos cheaper.. But after a while I realized that I don't have anything tangible to show anyone.. I could go to Kinko's or whatever and print them out.. but I'm kinda lazy... My daughter just turned 1.. and for mother's day I assembled a 35 page book of pictures and captions in iPhoto and printed out a nice book to give to my wife.. I've decided to do this every year to archive photos.. I also like how I just upload the pictures and they will send high quality pics to my door.. (which still allows me to be lazy) I also maintain a small website to show off pictures to family..
I have an Epson 785EXP, complete with internal compactflash reader and LCD screen. (not bad for $300!)
I prints photolab quality photos on Epson paper, with a advertised lifespan of 25 years. I have figured I can print digital photo's for much lower cost than at the local mall, although I don't know if it can compete with online printing.
I can print photo's directly from my compactflash cards, with previews of the photo on the LCD screen without intervention on a PC...pc doesn't even have to be hooked up. The LCD is a $99 addon. Amazon has the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX Inkjet Printer
for about $190. I have been absolutely astounded by the quality of the output.
May be worth looking into.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Automated scanners that can flip through albums, detect the borders of the pictures and scan away. I can feel a business idea here...
One otehr thought - get a high quality dedicated slide/negative scanner if you plan to digitize a lot of images. The advantages include:
1. You get more of the information from the original medium - printing invariably loses some of the details, especially those done by instant photo places. Prints also fade in the light.
2. You get all of your images digitized - even ones for which you've lost prints.
3. You can continue to shoot slides, which offer better quality images that negatives. (Ultimately, its the eye behind the viewfinder that counts, not the equipment.)
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
First off, the best info is probably found at www.photo.net. It's a photo forum, but they talk about digital issues quite often.
As an amateur photographer, I have yet to be impressed by digital equipment. By the time you get into a system that can equal a mid level film camera, you have spent several times more than you would have on a pro level film system. IMO, the biggest benefit is convenience. You can take a picture and have it color corrected, modified, printed, and ready to frame in a very short period of time.
If you want to go the scanner/printer route, get a good inkjet or dyesub printer. From what I've seen, color lasers are not there yet. Dyesub is the best, but most expensive. Olympus makes a great dyesub printer that can do 8x12. The results look like a standard photograph (smooth colors, no striations or other printing marks). It's about $800. If I were to go digital, that's what I'd buy. I'm not up to speed on scanners. From what I do know, flatbeds are a compromise. The best is drum scanning, but it is expensive.
Software-wise, it seems Photoshop is the tool of choice.
Chris
Photo.net would be a really good place to get the answer. If you do go there do yourself a favor and search the archives before posting.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
I converted more than 2000 photos to digital format on a CD, where I also have all of my softcopy writings, scanned legal papers, and other important documents. I still keep alternate versions of these things; I just wanted a single small item to grab in case of fire or hurricane or something, and one to keep offsite. I guess that makes me obsessive compulsive.
I actually had a great time doing it. I used Paint Shop Pro with good results, placing four pictures at a time on the scanner bed and then cropping them into separate images. Sometimes I did some image enhancement, especially with the older photos. A photo of my mother and my grandmother taken fifty years ago looks like it was taken last week with my wife's Canon T50. I had fun sorting and identifying them, too: "Let's see...when did I have that shirt? 1982?" Nohing adds perspective to your life like looking at all your bad haircuts over the years.
I did about 100 a night. I thought of doing something automated but there's no way to intelligently sort and name them that way (without going back and redoing it).
Now I just keep up with the photos I take. I'm hoping--perhaps vainly--that any updates to electronic photo formats will allow batch processes. I'm not sure what the lifespan of the JPEG format will be, but I'm pretty sure some enterprising person will develop a conversion tool from that to the next format.
Let me tell you.... If you do go the scanner/graphics software route, it's a lot of work.
My wife an I have a Family History Project online: The Arbutus Project (very slashdot susceptable! please go easy!). Try going here to get to the picture index. We've collected genealogical data, as well as choice scanned photos from our own photo albums and that of family members. Audio interviews are just starting, and video is a few years away (my computer's too wimpy)
On of the really cool things is if you do have an indexing system for your whole family (something that comes with a genealogy project, but is a lot of baggage with just a photo project) is that all your families photos become seamless. You can see a photo album for yourself, or for your wife, or for your kids, or for your grandfather, with just a few mouse clicks.
Today's pictures aren't much better than 300dpi, and I've got an old Microtek E6 scanner (bought new, just before the prices dropped). I scan at 300dpi for new, higher for old (when pictures were much better resolution, try looking at them with a magnifying glass.) Try not to cringe if you happen to get those awful square early colour photos with the bumps or hexagonal cells from the 70's. Save 'em all as PNGs, store those to CD for later, then batch them all to a good web size for online viewing.
It is a LOT of work, and I'd suggest that you focus on only the select shots from your albums, perhaps just the best 10%. Most photos are junk anyways. You don't really really need that pic of the cute neighbour kid your grandad grew up with.
Expect it to take several months of work just to get the photos scanned and organized in any fashion.
if you're looking to go from analog->digital, consider buying a scanner that has a paper feed, if you paste down your photos on a letter size page, this will speed up the process of scanning them in. And once they're digital, take advantage of the fact that you can make infinite copies of them. Burn them on CDs and give them away to family members. As long as someone has a copy, and the means to duplicate it, in the next media format that comes along, your photos will survive.
For going the other way, if you don't want to invest in a good color printer, you could take your prints to a copy store..and have them printed one a digital copier and use heavy glossy paper. If you scale them to a standard size, and put 2-4 on a page, they can take all your printed pages, and you'll have photo sized pictures, that are just about photo quality. (asuming the photo was high resolution to start with)
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
My wife and I forsook our 35mm for a Sony Digital8 camcorder. The benefits:
:)
... fair quality, but the new VX2000 will help with that.
- Digital8/MiniDV so no generation loss when converting physical media formats
- Firewire port means instant accessibility to computer *or* a different dv camcorder (to help convert media!
- Never get a precious picture with a sneeze again! Single stepping through frames means getting the best possible shot. Always.
My son's website was built entirely from a Sony TRV 310 to B&W G3 Mac w/ PhotoDV. First gen Digital8 cam so
http://www.speakeasy.org/~zezu/
i have alot of stuff on cdr. when it looks like cdr's are no longer an option i plan on migrating my stuff over to the next best thing. what that thing might be, i dont know, but it'll be there. it might take a couple weeks worth of evenings, but if the data is worth it to you you'll do it.
-- john
My local photo shop which is also the best one in the city can print from any digital source. They have the technilogy to do it. You can also have photos printed from the web. Upload your images and have them mailed to you.
In fact, they've switched to digital in the lab. If you develop a 35mm roll, thye will scan it and print from the scanned images using their digital enlarger. The result, using a good 3.1 megapixel camera is indiscernible from traditionnal pictures for sizes up to 8x10.
Have a great 3 day week-end for the other fols up there. And the store is LLLozeau in Montreal, QC.
JP
--- Worst tagline ever.
This is an example of the ridiculous consumer society that is 'computers' these days. What is wrong with keeping photographs in a binder? It's a proven, cheap and reliable way of storing pictures...
And what about all the bogus reasons people come up with to justify their spending hundreds and thousands on new equipment every two years just to take pictures? I mean you need a computer, a digital camera, a good color printer, various gadgets like more memory, ink cartridges, cables, CD burners... Why? What's wrong with a 100$ 35mm camera and 4$ rolls of film?
Do you take such good pictures you can't wait a day for the pharmacy to develop them? 'Oh but sometimes it can take two days, and what about weekends?' Sweet Jesus, I'm glad those pressing problems have been solved!!!
It's amazing to see adults act like little children when it comes to computers. I'm sure I'll offend lots of people and they'll get all upset because I think they're wasting their lives with silly gadgetry.
Computers are great at creating problems where none existed, and 'solving' them at great expense. Ridiculous.
Many geeks (who are not also photo geeks) don't realize that color print film and color slide film don't have the longest life unless you take very good care of them. Black and white film and prints that are washed to archival standards will last longer than you, but color film and prints can degrade quickly. Acid (in non acid-free papers, UV, light and heat are the enemy of photos. If you want your negatives to last, store them sealed in plastic (like ziplock) in a freezer.
If you're looking to make prints on an inkjet printer, be aware that MOST of the inks sold for inkjets will fade VERY quickly. Accidently leave them in the car on the passenger seat and they'll be totally washed out when you leave work. Several printers are starting to have archival inks, which when combined with archival paper will last as long as color prints and some will last longer.
Prints from digital are decent from places like ezprints.com, ofoto.com, adorama.com (my favorite), snapfish.com and others.
For people who normally would shoot 35mm or APS and get nothing but 4x6's and an occasional 5x7, the consumer digital cameras are a replacement. Not because 3 megapixel is equivalent to 35mm, but because most consumers don't take advantage of even the resolution that 35mm uses, much less medium or large format film.
I consider the storage and organization of a photo archive a sort of separate problem from web and print albums and photo sharing. An archiving solution will let you find a file or negative easily and make a decision based on some sort of thumbnail or contact sheet. From an archive, photos can be pulled to be shared in albums, sent in email, posted to a website, printed for framing etc.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Really cool tool if you have your own webserver, thanks mentioning it!
I can see a future where more and more people get rid of their Yahoo/Lycos/whatever accounts because they can't stand the ads - and at this moment, Gallery can find its place as a replacement for "Yahoo Photos".
Actually, I'm right now in this process (because of the ads and because I wanna own+control my stuff). I'm still looking for other "My Yahoo! Organzer" clones to use with Perl/PHP:
- notepad
- calendar
- address
- briefcase (file upload/download)
- bookmarks
- webmail
There are tools for most of these tasks, but what I'm really looking for is an integrated thing that has the same usability in all tools and allows to jump from one tool to the other in some cases (like clicking an email address in the address tool would bring you to the webmail tool and has already filled out the "to:" field). Is anybody aware of such a program?
I asked a similar question on the Olympus Talk forum at DPReview.
I wanted to know the quickest way to scan 1500 photos into my computer. If I could scan 3 at a time on a fast scanner that takes 60 seconds to scan, it would take over 8 hours. If I used a stand and my digital camera to photograph each one, if it took 5 seconds per photo, it would take over 2 hours.
Is there a page feed scanner that can feed 4x6 and 3x5 prints?
Also, a great way to get real photo quality prints from your digital images is to get them printed at Walmart.com. They're inexpensive, very high quality, and they're printed on real photo paper.
PS: I have some of my recent digital albums on my web site.
- Eric, InvisibleRobot.com
Fist things first if you really do plan on converting your photos to a digital format make sure the photo lab you use is not using a digital process. The digital mini-labs use a digital printer to print out the picture. Now when you go and scan this digitaly produced picture it will look like crap ( you can see the ink dots used to produce the print ). So find yourself a good old chem process mini-lab or do the 3 day turn out service. You will be much happier with the results.
Now on to actualy scanning them. While you are scanning be sure to scan at a high enough resulotion so that they will work well with future high res printers. I normaly do 600-1200dpi when scanning a print.
On the other hand if you are really serious about it don't even bother with a flat bed scanner. Go out and get yourself a neg scanner that will scan the neg at the 4000dpi range. This will get far more information from the image than a flat bed will. If you are doing this on Linux go get VueScan as you will need it to make your neg scanner work.
Personly I have both a neg scanner and a flat bed scanner. General stuff I do on the flat bed but for those images that I really want to save for the future or that have allot of detail I use the neg scanner. You can't bet the neg scanner for getting every little detail out of a neg as you do loose some things when the image is transfered to paper.
I personally wish that there was a standard and widely used way of tagging each picture for archive and retrieval purposes.
We have EXIF and it is especially for this purpose: to store data about the picture (date, comment, etc) It is available for JPEG and (I believe) also for TIFF formats.
[ Perhaps you noticed that ZoomBrowser happens to know a lot about the pictures you have taken with your G1 - it uses the EXIF field ]
Damn, I think you solved a problem I've been worrying over. I said I would set up a site for my family, especially to help coordinate our family reunion. What are the other options besides Yahoo Groups? Are there any more focused options?
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
For digital images, whether scanned from film or pure digital, there are two good options for making prints.
Epson Photo printers like the 1280 or 2000p give photo-quality output with longevity comparable to most color prints. I know a number of pro photographers (including me) that sell images output from these. A few people have had problems with color-shift due to ozone, but properly framed and cared for (e.g., not left hanging in the sun, same as with a regular photographic print) they will last.
For really important digital images, get a LightJet print. Starting with a digital image (whether scanned or pure digital), it uses lasers to expose the image on normal photographic paper like Fuji Crystal Archive. At that point it is a regular photographic print, with the same longevity. The process isn't cheap, though, but the quality is unbeatable. Some big-name pros sell their images only in this format.
One thing to consider though is that no color images have the longevity of those old B&W prints. For current photo albums, having digital copies of important images made *before* the images degrade is important -- they aren't going to last.
What you'll also want to make sure of is the paper - it should be a PH-neutral archival-quality paper.
On top of that, not all dye sub printing is archival - check into what museums use.
Museums are in the business of making things last - they will be your best resource for this type of work.
As for digitally-stored files, don't trust any one medium. If you insist on putting irreplacable images on a twenty-cent CDRom, do yourself a favor and burn a couple - then also copy them to a hard disk. Personally, I'd love to see a good system for printing the images out as machine-readable codes onto archival-quality paper in something like IBM's glyph format - I've seen 500 year old paper that was showed absolutely no signs of degradation - any longer than that and I think I've fulfilled my responsibility to posterity. (Not that my photos are any good.)
One word of warning, a lesson learned the hard way: Do not use Zip disks for stuff you care about - I recently lost all of the pictures I took from a helecopter of the World Trade Center two years ago to a Zip disk that died the "click of death".
As for old family albums, I have been working on scanning my girlfriend's family albums and it's amazing how much detail we've been able to get out of these pictures that were often the size of a couple of postage stamps. We've been making a slide show and putting it on video tape for family members to watch on their TVs as well - great for older members of the family. An online gallery that allows comments (I have one at http://mmdc.net) is a good tool for gathering "Who's that guy on the left?" type of information.
The next stage is to remove the originals from the dangerous albums that they are in (the so-called "Magic" type albums with the sticky sheet and the plastic over them - they are probably the most damaging.) and place them in albums that won't accellerate their demise.
Search on Google for dealers in archival supplies, like Light Impressions. You'll find a lot of information and resources online.
Also, when dealing with really old black and white photos such as albumen prints and sometimes incorrectly-developed silver prints, if the image has faded away, it can often be brought back through chemical means - talk to a restorer, or at least, don't throw them away.
Hope this helps -
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
what digital format will still be readable in 25 years? I've had a couple digital cameras already, the first was a sony mavica - the floppy disk transfer was very appealing then. It shot everything in .jpg format. Will I still have to keep an ancient copy of photoshop running on windows98/2000/XP just to look at my circa 1996 pictures in 2025?
It to avoid any commercial software solution.
If your digital family album is not based on open standards (jpeg for example) it will be useless and completely lost in a much shorter time. There are plenty of "special" family album packages out there, that REQUIRE their viewer to see them.. nice now, but worthless in 95 years when that windows/intel X86 based software package is inserted in a Linux based Quantium computer (Yes linux will be around then... that's the beauty of having the blueprints!)
Me? I store everything as TIFF files. there is no encoding, no compression and a moron with a rock can figure out how to read/display that format.... That is for archival.. distruibution to family is Jpeg + simple HTML templates.. anyone can view them no matter what they own for a PC.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The best way to print 'cheaply' for a DIY setup is probably an Epson 8xx series (870 if you can find it) with a bulk continuous ink system, such as the one at www.missupply.com (there are others).
It's a non-trivial up-front cost (about $400 total), but your per-print cost will be quite low on a suitable paper. (eg epson heavyweight matte is about $.10/sheet, and will give you four snapshot size prints per sheet. ink cost not counting the up-front cost is about $100 for a couple thousand prints)
Due to the very high cost of manufacturers ink cartridges, I suspect this is the about the only viable home alternative - a service bureau will win out in this case.
Is that you are scanning the film itself, rather than than a print made by some clueless photolab worker. It's always best to go from film rather than a print when scanning, if possible.
Best bet for color accuracy and widest range of potential use is to scan the neg twice, once with as little adjustment in the scanner software as possible to keep and modify as needed later, then again, adjusting it to get the output you want right now.
As for organization software, I thought Canon Zoom Ex Browser was nice. Then I upgraded to OS X and iPhoto. Amazing.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
There are several ways to digitally archive film based images. The most accessible:
Digitizing:
1. Flatbed Scanner. Bad, bad, bad. Without exception, any flatbed scanner you use to scan your prints will yield terrible color, horrendous contrast and generally crappy output. This is, of course, the least expensive way to digitize your pictures, with flatbed scanners running as low as $100 these days.
2. Film Scanner. This is generally the best output you're going to get at home, but they tend to be expensive (~ $600 and up on eBay) and the workflow is very, very slow (5 min. per image after you get the hang of it). The images will also need a lot of adjustment after editing. If you do go this route, I recommend a used Polaroid SprintScan 4000; it does negatives and slides, and produces a max 4000x4000 image, which is good enough for prints up to around 11x17. There is also an APS attachment available for $40.
3. Kodak PictureCD. This is Kodak's consumer level image digitization service. You get a archival quality CD with your negatives scanned to JPEGs with a resolution of 1024x1536. This is generally good enough to print 4x6 prints at photo quality without cropping. The CD is in standard ISO9660 format. This is available pretty much everywhere, and runs ~ $12/roll without processing.
4. Kodak PhotoCD. This is Kodak's pro level service. You get an archival quality CD with your negatives scanned to the proprietary PCD format. Using special software (either included on the CD or using something like PhotoShop) you can output up to 5 different resolution levels of JPEG: 192 x 128, 384 x 256, 768 x 512, 1536 x 1024 and 3072 x 2048. This is generally good enough to print at 8x10 without much cropping. A PhotoCD usually runs ~$25-$30 without processing.
You can also get a ProPhotoCD which gives you 6144x4096 (good enough for 11x17, possibly 16x20 without cropping). A single ProPhotoCD runs ~$40 without processing.
Storage:
1. DVD. DVDs do hold quite a few images, especially if you're using a film scanner or other high resolution source. I've stayed away because the archival qualities of DVD are still in question, and there still doesn't seem to be a standard format.
2. CD-R. CDs are still the pick of the litter when it comes to storage options, PROVIDED you use archival quality media. I recommend the Kodak Gold Ultra series of CDs, rated to something like 100 years. You can buy these straight from the Kodak website, or at B&H Photo Video (http://bhphotovideo.com).
Software
For the Mac, I recommend getting a copy of GraphicConverter ($35, shareware) for browsing and editing images. PhotoShop is of course the standard, but I shoot hundreds of images a week and I haven't found an absolute need to fork out the $600 for PS.
iPhoto is a reasonable program for managing your photos (get the multiple photo library addon), Extensis Portfolio is the pro level tool. Both GraphicConverter and iPhoto let you make HTML pages and slideshows of your images for presentation.
On the PC, Picture Window Pro is probably the best image editor and browser going short of paying for PhotoShop. Paint Shop Pro is also a good choice. Check out ASeeDSee for a good image management tool that lets you output HTML pages for viewing.
If you are using a scanner at home on Mac or PC, I highly recommend Ed Hamrick's VueScan; a scanner control program that does batch scanning (really nice for film scanners) and produces superior ouput for the $40 or so he charges.
Summary:
Get a digital camera for you new photos if you can afford it; the savings in processing and archival costs make a decent camera quicly pay for itself (I have a Canon Powershot G2, which is amazing for $799).
The cheapest way to archive is to scan on a cheap flatbed scanner, but is also the lowest quality.
A film scanner produces the highest quality images, but can take you several years to scan them all if you have many rolls and don't do some serious culling first.
The easiest way to archive family photos for which you have negatives is PictureCD or PhotoCD, but the costs get out of hand quickly if you have many rolls to archive.
--predictive (lost me password)
The http://cat-photo.com/ project aims to:
1) Provide tools for increasing productivity in archiving digital photos, both scanned and those taken by digital cameras, together with descriptions and other information about the photo (-> use as little time per photo as possible).
2) Provides a well defined and easy readable file format that makes it easy to preserve photos (like family photos) for many decades (and still be compatible with future computer equipment).
3) Provides tools to publish photos (and associated textual information).
Today, there are Win32 tools, php tools, Linux commandline tools and java-based tools available from this project.
Currently, we seek java developers that are willing to help our java-based GUI productivity tool to reach a state where it can be released for the average end-user.
Dybdahl.
I just finished reading an interesting book that is somewhat related, called "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper" ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375726217/ ).
The book discusses how libraries are "archiving" old newspapers and books using microfilm and, now, digital techniques. The problem is, in most cases, they are throwing away the originals which have some nice properties (they are more tactile, look better, etc.) because they got so excited about the new technology and were happy they didn't have to set aside space for the old materials. Of course, it turns out that most of the microfilm is deteriorating now, and the original digital versions are low resolution and on obsolete platforms.
While the book deals with archiving our collective paper-based history, some of the lessons in there are relevant to archiving your own personal photographic history. The biggest lesson--don't make the mistake of throwing away the originals because you have this fancy new digital version!
Sure, why not? The source-code for jpegs is readily obtainable.
Even given that you store source code for libjpeg and libpng, do you really trust your family's history to the idea that C, for example, will still be readable in 2102? What about the Compact Disc format itself?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have a fast, flatbed scanner from HP which can scan 4 photos at once. However, I still have to individually select and save each photo. Does anyone know of any scanner software that could automatically detect the scanned photos and save them with a generic name, such as 'photo1.jpg, photo2.jpg, photo3.jpg...'? This would make scanning the photos go MUCH faster.
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/d
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/char
I don't think they support Memory Sticks yet, but I think that's "coming soon."
I've printed out several digital pictures (from a 2.1Mpixel camera) and the quality is quite good. The box allows you to do some manipulation of the photos (lighten, darken, rotate, etc). Print sizes range from 3x5 to 8x10 (I think the 8x10's actually have to be sent out though)
ProEx is owned by Ritz Camera, so Ritz stores may have eBoxes as well. They're fairly new, though, so the stores may not all have them yet.
I wonder what all that JPG > PNG
Stop there. PNG is already lossless up to 16 bits per channel. If you store source code for libpng on the same CD as your images, then as long as CD-ROM drives and C compilers are still readily available (neither of which I can guarantee), you can recover your data.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How about some extra time ?
Not to sound too negative, but how important are your photos, really? Why are saving them? Who are you saving them for?
Unless you're really into it, don't worry about saving all your photos. In 100 years most of them won't be worth anything to anyone. Pick out the few that are most important or representative of your family and its history. Then, have archival prints made by a reputable service bureau and store them to archival or close to archival standards.
A family record can be an interesting thing. And, it can even be historically significant in some circumstances. But snapshots are mostly for people in them. Don't waste your time worrying about something so transient. Making moments in the here and now is more important than waxing nostalgic about the past.
I would like to retrieve some of them, but I (a) haven't seen a 5.25" floppy drive in years
I'm in an A+ certification class. I saw a PC 5.25" diskette drive two days ago.
can't find any software that will read those formats.
GNU 'strings' will extract all ASCII text from a file format. If that doesn't work, you can always pull up the file in GNU Emacs's hexl-mode (or other hex editor) and try to guess how the text is stored. For instance, if you see a lot of strings of bytes from 0xa0 to 0xff, you probably have ASCII or'd with 0x80. With a bit more practice, you can recognize even parity.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If any companies are reading this, i think what we really need, is scanner that can take a stack of regular sized photos, and autoload and autoscan them, and put them into an album, awaiting labels from us, this would make digitizing photos take much less of our time, just minimize the program and let it work while we do other things.
Just my 0.02, Reece, Reece400@myrealbox.com
If you want your prints to outlast you, a $200 inkjet printer aint gonna cut it. Most inkjets inks use vegetable dyes that breakdown more quickly than photgraphic emulsion. For serious archival work think about earth-pigmented inks (I use Epson Archival and Ultrachrome, there are others) on papers prepared for such a purpose. At that point, you essentially have Giclee prints that will last many decades.
Well, Digitizing your family album is a task, i can assure you. But here goes.
For photos already developed, you can get a scanner with an Auto-Document feeder, which will let you leave a set to auto scan and save you having to switch individual photos.
Then for future film photos, you can ask that the negitives NOT be choped up and then have them scanned all 24 or 36 at the tiem with a roll fed film scanner. Please note that no matter how they advertise it, the negitive scanning feature on all flatbeds, SUCK. You need a negitive film scanner for this.
For archive purposes, you will need soemthing like ACDSee. I love ACDASee, you can use it to organise your photos, rename, convert format, realign (from Tall to wide and vice-versa) and a host of other nifty things with it.
then for burning, if it's to last, i recomend KodaK Gold CD-Rs. Sure they cost a couple of buck more, but with a bit of care, they will make your photos last a life time.
Cheers!
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Sure, everyone says, "I'm sure it exists," but I have yet to find ONE reputable service that accepts a shoebox of snapshots, scans them all in for you, and sends you back the shoebox along with a CD-ROM filled with high quality JPEGs.
A friend was looking for this type of service about a year ago, to assemble a huge family album online. He eventually gave up the search and scanned in everything himself.
I don't want to spend 6 months doing it myself, and I'm sure my equipment isn't the best for it. I'm not looking for software to help manage the arduous scanning process, I'm looking to pay someone to do it for me.
I'm thinking this is the perfect time for such a "transition" type of service. Too much labor involved? Not enough of a demand, or the costs don't work out right? Who knows -- but for now, I've looked into finding a company that offers this type of service, and constantly am coing up empty handed.
I'm not talking about printing digital pics, or even scanning in negatives. I'm talking about scanning in a shoebox filled with old snapshots, in the best and most efficient manner possible.
I ran into the same problem a few years (1996) ago with respect to my collection (9000 35mm pics covering 15 years - family and friends stuff that is emotionally important). I wanted to archive them for protection, and started off with Kodak PhotoCD. I moved to a scanner quickly thereafter. Basically, it comes down to making a good record of your work - Date/ Subject/ Names/ Where/ Extra info, as well as an archival backup, and readily viewable 'smaller' portable versions. I scan a 35mm frame at: 3600x2700 for archive (PNG - lossless compression) 1400xAAA for large copy (VGood JPG - print quality) 800xBBB for browser (Med JPEG viewable) 100xCCC for indexing (JPG) I get about 50 images stored in PNG/JPG combos on one 700 meg CD. And I make two copies of this. I can fit about 1800 pictures in the JPG only format on one CD. If I remove the large copy JPG from this, I can fit 5000 on one CD. You can scan yourself and get through maybe 50 photos in 3 hours. Retouching can be reduced with a scanner that has an auto fixing mechanism (very effective), and scanners can really dig out images you may have thought useless. When Im on a roll I can cut through maybe 100 in 3 hours. I wrote my own HTML/web based software to catalogue etc, as well as organise the images, but there are packages that do this for you. Similarly, companies will host your images - but I trust only myself with my stuff. Its a daunting task at the start, but all new films go straight in digital format - and when cameras can get 20 Megapixels then I might be going direct from digital to archive. Dont think of it as wasted time either, as its a wonderful thing when you can let friends/family see some very lovely memories with ease. I have relatives worldwide who have looked, and contributed comments to my collection. A great way of bringing the people together. Im now starting on my mothers 'boxes' of prints dating back 80 years using a flatbed scanner. Dont think of paper as being the 'best' solution, as devices and technology will move to make a digital collection an accessible one. On HDTV, flat panels, mobile devices. And your not throwing out the paper ones. Just protecting the memories. bert
Gritty.
Er....maybe. Most color prints unless sealed under glass don't age well. Maybe ten to twenty years. Better then most inkjet prints, but still not great. The negitaves last longer...normally.
Some negitaves, like the non-C41 color that Seattle Filmworks either sells, or use to sell dies very very quickly. Like in 3 years or so unless you put them in the freazer and are careful not to lot them get too humid.
Even good negitaves, like the thought to be archival Fuji slides from the 70's are starting to suck. Bad.
Quoting from some Apple propaganda:
Be careful of how archival you think reguar photos are. Sure you see a lot of old photos, but those are mostly silver haldide black and white which has much better archival properties then the dye baised C-41 and E-6 that almost all color stuff is these days.
The only arcival color process is Kodachrome...and Kodachrome is rapidly vanishing. I think all pro speeds have been discontinued, and the mature speeds are going. Either that, or at least all pro speeds below ISO 100 are gone. No more Kodachrome 25. Of corse that's because not many people have a taste for that color palette anymore, perfering Fuji's Velvia or Provia, or Kodak's E100SW. Plus Fuji is stealing basically the entire slide market from Kodak...and pro slide shooters are slowly converting to digital SLRs anyway.
Now that doesn't mean JPGs on a CD are going to automagically last 100 years either...but it is not as hard to think that if you recopy them every 5 years or so they will last...and if you stick the source code of something that converts JPG to a bitmap, and some documentation on the current C language...and JPG...maybe in 100 years it can be reconstructed even :-)
(Ok, given the current popularity of JPG, it is hard to imagine you won't be able to open JPGs in a specilty program in 100 years! Still, help the historians out...include file format documents!)
The propriatary RAW formats will be hard to open in just a few years though I think. So convert them to PNG...and make at least two CD's, on differnet dye types! Keep 'em out of the sun. Heck, keep one at home, one at work, and one at your parents house. A family alblum is the kind of thing relitaves love to be off site back up for.
If you have film...keep it in a cool dry palce. Inspect it yearly. Think about getting a high quality scanner and spending time on the best shots. Just remeber though, film brings out more detail then any print...and a scanner can capture more detail then prints, but affordable scanners won't capture as much as the film has (I wouldn't print anything a Nikon 4000 has scanned at much more then 8x10...but you can print a very good 35mm picture *much* *much* *much* larger then that). After you scan, take care of the print, there will be a better scanner in a few years.
Medimum and large format film folks? Your on your own...but you knew that already, didn't you?
It does, with an optional adapter... cool! :)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
One problem I have with moving towards digital photography and email and the like is that we are moving into mediums where storage is most often measured over the terms of years, not centuries. We can analyze history by reading letters and seeing photographs of previous eras. Will citizens of the future be able to do the same for our age?
slashdot!=valid HTML
I waited years to buy a digital camera. I wanted a digital camera that took pictures as good quality (or better) as 35mm. The Canon D30 is the first digital camera that has received critical acclaim for its ability to take photos which surpass the quality of 35mm cameras. So I bought one of these cameras and a nice 28-135mm lens and entered the digital realm. I also bought a 1GB IBM microdrive for the camera which holds about 800 photos. This camera takes absolutely fantastic photos. I use a very inexpensive inkjet printer, the Canon BJC-8200 to print photos on glossy photo paper and visitors to my home are astounded when I tell them that all the photos hung around my home were taken with a digital camera and printed on an inkjet printer. They look at least as good as traditional photos.
There are several advantages to digital photos over 35mm:
1. Since my microdrive holds 800 photos and each digital photo has no real cost to me (besides a small amount of battery power), I will often take several photos of the same subject / scene whereas with a 35mm I might only take one photo because of the cost of film.
2. Before printing a digital photo, you have the opportunity to crop, enhance and edit it. While you can certainly crop, enhance and even edit 35mm photos, it takes far less time and money to do so with digital. I use Adobe Photoshop for this purpose. Besides providing tools to do simple enhancements, Photoshop also has many built-in filters (and more available third-party) which are a lot of fun to play with.
3. Digitial albums are extremely easy to organize. I use directories to create albums. I create a new folder under the "My Photos" folder for each new event. I use the naming convention "YYYY-MM-DD Event Name" for each subfolder, so it's easy to browse the albums in chronological order.
4. Digital photos are far more permanent than prints. Formats may change over time, but you'll always be able to convert to the new formats. The key is to keep copies of both the original photos AND the ones you've spent the time editing. I backup all my photos onto CD. While you only have one copy of a 35mm negative, you can easily create as many copis of your photos CDs as you like and share these with friends and family members or just store them for safekeeping.
5. Digital photos are much easier to share. I live a great distance from the rest of my family and use my photos to help stay in touch. When I first got my digital camera, I kept my online photos at zing.com. Unfortunately, they went the way of the dodo about a year ago. They made a deal with ophoto.com before unplugging and all my albums were transferred, but I didn't like ophoto's interface all that much and eventually found a new home for my photos at ImageStation. It's a free service and it's owned by Sony, so hopefully it will prove to have some staying power. If you're interested, please visit my photos. I have over a hundred albums online - I think this one is the best.
I also started digitizing my older 35mm and APS photos using a film scanner. A film scanner produces far better quality digital photos than a flatbed scanner does, so consider investing in one if you want to digitize / preserve your old photos. I can recommend the Canon CanoScan FS 2710 that I bought. It was inexpensive and besides producing much higher quality photos than a flatbed scanner, it's also a lot faster!
I have a CD-RW (two of them actually, one in a fire proof box), when I pull pictures off the camera I create a new directory labeled for the date.
Then I use a freeware version of Ulead Photoexplorer to print a copy of every picture in that directory in a 2 by 2 format.
I print the directory name (the date) at the top of the sheet and the filename under each picture.
Then I slide the sheet into a sheet protector and put it into a three ring binder.
Works great, is very portable and if my technology illiterate grandmother wants a copy I know exactly where on the CD (kept in the back of the binder) to print a new copy.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
I've had 35mm processing from Snapfish, and ordered digital prints from both of the above, and the quality is excellent.
To get a full 24 digital prints (the average roll of film) would cost about $13 shipped... which is more than you'd pay for processing a 35mm roll. However, you have to consider that you're not paying for the film, and you also know you're only getting prints you want. How many of us _want_ every print off every roll of film? There are always bad ones and with digital you're not paying to print them.
LordBodak's journal.
Gallery works seamlessly as a PostNuke module as well - Themes and user authentication carry over from the parent PostNuke site right into the gallery.
It works well in standalone mode, but I recommend taking an extra 10 minutes and setting up Postnuke first.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Feel free to poke around my own PostNuke/Gallery site (Gallery link on the left):
-- My Weblog.
If you have your own server, look for a Apache / PHP solution. Plenty of them.
i don't like style guides
Thas all you need to know. Scan in everything you got, burn it to CDRom, and put it in the safe deposit box.
Boss had a total house fire with nobody hurt, not even the dog. To this day, complains about not having pix of the kidz when they were small.
Can you imagine the loss of the folks in CO and AZ?
Alternatively, digitise, for us British imperial types.
I wanted something simpler than gallery that just generates flat HTML files and thumbnails, so I wrote my own simple perl script to do it:
p l
http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~flynnj/stuff/makealbum2.
(If you want something done, do it yourself)
It's a work in progress, but gives you simple options and lets you put in caption files for each image.
Here's an album generated with it:
http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~flynnj/kittenpics/
Since it generates flat HTML, it can be used with any web server, even *shudder* Windows ones.
It all started with my dad making color copies of photos. I said "Dad, that paper is going to deteriorate faster than the original photos. What you need is a digital copy, and with backups, it'll basically live forever." So he challenged me on the best scheme for browsing the photos. I said there must be software out there to do what we want. Then we discussed what we wanted.
:)
My dad then set to scanning in 3000+ photos.
Meanwhile, I wrote the software (JSP/Servlet/JDBC). It was quite a task, and it's by no means perfect. But I didn't find any software out there that did exactly what we wanted. I didn't really care about pre-arranging albums for people... I might allow them to make their own in the future, but the key aspect is that we figured out what info was important, and then I wrote a search engine. You can search on any combo of family (up to 3), year, location, event, and keyword. The software scales the original scan (usually at a pretty high res) to a "web size" suitable for display on the page, and a thumbnail for the search results page. I make some assumptions about the pictures for the sake of expediency, but generally it looks okay.
Over time, we've added features like biographies for individuals, and now he wants to be able to put in stories about people and link photos and/or biographies to those. Talk about scope-creep. And then there's always new admin tools he wants me to write for him. Still, he's spending 4+ hours a day entering descriptions for the photos. He's got most of them done now.
At the risk of slashdotting the site (which runs off my pitiful cable modem), I'll post the URL: http://www.johnsonfamilyhistory.com/
Now I just have to figure out how to get him to spell and write a little better.
www.Jackassery.com
I have photo's of my grand-grand parents. How big do you think the chance is that your over-grand-children can read the cdrom, dvd or whatever else you burn these photo's on?
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
What I want to know is a rule of thumb for equating megapixels to analog film. How many megapixels does it take to equal the quality of a 35mm negative, taken with the following speeds of rather generic (Kodak, Fuji, ...) color film?
100
200
400
800
1600
What I really want to know is what sort of digital camera do I need to buy to take pictures as good as 200 speed film?
Are digital cameras generally "fast", in the sense of 1600 speed film?
(I hate taking pictures with fast film because of the graininess, and I hate taking pictures with flash.)
If you have your own server or access to one with a full PHP setup, check out http://www.phpgroupware.org/ Very nice suite of (mostly) intergrated PHP apps. It has modules for everything you asked for :) It's not a 1.0 release yet, but quite stable for personal use.
If you do archive your pictures, take some time and write a description of each picture. Your children will thank you.
I had to go through my mother's estate a while back, and she had pictures from her mother. My maternal grandmother was born in 1900 - many of these pictures had no detail as to WHO these people were, or WHY they were important enough to photograph. It was really heartbreaking to look at these pictures and not know it they were important to anybody else in the family.
No matter how you archive your photos, do those who come after a favor - write date, place, and a description on the pictures. Be that in magic marker on the back of the print, laserprint in the album, an HTML file on the CDR, or a comment tag embedded in the PNG, do something to capture that context!
Personnally, I wish that my cameras could embed the GPS location on the print, in addition to the date and time as they do now - even better would be to have a flux-gate compass to get bearing data.
OK, so I may be a bit obsessive (I've spent over $300 in film and developing costs for a 2 day trip!).
And I concur with others - if you are serious, get a film scanner. I use a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II, which is a USB device and is supported by Vuescan under Linux. Then I Gimp the pics to clean them up, and save them as 3600x2400 24bpp PNGs.
www.eFax.com are spammers
http://enraptured.compulsion.org/code/opt - will run imagemagick optimizations on your files to compress them as best as you can
http://enraptured.compulsion.org/code/lister.tar - 4 column image listing, with one-liner storybook style comment.txt file for captions
lister.tar contains mkthumb.pl which will use
imagemagick to make the thumbnails for you.
its really just the matter of 1 batch script.
-slf
No its not ignored, but why not get an account for +1/+2 posting rights
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I've been working on this over the past couple of years. I bought a Minolta Dimage scan dual II film scanner(they're pretty cheap on ebay these days) which can scan whole roll of crappy APS film (I had about 50 rolls) in one shot. For 35mm it will do 6 negatives at a time. The resolution is pretty good, but you have to do some color correction still (like they do when they make prints). I've archived almost 3000 pictures this way so far.
I've got a lot of prints without negatives, for those I scan with a flatbed.
I always scan at the highest resolution, then I batch convert everything down to different resolutions, and archive everything with dates/keyword/etc. to a database using a PHP image gallery I wrote.
It's very time consuming, but nice to be able to find images so easily.
I have used an HP PhotoSmart S20 to scan negatives. I has done a good job, but it only has drivers for Windows, and I've given up on that now. The s/w that came with it (the driver?) automatically chopped up the scanned strips into individual shots, which helped dramatically. Still, since I don't use Windows anymore, it's sitting gathering dust.
(Anyone know of a driver for Mac OS X, or another scanner that automatically splits strips *and* has a driver for Mac OS X?).
Another thing...the ReplayTV4000 has a facility for showing a photo album on your TV (as well as recording shows etc). I haven't tried it, but it would appear to be the modern alternative to a photo album on the coffee table.
Max.
Max.
Anyone point me in the direction of a negative scanner that can also handle 126 (Instamatic cartridge format) negatives as well as 35mm ? IIRC 126 format film is not same width as 35mm (or is it?)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Do not put thumbprints on pictures.
For speed, there are very good digital cameras out there that cost a bit more than the 'equivelant' 35mm ones in which there is no noticable difference on speed. The trade off is one of mechanics however. You must have an enourmous amount of storage that can quickly and easily be switched out for the digital camera. (which I was told is not a big deal, but analog cameras have had the techniques of that problem brought down to a science)
About the quality, the answer was this: If you only view desktop (not computer) sized photos and smaller then you will never see a problem with the mid to high end digital cameras out on the market currently. However, while you can blow up the negative (from a good quality film/camera) to make very large pictures you are stuck with a rather low end for magnification on digital film. His solution was to take his best shots and store them on very high (and thus very large) resolution files and store those on any number of mediums.
Yeah, I know its not that helpful really but I hope it is a jumping off point for more information.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
"Hey, come to my room to see my family album!"
These services burn your digital image on to ordinary film paper - the same stuff they use to make your prints from negatives in the lab. How do they do this? Instead of exposing the print paper to a darkroom enlarger with your negative in it, they scan the paper with a cathode ray tube (yea same technology as your monitor) and the results are actually better than a negative transfer because there isn't a second lens in the darkroom to distort and soften your image from the negative, the image goes from colored electrons to the paper directly.
as for reccomendations, I've had good service with all three, Ofoto and Shutterfly use Kodak professional and/or Kodak digital imaging paper (ofoto is owned by Kodak) and Photoaccess uses Fuji Crystal Archive paper, and also offers a beautiful matte finish paper that I use when I'm selling prints.
As for online photo display for the web, I would heartily reccomend Gallery, which is a set of PHP scripts. I have modified this software to allow print sales of my photographs. Photoaccess and all the other companies have online sharing of albums themselves, but their interfaces are mostly terrible and the preview images are way too small and lossy. (they have to go small to handle the traffic, I don't blame them) so I have my own web galleries, but I print through them.
---Mike
About a year ago a relative of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer so for her birthday I decided to go through the task of converting all the family photos from 3x5 to digital. We still use the prints in the family rooms but the CD-ROM was great for sharing because you can just send one out to everyone for very little expense. When all was said and done, I was able to send out a full CD-ROM of high-res family photos to 20 relatives for under $30 and a days worth of work. Most of whom would never have seen any of the pictures otherwise.
I use both digital and analog cameras. Digital for the quick and dirty (though sometimes they're spectacular) and analog is for archival.
Analog is also quicker - I can get off alot more shots quicker than with digital, unless I really want to spend alot of money.
I uise both 35 MM and an SLR APS (those little 24mm canisters) and in developing, opnly get index prints (costs only 350 per roll). I use a FILM SCANNER to create DIGITAL versions of developed film and can then get both analog and digital prints as mnecessary...
I've taken all developed film I have and made digital copies.
Any photos without negatives have been scanned.
for family use all old documents are being scanned, and copies out to brothers and sisters...
I may be late on this but dotphoto.com does 4x6 prints for 19 cents VS. 39-49 cents from everyone else.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Picture CD gives you 1.5 megabinary pixels of resolution, while a Photo CD gives you multiple resolutions on a single CD ranging from 24 kilobinary pixels to 6 megabinary pixels. Pro Photo CD has a maximum resolution of 24 megabinary pixels! And keep in mind that this is electronically scanned from the original negative or slide. One couldn't possibly hope to duplicate this at home.
Now, if you have existing prints for which you have no negatives or slides, then you need to scan at the highest resolution you can and store it in a non-lossy format, high bit-depth format. Note that this is for poor man's "archiving". If you just want to store a representation of the picture to use for printing or something, then you could use a low end compression algorithm like JPEG.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
I bought this printer (including the LCD monitor) for my father a few weeks ago (Father's Day gift), and he loves it. Not only you can do use glossy papers, you can get those strip papers (looks like those cashiers). Fry's Electronics had it cheaper than other stores in Los Angeles area. Just a note: It is hard to find the LCD monitor part because it is always sold out, even online.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
In the US, OPhoto and ShutterFly are a couple.
There is also some Linux software to manage your own photo albums, if you have a web site available:
I also have a HP PhotoSmart 100 printer, so my as far as photos go, I have reached nerdvana. :)
Scanning pictures is a pain in the ass, I recently decided to take on the daunting task of digitizing 139 pictures for my highschool graduation and the trivial task was quite boring. We need some software that uses neural networks or fuzzy logic that will be able to pluck pictures from a scanned page. Thereby, if you could use a professional, large scanner, you could scan 30 pictures at a time.
You can see how my pics turned out at http://datacracker.com/gallery/album05/
Cheers,
raja
The Guggenheim museum had a similar problem w/ digital formats and its longevity.
The museum was worried about not being able to view today's digital installations in 100 years from now and in the way it was meant to be seen by the artist (presentation).
There are a lot of articles on google on this topic.
"storage, emulation, migration, and re-interpretation."
http://curator.sourceforge.net/ is very nice IMHO - I use it for my web gallery.y /diri ndex.html
Have a look at:
http://users.pandora.be/jancastermans/galler
If you're really bothered that JPEG will become unreadable - something I doubt, givent that it is an open format - try something like PPM. Straightforward RGB raster format, and you could even put a description of the format in the comment field at the top of the file!
While there are some nice packages such as Gallery, IDS, My Photo Gallery, and others, I prefer Album. (Actually, I prefer Album plus my fixes and enhancements.) The one reason that I don't like albums that have server-based components to them is that they tend to do all sorts of image resizing operations at runtime, making them horribly slow.
Album, on the other hand, recognizes that photos are static content, and takes the performance hit of generating thumbnail galleries and web-friendly images right up front (i.e. offline), and as a result, the speed that end users see is limited only by how fast Apache can serve up files.
The approach that I am taking for long-term archival is to burn Album-generated photo albums into CDs, such that the only requirement to view them will be a browser. HTML and JPGs are so pervasive, I don't see them being replaced anytime soon. I can burn a CD, send it via snail mail to my Mom, and she can browse away easily (including "themes"). The same cannot be done with these [php- | cgi- | perl-] based solutions that require some server software to be setup and configured.
The only advantage that the server-based programs provide is the ability to add comments, but that seems overrated IMHO. -Steve
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
First, I'm currently using a databasing package that I came upon after almost giving up and writing my own. I'd tried scores of different software, but nothing could give me access to a lot of photos, deal with off-line storage easily, and give me powerful databasing/scripting tools useful for finding that important photo. It's called I-Match and can be found at Photools.
.jpg format.
.jpg. JPG is like text. It's going to be around for a long time to come simply because there is so much content in that format already.
The software won't do much for preservation except for its good offline capabilities.
For that, I store photos in a simple system on my hardrive. I break up the directories into 650MB sections with subdirectories that are named with the date as in, "20010927_Wedding". That directory contains subdirectories named "processed", "web", and whatever else makes sense at the time, but the top level contains completely unmodified files in
Now I can copy these directories wholesale to CD-Rs.
Here's the first big point: media sizes always get bigger. So in a few years, I won't duplicate those CD-Rs (there's already two copies of everything right now). Instead, I'll copy them to DVD-R (after they have time to work their bugs/formats out). The DVD-Rs hold a few more CDs worth than the equivalent CD-Rs. A few years from then, my holo-bubble-memory or whatever will hold a few DVD-Rs worth. So in all, I should still be carrying around a relatively small collection of archival data disks despite the growing amount of data.
As for formats... I have a Canon G1 and it has a great RAW format. IMatch even has support for it. There isn't a chance in hell that I would store anything in it without also storing an equivalent high-quality
From this discussion, however, I will modify my procedure slightly. I'm going to start including a tar'd, bzipped2 version of the xpm tools on each of the CDs.
As for prints, I have no desire for my prints of digital images (so far) to last. The archival copy is the copy on the CD-R, not the print. I _want_ the print to degrade over a few years - it'll keep things fresh. Just so long as I can get at the original data (and the processed version that was used to make that print). Of course... there are artifacts that the printing process introduces that can be considered part of the art....
1. 2.
"A few years from then, my holo-bubble-memory or whatever"
According to Steven Spielberg, we should have 'holo-bubble-memory' by the year 2054.
I can't wait!
gallery [apt-get install gallery] is a fantastic tool for organizing digital photos. Check it out.
Nobody can guarantee that any format will be readable in 25 years. Preserving the information requires that somebody does the job of format conversion every say, 10 years or so.
Preservation of historical data, particularly digital data, is an active process.
Why do you have to choose between "digitizing" or "not digitizing?"
Keep the negatives, keep the prints, and scan them and keep copies.
Also, analog colorspace possibilities still surpass
consumer digital. A good 35mm or medium format negative still has far greater "resolution" that any consumer digital camera.
On the other hand, the ecological consequences of film processing should make it something we eschew as a civilization. I know of an Eastman town that I can't even *drive* through because of the noxious gases *miles* away from the plant. That people live there amazes me.
Advantages - everyone has a copy of all the photographs, and digital images won't degrade. I'd strongly recommend it. And yes, provided oyu've got the negatives, negative scanners are better.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Firstly, the easiest (non techie) way, IMac/USB Scanner/CDROM burner, the Mac has all the software built already installed.
Secondly, A very good inkjet printer and good quality paper plus a three hole punch/Binder.
Thirdly, scan-em/burn-em (on CD's), punch/print-em, make binders out of them send copies to your family, put the original photos in a bank safe deposit box, and use the binder for your living room conversation piece.
Note: by doing it this way you can easily add captions and page headers to your photo album.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I keep them with the name the camera gave them, unaltered, in year\yyyymmdd folders. The camera will wrap at 10k pictures, but I haven't taken that many in a single day, yet.
I used to try to give them good names, but it falls apart rapidly, and there are better tools available, such as ThumbsPlus from Cerious Software. It uses an Access97/ODBC compatible database, allows for the tagging of multiple keywords per photo. The slideshow mode is VERY handy.
For editing the photos, use Paint Shop Pro from JASC, it's good, cheap, and has a good thumbnail system as well.
I made two sets of geographically dispersed backups to guard against system failure, with CDs as low as $0.23 each (a sale at Target), it seems silly not to.
All of this works very well for me, as before your milage may vary.
--Mike--
what digital format will still be readable in 25 years?
I would argue that all of them will. My argument is based on the fact that almost every image format known to man, including those that were invented 20 years ago, are still readable by some form of shareware.
Take the program Graphic Converter, for example. It imports about 160 different image formats. I don't think I can name more than 20 formats off the top of my head.
The reason this is the case is that image data is very, very simple. It's a regularly-spaced rectangular array of color values. The most complicated part of the data model is the fact that color can be represented in different ways. It's nowhere near as complicated to write a reader for an old image format as it is for, say, scientific data.
I think that we're going to be able to read JPGs for many decades to come.
your != you're
why do you pack of dumbasses post articles like
this?
this has got to be the stupidest damn thing i've
ever seen on slashdot, and given the usual calibre of tripe here, that is a tall statement.
Would be a display screen dedicated to showing a photo. Could be anything from credit card size to [ real ] window size. Would hold a set of photos you could change at a touch, e.g. iPod does with music. The movie Minority Report had many of these.
I believe Bill gates already has some plasmatrons about his mansion that does this, but these are expensive. Id guess about fifty bucks for a credit card size to a thousand for a wall size would work. This is only a matter of time given Moore's Law.
If you and your family were to become say, stick figures, then you could store the pictures with a lossless vector format. The file size wouldn't even be smaller than with jpegs, and you will have no problems with pixellation!
I think most are missing the point. What he wants is to automate the process of scanning the prints and negatives. Good news is O'WONDER is developing such a system for launch within a few years. It will automate the process and allow you to assign keywords and the like to each image too. Color adjustment will also be done to ensure an accurate match. As regards storage, the best bet is on a hard drive, not a CD or DVD because they can decay or get scratched. In addition, there will be a time when removable media will become obsolete and high speed networks are used to exchange and archive data. (For some of us, this is already the case.) I have all my music on a hard drive - not any removable media. As long as I keep moving my music to a medium that can be connected to my latest computer, I have no worries!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
I tried using gallery but I had issues with security on my host, 34sp.com (who are both top flight and dirt cheap. They also do PHP/MySQL hosting as standard). These issues were probably more to do with my own ignorance than any actual problems.
Instead I've been using MyPhoto, also available at sourceforge, and I have found it to be easier to configure than Gallery.
All things in moderation; including moderation
medium Pronunciation Key (md-m) n. pl. media (-d-) or mediums
Pronunciation Key (md-m)
n. pl. media (-d-) or mediums
etc etc etc...
Here, chew on this for a while:
VIRUSES
FUNNER
I AM THEY'RE FRIEND.
I AM TO!
Has everybody gone blind or what?
hasn't anybody noticed the awful deterioration in prints lately?. Laboratories (like kodak) are now digitising the negatives or slides to print pictures and the result are ugly grainy pictures. Through digital medium (video tv and digital cameras), we are just trained to accept a lesser quality of images. Even on international art fairs you can now see (grainy) prints from digital processing.
what a shame!
If you seriously want long term photos for generations use a metal photo.
Just a quick note to say that a comparison of a few online digital photo places has been done by a writer for TidBITS, the well-respected Mac-slanted newsletter. The relevant issues are #616 and #617.
On another topic, if you're thinking about jumping to digital photography, do it. Briefly:
1. Resolution of consumer film, even used with a (basic) SLR, is not as good as you might think. I've had film negatives scanned with a professional drum scanner, and they looked terrible, loaded with grain.2. Instant feedback (and better photos as you learn more, faster).
3. Take as many photos as you want (until everyone smiles, until the framing is right, etc.).
4. Digital cameras are smaller and lighter than film cameras.
5. No developing or film costs.
6. iPhoto really does let you view/organise your photos far better than any album could.
Seriously though, getting a digital camera changes the way you take photos. My partner and I have taken over 2000 photos since Christmas, not counting the ones we've trashed already. Yes, we used to use Picture CDs from conventional photography, and they were pretty good, but our (low-end) 2 megapixel camera gives higher resolution images than the best Picture CD pics we got. (And not all of those were equal, but don't get me started on that.)
BTW, Photo CD - the really nice pro CD option with all the different resolution options from Kodak - has been discontinued. No new machines are available.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
It would be nice if every 5-10 years NIST or the Smithsonian would accept a standard that would always be accessible in the future. That is, the government would fund the continued existence of a select few outdated digital technologies in the interest of being able to archive data on that technology (and have it always readable).
This would come at some cost, but then everyone would know what to format use if they want to save something for the great great grandchildren.
When I take underwater photos, I get the film developed but not cut. I also tend to use slide film since its much better. I then get a 1 hr photo place to scan the entire 36 pictures. They will do a single roll for about 1/2 the cost of 36 pictures if they negatives are cut. I then put their CD in my pc and run a small script that uses convert to convert the images to 400x300 and 100x75 thumb prints. If any of the pics are very good I get them rescaned at very high resolution. Kodac Photo CD is much better than their picture CD but its hard to find palces that will still do that. I've got two photo cd pics (reduced in size) at the bottom of www.abnormal.com. I've got a few pics taken with a $200 800kpix smasung camera (click on the fish, then the nice trpical islands)
Remember the worst 35 mm film has a resoluion of about 50 megapixels while the better stuff has a resolution of about 300 megapixles.
Check out the Horde project. I've used their webmail & address book - both very good. They have projects for many of the other things you mention, as well.
I go through about 4 (usually business related type) books on CD a month. At ~$20-$30 a pop, that adds up. I am trying to get my listening habbit to pay for itself. So far I don't break even. If I am going to recommend a product Amazon happens to sell (my printer for instance, which I really do own and love), you're damn right I'm going to put my affilate link in there.
You will see it's a +5 comment, so I'm not just "spamming", but actually providing some useful content.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I finished scanning my mother's childhood album a few weeks ago. M$ made it difficult, but that's another post. The tools that worked were Electric Eyes (to liberate corrupt M$ tiffs to png), Gnome Midnight Commander (gmc, to autogenerate thumbnails 100x100), Bluefish (to make a html tabled view page template one day I'll make webmagic do this, but I may still prefer the straight simple html). HTML, thumbnails, larger jpgs and as large as possible PNGs are stored in seperate directories. The html has tables of thumbnails that point to larger jpg's. The user is made aware of the PNGs on the album's first page. All the pictures in the different directories have the same name to minimize confusion. The albums have coppied to CDs and placed on ftp sites to share with anyone who is interested. I'd post a link, but I fear some ass will put a nasty little winbot DoS on me for my trouble.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I wrote my own software for managing the collection (creating viewable size pictures, thumbnails, etc.), and so far, the best way to organize them is in a directory structure like /YYYY/MM/DD/ so that you can get to any specific day easily, and since you usually don't have that many pictures for any specific day, it manages it quite nicely.
Biggest issue so far is space. I may be living in the past, but having some important directory take up 40% of a HUGE hard drive is kind of unsettling. Backups are also a pain, it takes many CD-Rs to store everything, and even with DVDs, it would still be a major pain requiring several DVDs.
The best parts are that you can easily share it with your family, just startup a web-server and have your family browse through the thing. You can also combine it with other media, for example, my collection has digitized home movies (MPEG format), files, etc.,
There is no worry about it outlasting technology, since I'm sure I'll move it over to the newer machines/technology as those become available. The family will maintain the whole collection. You also don't throw away (shread or burn) the originals, so in case something horrible does happen, you still have some physical backup.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I just went through this exact same debate. I chose to dig out all my old negatives. I called up my local university. They were more oblidging, and allowed me to use their equipment for an extremely trivial cost ($10 / day). I had access to a wicked UMAX flatbed capable of scanning over 100 negs at a time; with photoshop on a dual-G4 for cropping and cutting. I scanned at an effective 2400 DPI, saved in PNG at about 800K a file; 1000 pictures took me about six hours - 800 Megs worth of pictures.
I've got all my prints still - but scanning pictures is _so_ much more a pain than negs. See if you can get a flat bed. Oh; and choose a bit-depth, size and format first..
What hardware you use for acquisition controls the final quality of your results, so don't skimp on a cheap scanner, use slide or negative scanners rather than flatbed scans from prints, and use digital cameras like the Canon D60 or Nikon D100 that have larger sensors with less thermal noise rather than point and shoots. Using a alide/negative scanner is a very slow and laborious process, and a better option is to have scans made by a photo lab. Avoid the low quality Kodak PictureCD and opt instead for PhotoCD, which has higher resolution and scans made more carefully.
For most of the other phases, the choice of software does not matter very much and will indeed change over time. It is essential to get asset management right up-front, however. The solution you use must be
The best program I've found so far is IMatch (Windows only, I'm afraid), mostly because of its incredibly flexible category system, that works like set theory with multiple inclusion relationships and boolean operators.
Finally, the most comprehensive description of a Photoshop editing workflow is available here on Michael Reichmann's Luminous Landscape site.
Well I can tell you that I have done this both ways. First we will start with the photo >> computer, then I will talk about computer >> photo.
For converting your photo's to images on a computer there are several paths that you can take to get to the desired solution. I have access to a stack-fed scanner and use that for doing bulk picture scanning, but I don't think that is in the price range of the average Joe. It is however by far the fastest solution. So I will enter the relm of reasonable prices for people.
There are machines built for scanning negatives, most of these are great if you are not to woried about loosing some of the picture quality afforded by your 35mm negative (if you still have them, a lot of people don't keep those around long for some reason), to get a really good one (note: I am pretty anal about my picture quality) you might have to pay a bit more. If you do 24mm (APS (ie. Advantix, ix240, nexia) Which by no means I suggest using) there is a device made specifically for you by Kodak (I think) that is designed for this purpose and carries a decent price tag. However for 35mm you will need to do some shopping and research as I have no scanners built for doing 35mm film scanning (I do have some masks for various aspects of the medium formats though).
For doing prints I suggest getting a fairly fast scanner if you plan to do a lot of pictures in one sitting (I suggest SCSI, but others will suggest other things). You can also cheat and scan negatives on a scanner (not suggested as you might scratch the negative) in bulk and do a mass color reversal (there are programs that will do this for you, but I don't know their names, and don't suggest that path). I highly suggest doing research into what you can and can't afford scannerwise as this can cut a lot of your time out, as software isn't one of the biggest bottle necks here.
Now for digital >> prints. The path for this really depends on how much you want to pay to get good results (I HOPE you want good results). And I will assume that a 4" digital photo printer is a bit outside most peoples buget (I have access to one of these due to working with them).
There are devices out there that can read your data source of choice and print them out for you on decent photopaper (a 150m roll of 4" glossy paper is about 25-30USD same with matte). These however are a bit expensive but are quite a bit fun. Beware that you need to mix chemicals to do this and that can be both dangerous and touchy. From what I have seen of this market price reflects quality and/or speed.
If you want to do this on a computer however your options get a bit more pricy, however, you can use your inkjet printer now to do them. There are ways to get blank photopaper (yes, the kind i mentioned abover) to become white and work in an inkjet with decent results, but this requires you to be able to make a light tight room and develop the paper beforehand. I am just going to assume here that most people don't know how to develop photopaper properly by hand, as they would be looking for a more professional result than this will produce, so I will not explain it here and let that to someone else. You can also buy paper in both matte and glossy made for your inkjet, but it doesn't look the greatest, but should pass for most people. Also there are printers (I know poloroid makes one, and I think Fuji does too) that attach to your computer and will print out 4x6" pictures, but I think most of them require special paper to do this.
Going either print>>digital or digital>>print by having someone else do it can be REALLY expensive if you are not careful. Also, if you take things somewhere to be done out of house, ALWAYS ask who they send it to and research that company a bit. I have had awful dealings with a company called Qualex before and having to explain to a customer that this company screwed there order up, destroyed their negatives, and charged the wrong price. I could correct what I could of the price (and I gave them free processing coupons as well).
I use an HP 100 printer. It prints 4x6 photos with great color result. It takes about 3 minutes per print, but the result is fine. The printer does not even require a PC. Just slide in your favorite memory (CompactFlahh, SmartMedia or Memory Stick) and print away. HP photo paper runs about 30 cents per sheet when bought 60 at a time.
Before this we tried Ofoto online, but their color balancing sucked.
Try Sam's Club. Until my local Costco started digital prints on the same Fuji Crystal Archive paper Walmart and Sam's Club use for $0.20/4x6 I used Sam's Club online. www.samsphotoclub.com They charge $0.24 and I found the qaulity to be better than that at Walmart online... You don't need to be a Sam;s Club member to use this service!
Costco online is also price competitive, but I found their prints (on Kodak paper) dull, particularly compared to what I had from Ofoto before Kodak took over there...Balam
Contract the neighborhood kid who's out of school for the summer. Offer a $50 scanner - maybe a $50 CD burner to scan in 20 or 30 rolls of film (24 pictures) at 600 dpi. Then you offer a buck or two for every roll after that.
You can scan your prints in yourself or have a company do it for you. Either way, there is some work/money involved.
In 1998, I scanned all my prints and threw away my 35mm. I picked up a digital camera and have not looked back. I recently found IDS and now store all my photos in online albums using IDS (Image Display System). IDS has the excellent features of scaling (ImageMagick), caching and ordering from ShutterFly directly from my photo albums (makes it easy for grandma).
When I have scanned the old family albums I would like to sit down with my parents (both 90 and in good shape) and have them tell the stories behind the old pictures. Then burn CD's for their 9 grandchildren. Any suggestions on what software to use to add sound?
But then, I am printing (the old-fashioned darkroom way) all my interesting work on at least 8x10, so i might be a bit more concerned with quality. Having a Hasselblad doesn't hurt either :)
It still exists and its a great service. Fairly archival as well.
The comments on dye life also apply to the C41 process black and white films, such as Ilford XP. For archival life, stick with the old reliable halide films, the ones that use Microdol developer. Which is why they can't process it at the one hour photo counter at Wal Mart.
The other big factor is archival quality protection for the negatives (and prints). High acid paper, PVC, etc. will ruin the images no matter what hardcopy you use--photo print, negative, slides, or ink-jet print. If it's important enough to keep, protect it properly.
There are also many online photo development services available to Canadians, see Tables of Online Photo Service Sites.
I have a used HP Photosmart S20 scanner, bought for less than $150. It makes extremely high quality photo scans of anything up to 5 x 7. It also scans negatives and slides! I also have an Epson Stylus PhotoEX printer, purchased used for less than $150, which produces pro-grade photo prints. The real expense here is in the photo paper. But if you get organized, and print out pages with lots of smaller photos on them, then insert them into photo album binders, you then have pictures you can readily pull out from the bookshelf or coffee table and share with folks, while you have preserved the larger images for longer term on your computer. Good idea to save the images on a CD as well, however, for that inevitable day when they will need to be transferred to some other medium. Unfortunately, todays regular photo prints don't hold up as well as old ones. Its a combination of paper and process. I have some family photos from the 1800s that are in better shape than some photos from the 1970s. It is work, but should be worth it to your family and your descendants in the long run.
Ten years ago, Hurricane Andrew destroyed my mom's house. By sheer luck, the china cabinet where we stored all the family photos survived, and we were able to rescue almost all of the photos. We decided then to start digitizing them. Kodak Photo CDs had just started becoming prevalent, so we sent our photos off to a local PhotoCD preparer, who created TWO copies of each CD. Now, my mom keeps one and so do I. Now that we are both taking digital pictures, we send each other CDs occasionally, with our latest pictures. We also do the same with other family members photos. As we come across old family photos, I scan them, and touch them up. Most people don't think about losing things like this, but as anyone who has been through a disaster such as this can tell you, the only things that matter in a disaster are saving life, and family memories that can't be replaced. Now that we have the family photos "backed-up" to other family members, that is one less worry during hurricane season. ... and that is probably the best reason to put your photos on digital media.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
One major problems with digitalized photo libraries is that the storage media will degrade over time. There is a reason that archaeologists still use regular archival quality photos for their records: CDs have a thirty year expected lifetime. While recopying the family photo collection every twenty-five years may not seem like such a big, it is any easy thing to forget to do.
Opinions are not Informative, though they may be Insightful or Interesting.
Lodju.
You can add an Auto Document Feeder (ADF) to alot of HP scanners. Most of them will auto feed up to 50 items at a time.
Maybe the original poster is just too young to have had experiences such as you describe, but I'm with you 100%. Like most Slashdotters, I imagine, I'm more oriented toward the future than the past. Even so, sometimes I imagine what it might be like to have a "holodeck" recreation of my surroundings as a child. Sitting in the back seat of our old car, with a young Mom and Dad in the front seat, surrounded by my favorite candies, some of my old toys....
I don't know how realistic VR is going to become, but even if I have to just do it in my head, having pictures of the old people, places, and things helps me to recreate a world that was good to me and fill in a lot of the details. Seeing even older pictures helps me to recreate worlds that had a big impact on my life, even though they disappeared before I came along.
These things matter to me, and they matter more as I get older and can begin to really feel my place in the sweep of human history.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
As I've gotten older, I've noticed a definite change in my orientation from a close up on my own personal here and now to a wide angle view of family history. I remember my parents when they were younger than I am now. I can remember my grandfather when he wasn't much older than I am now, and I'm surprised at how I'm beginning to relate to them as peers.
They're gone now, but I want to know them more now than I ever did. The photos aren't even close to being enough, but I'm sure I glad I have them.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
At some point, it would make sense for a service bureau to offer the service of reclaiming data off old media and copying as much as possible onto new media. We already have SBs that will recover data from crashed hard drives and others that will copy old super8 movies onto VHS and others that will move VHS to DVD.
It seems that there is a generic business here: moving data from old, even damaged, media to new media. A lot of local SBs already do parts of this. Maybe over time, we'll see a franchise appear offering a wide range of such services, that uses old designs and virtual machines to manufacture the necessary equipment for its franchisees....
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Yes, but Superstore can have your photos done in an hour (two hours for digital pictures, I think). I'm not a big fan of mailing away things like memory cards, and for a lot of people (myself included, even on Sasktel's DSL), it's faster to drive to Superstore and get the photos developed there than it is to upload them anywhere, not to mention much less complicated. And besides, rare is the Western Canadian city without a Superstore. Or at least, sucky is it.
--Dan
The digital pictures are over hyped. They are not high resolution, and we are still several years away from high resolution. Try a little experiment. Get a photographer to take a group photograph with a fine grain film under good lighting conditions and have it professionaly developed. Snap the same picture with a digital camera. Then enlarge the image of one person, in both of them, to a substantially larger size.
I have tried this trick a few times and must say it works like a charm.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
I got this done, around 1.3 megs
. ta r.gz2 .3-REA DME.txt- 1.2.3.tar . zm lp ://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/zlib-1.1.4.tar.g z
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/libpng-1.0.13
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/libpng-1.
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/libpng
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng-manual.ht
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
htt
http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
Hopefully most of that will be useful later.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
After having struggled printing color photographs on my inkjet (ink drips, misfeeds, empty cartriges, expensive ink, expensive paper, etc.) I threw in the towel and now take my CF card to the photoshop. I buy all of my printing stuff in the states (cheap), but I live in Latvia. I have found that the cost of the supplies, plus the cost of my time and frustration and sleepless nights printing piles of photos, is far more than the approximately $0.40/print it costs to get prints made on real kodak or fuji paper. My photo printing printer is now in the garage...
Enough said.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.