Best Method for High-Quality Photo Scanning at Home?

samuelethan

Registered
Hey everyone,

I'm looking to digitize a large collection of old family photos and want to make sure I get the best quality possible without breaking the bank.

I’ve seen everything from smartphone apps to flatbed scanners and even professional services, but I'm not sure which route to take.

I’m particularly concerned about preserving detail and color accuracy. Does anyone have experience with home scanning setups that produce archival-quality results?

What scanner or app do you recommend, and any tips on resolution or file formats?

Appreciate any advice or personal experiences you can share!
 
Hey everyone,

I'm looking to digitize a large collection of old family photos and want to make sure I get the best quality possible without breaking the bank.

I’ve seen everything from smartphone apps to flatbed scanners and even professional services, but I'm not sure which route to take.

I’m particularly concerned about preserving detail and color accuracy. Does anyone have experience with home scanning setups that produce archival-quality results?

What scanner or app do you recommend, and any tips on resolution or file formats with Tapes to Digital?

Appreciate any advice or personal experiences you can share!
thanks in advance for any help
 
If I were gonna go down that path, i'd probably look at https://photomyne.com/ and see if it has scanner support, rather than being camera based. I've never used it, but it looks pretty cool. In particular being able to just do a page of photos and pick thing apart looks very attractive. That'd save a bunch of time.
 
I’m particularly concerned about preserving detail and color accuracy. Does anyone have experience with home scanning setups that produce archival-quality results?

What scanner or app do you recommend, and any tips on resolution or file formats?
For slide films I went with a SlideSnap Pro system and a good digital camera. For flat media I am using a scanner with a 2400 optical resolution.

Save in lossless file formats like TIFF.

Look at Library of Congress for info on how to handle various types of images and the resolutions you need. Do not destroy the originals, technology changes and you will want to re-scan them again eventually.

Don't ignore the cataloging and documentation. That's as important as the actual scan.

If your collection is small enough (less than 10-15 thousand images) I'd seriously look at a good professional scanning service. Use one that does NOT send you media out of the country. I have over 50K just in slides alone and about that many negatives as well so for me the cost to send it out was prohibitive compared to buying the same equipment myself.
 
For slide films I went with a SlideSnap Pro system and a good digital camera. For flat media I am using a scanner with a 2400 optical resolution.

Save in lossless file formats like TIFF.

Look at Library of Congress for info on how to handle various types of images and the resolutions you need. Do not destroy the originals, technology changes and you will want to re-scan them again eventually.

Don't ignore the cataloging and documentation. That's as important as the actual scan.

If your collection is small enough (less than 10-15 thousand images) I'd seriously look at a good professional scanning service. Use one that does NOT send you media out of the country. I have over 50K just in slides alone and about that many negatives as well so for me the cost to send it out was prohibitive compared to buying the same equipment myself hair transplant istanbu.
thank you so much for your suggestion
 
Hey everyone,

I'm looking to digitize a large collection of old family photos and want to make sure I get the best quality possible without breaking the bank.

I’ve seen everything from smartphone apps to flatbed scanners and even professional services, but I'm not sure which route to take.

I’m particularly concerned about preserving detail and color accuracy. Does anyone have experience with home scanning setups that produce archival-quality results?

What scanner or app do you recommend, and any tips on resolution or file formats?

Appreciate any advice or personal experiences you can share!
It depends on what you are scanning.

The best thing, to give the highest quality scan with the most detail, is to use the negative. You'll need to take them to someone who knows what they are doing, which may break the bank.

There is this set up if you have a decent camera, with a macro lens, tripod and light box - film scanner link You'll also need a plug-in for colour images, and Adobe Lightroom - links from the scanner website. And if you don't know what you are doing then plenty of hours on Youtube should be factored in.

If you're scanning the prints then the quality will be no better than the quality of the print. Yes, you may get a big file size, but a high resolution scan of an out of focus print is just a large file size scan of an out of focus photo!

You won't get any detail that isn't in the print, and you're likely to see lots of film grain too.

The quality of a 6x4" print is likely to be poor, especially if they were printed in a high street store. They'll also likely have loads of fingerprints, marks and scratches on the surface that will be amplified with the scan. There will also be lots of hairs and dust that need to be cleaned up (some scanners do this automatically, but at the cost of blurring the image slightly).

There's no such thing as an archival quality scan-it all depends on the media it is stored on. Try accessing JPEGs that are stored on a floppy disc. A high quality scan on a floppy disc is less archival than a low quality scan on your computer SSD.

Save as the highest quality JPEGs, as they are supported by just about every app. TIFFs are less widely supported and the most likely file type to become obsolete. You'll save on space too. You only need to save as a lossless format (JPEG isn't) if you are going to repeatedly make changes and open and save the file each time.

My advice for prints would be to get a couple of angle poise lamps with daylight balanced bulbs, and use a decent smartphone (clean the lens first ) or a decent camera if you have one (put it on a tripod). Place the lamps by each of the short sides of the print, so that they are aimed at the furthest side away, at the same height, distance and angle (about 45 degrees to the print). This should give you even lighting and probably the most accurate colour, although it will be no better than the print, which probably has a colour cast anyway.

And as has been said elsewhere, keep the originals, and catalogue the digital files so that you can find them.

Good luck!

DK
 
It depends on what you are scanning.

The best thing, to give the highest quality scan with the most detail, is to use the negative. You'll need to take them to someone who knows what they are doing, which may break the bank.

There is this set up if you have a decent camera, with a macro lens, tripod and light box - film scanner link You'll also need a plug-in for colour images, and Adobe Lightroom - links from the scanner website. And if you don't know what you are doing then plenty of hours on Youtube should be factored in.

If you're scanning the prints then the quality will be no better than the quality of the print. Yes, you may get a big file size, but a high resolution scan of an out of focus print is just a large file size scan of an out of focus photo!

You won't get any detail that isn't in the print, and you're likely to see lots of film grain too.

The quality of a 6x4" print is likely to be poor, especially if they were printed in a high street store. They'll also likely have loads of fingerprints, marks and scratches on the surface that will be amplified with the scan. There will also be lots of hairs and dust that need to be cleaned up (some scanners do this automatically, but at the cost of blurring the image slightly).

There's no such thing as an archival quality scan-it all depends on the media it is stored on. Try accessing JPEGs that are stored on a floppy disc. A high quality scan on a floppy disc is less archival than a low quality scan on your computer SSD.

Save as the highest quality JPEGs, as they are supported by just about every app. TIFFs are less widely supported and the most likely file type to become obsolete. You'll save on space too. You only need to save as a lossless format (JPEG isn't) if you are going to repeatedly make changes and open and save the file each time.

My advice for prints would be to get a couple of angle poise lamps with daylight balanced bulbs, and use a decent smartphone (clean the lens first ) or a decent camera if you have one (put it on a tripod). Place the lamps by each of the short sides of the print, so that they are aimed at the furthest side away, at the same height, distance and angle (about 45 degrees to the print). This should give you even lighting and probably the most accurate colour, although it will be no better than the print, which probably has a colour cast anyway.

And as has been said elsewhere, keep the originals, and catalogue the digital files so that you can find them.

Good luck!

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thank you so much for your suggestion
 
Try accessing JPEGs that are stored on a floppy disc. A high quality scan on a floppy disc is less archival than a low quality scan on your computer SSD.
JPEGs are lossy.

You're confusing storage location with format. JPEG is a fine format but a JPEG on an SSD is subject to catastrophic failures of the drive. A jPEG on multiple devices, and storage systems is more archival than a TIFF only on one local SSD drive. You do need to pay attention to not only the file format but the storage system and also plan for redoing it regularly. I've had my archival images on variously, floppy, WORM, Bernoulli, Floppy, and other storage locations to mention a few. The images archived in a lossless format are much safer than the one saved in any number of proprietary lossy formats.
TIFFs are less widely supported and the most likely file type to become obsolete.
TIFFs are the preferred format for Library of Congress image files. I do not think the TIFF format is going away any time soon. And when it does, the key is plan for the upgrade/conversion process to whatever new format is available.
 
JPEGs are lossy.
As I said.
You're confusing storage location with format
No I’m not. There is no such thing as an archival quality file format.
. JPEG is a fine format but a JPEG on an SSD is subject to catastrophic failures of the drive.
Agreed.
A jPEG on multiple devices, and storage systems is more archival than a TIFF only on one local SSD drive.
Absolutely. Any digital file that you only have one copy of is one you are willing to lose.
You do need to pay attention to not only the file format but the storage system and also plan for redoing it regularly. I've had my archival images on variously, floppy, WORM, Bernoulli, Floppy, and other storage locations to mention a few.

Agreed. I still have boxes full of CDs and DVDs that I used at one point, but have no idea if i can access them (I did manage to access one recently to get some old college work off of it!)

I advocate (and use) a 3-2-1 back up strategy. At any one time you should have 3 copies of everything, stored on 2 different media types, with 1 offsite.

As well as the hard drive the original is stored on, I would suggest an external hard drive as the second copy, with a cloud back up as the third, and offsite copy.

This is what i do, although I actually have 2 external hard drives, with one stored in a safe in my workshop, just because it is easier and quicker to recover from a drive failure. But I still have the cloud back up as well.
The images archived in a lossless format are much safer than the one saved in any number of proprietary lossy formats.
JPEG isn’t proprietary. All the major picture libraries use JPEG.
TIFFs are the preferred format for Library of Congress image files. I do not think the TIFF format is going away any time soon. And when it does, the key is plan for the upgrade/conversion process to whatever new format is available.
Agreed. A lot of Magnum’s archives are still film, which they are now digitising, and that is a major, and costly effort. Converting from one format to another is a comparatively quick and simple job.

The OP was talking about family snaps though, and I’m not sure that this is pertinent to GTD, so we’ve probably gone off topic.
 
There is no such thing as an archival quality file format.
According to the Library of Congress there is. At least that's what they call it. Now realistically, at some point TIFF will be superseded by something else but for now it's the format preferred for archival photographic media.

All the major picture libraries use JPEG.
The ones I know about use JPEG for public facing and display purposes but use TIFF for their "Master" files. The ones that are carefully preserved in several backup systems and locations.
The OP was talking about family snaps though, and I’m not sure that this is pertinent to GTD, so we’ve probably gone off topic.
Family snaps are sometimes the most important, not just for the family involved but for their future historical value. A snapshot of real daily life is incredibly useful for future historians. As to off topic, I guess I see it as a project, with ramifications that need to be thought about before you jump in and start so that is clearly in the GTD natural planning model.
 
According to the Library of Congress there is. At least that's what they call it. Now realistically, at some point TIFF will be superseded by something else but for now it's the format preferred for archival photographic media.
I’m not familiar with the role of the Library Of Congress, but if they have chosen TIFF as their preferred file format for their archives then so be it. That doesn’t make the file format archival quality though.

Archivability is about accessibility. If you can’t access a file then it’s not archive quality. The ability to access a file is affected by:
1. Data/file corruption
2. Hardware-if the hardware is obsolete you can’t access it, hence my floppy disk analogy.
3. Software- if there isn’t software that supports the file type then it isn’t accessible. I have some very early camera raw files that I can’t open as they are no longer supported by any software.
The ones I know about use JPEG for public facing and display purposes but use TIFF for their "Master" files. The ones that are carefully preserved in several backup systems and locations.
I have supplied images to photo libraries, and it was true in the early days that they wanted uncompressed TIFFs uploading. But for many years now they only want JPEGs saved at the highest quality setting.
Family snaps are sometimes the most important, not just for the family involved but for their future historical value. A snapshot of real daily life is incredibly useful for future historians.
My point was more about the effort involved. A JPEG at the highest quality setting will be no worse than a TIFF for the historians of the future.

Do two scans. Save on as a TIFF and one as a JPEG. Open them both in your preferred application, on your biggest and highest resolution monitor, so that they fill the screen. You won’t be able to see a difference.

There’s a story I heard many years ago, and whilst I have no idea if there’s a grain of truth in it, it illustrates my point.

NASA spent millions of dollars developing a pen that would write in zero gravity. The Russian Cosmonauts used a pencil.

Use the pencil-it’s ubiquitous and works just as well.

Cheers
Doug
 
Do two scans. Save on as a TIFF and one as a JPEG. Open them both in your preferred application, on your biggest and highest resolution monitor, so that they fill the screen. You won’t be able to see a difference.
@DKPhoto I agree that in most cases lossless format preserves… unimportant information. It accurately preserves all the scratches and the lack of focus of the original image. It's like measuring a distance from New York to Los Angeles in inches.
 
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