How to digitise old photos: scan, photograph or use a service

At the bottom of the cupboard there is a shoebox. Prints with scalloped edges, an envelope of negatives, a photo album with yellowed plastic sleeves and two trays of slides from the trip to Italy in 1978. Everyone knows it should be digitised one day. Nobody knows where to begin. This article helps you choose.

The short answer

For ordinary prints, a flatbed scanner at 600 dpi gives the best balance between time and quality. If you want a quick overview, your phone will do, in daylight and straight above the photo. Slides and negatives need a scanner with a light lid or a service that does it for you. And whatever you choose: write down who is in the photo, because that is the part that gets lost.

Three methods side by side

	Scanning	Photographing	Using a service
Best for	Prints, albums whose photos come out	A first overview, albums whose photos do not come out	Hundreds of slides or negatives
Quality	High and even	Good for on a screen	Depends on the service
Time	One to two minutes per photo	A few seconds per photo	Your time: almost none
Watch for	Clean glass, automatic correction off	Glare, tilt, shadow	Resolution, format, originals back

Scanning: the settings that matter

• 600 dpi for ordinary prints, 1200 dpi for small photos. That way you can crop and enlarge later.
• TIFF or PNG for the master. You never touch it again. Restoring, colourising and cropping you do on a copy.
• Colour, even for black and white. Scanning a black and white photo in colour keeps the tint of the paper and makes restoration easier later on.
• Automatic enhancements off. You want the photo as it is. You can improve it later, but you cannot undo it.

Scan several photos at once if your scanner can save them separately. That saves half the time.

Photographing: when it is enough

An album with photos glued in place does not have to be taken apart. Photograph the pages. Lay the album by a window, out of direct sunlight, and hold the phone straight above the photo. Turn off the flash: it leaves a white spot on glossy paper. A scanning app that combines several images, such as Google PhotoScan, removes most of the glare and straightens the photo.

For viewing on a screen, for a family app or for a first sort, that is more than enough. If you later want to restore a photo or print it large, scan that one photo again.

Slides and negatives

A slide or negative has to be lit from behind. An ordinary flatbed scanner cannot do that. You need a scanner with a light source in the lid, a separate slide and negative scanner, or a service. For a few dozen slides, a device of your own can be worth it. For a few hundred, most people choose a service.

Using a service: five questions to ask first

• What resolution do you scan at, and can I choose it?
• Do I get TIFF, or only JPEG?
• Are dust and scratches removed automatically, and do I also get the unedited version?
• How are the originals packed and shipped, and do I get all of them back?
• Is the order of the boxes and albums kept?

That last question matters more than it seems. The order in an album is often the only clue to the year.

The part nobody scans: the names

A digitised photo without names will be just as much of a riddle in twenty years as the print is today. With each pile, take a moment with someone who still remembers. Who is this? Where was this? Roughly what year? Write it down, in the file name, in the description or in a note alongside. One sentence is enough.

If you then want to bring back a single damaged photo, you can do that for free and without an account at thememorypalace.ai/restore. And if you want to see which years are still missing from your digital photos, you can do that at thememorypalace.ai/timeline.