Old family photos: scan, date, restore and share
How to digitise prints, slides, letters and home videos, date a photo and recognise the people in it, restore what is faded, and share it with the family.
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Your palace, on your phone too.
How do I label old photos without damaging them?
What to write on the back of an old photo, with what, and where: soft pencil near the edge, no tape or sticky notes, longer stories on the sleeve or with a scan.
What is the best way to back up family photos?
How to back up family photos so one broken phone, drive or account never takes them all: at least two copies in different places, checked once a year.
How do I collect old family photos from relatives?
How to gather the old photos that aunts, uncles and cousins keep in their own boxes: a small, concrete request, copies instead of originals, and the names written down straight away.
What is the best way to keep family photos together with their stories?
How to keep each family photo together with its story: who is on it, when, and what happened. The options compared honestly, with when each one is not the right choice.
How do I organize decades of old family photos? Scan, date, name and share
A calm plan for boxes of family photos that span decades: sort by decade, pick a way to scan, date and name each photo in its file name, then share it with the family.
How to date a photo from the 1900s: collars, card mounts and the first Brownie snapshots
Studio portraits on card, the first box-camera snapshots and photo postcards: how to recognise a photo from 1900 to 1909, with clothing, formats and the back of the print.
How to date a photo from the 1910s: war portraits, photo postcards and the end of the corset
Photo postcards, soldiers in uniform and narrow skirts that grew shorter during the war: the clues that place a photo between 1910 and 1919.
How to date a photo from the 1920s: bobbed hair, short skirts and small snapshots
Dropped waists, bobbed hair, cloche hats and small black and white snapshots with a white border: how to recognise a photo from 1920 to 1929.
How to date a photo from the 1930s: longer skirts, waved hair and the first colour slides
Longer skirts, a natural waist, waved hair and fedoras, small snapshots and the first Kodachrome slides: the clues for a photo from 1930 to 1939.
How to date a photo from the 1940s: wartime clothes, the New Look and the first colour prints
Uniforms, square shoulders and knee-length skirts, then Dior's New Look of 1947; the first faded colour prints and the first Polaroids: dating a photo from 1940 to 1949.
How to date a photo from the 1950s: full skirts, square prints and the first colour snapshots
Full skirts and fitted waists, square black and white prints with deckle edges, slides and the first everyday colour prints: how to place a photo between 1950 and 1959.
How to date a photo from the 1960s: square Instamatic prints, miniskirts and the back of Kodak paper
Colour becomes normal, Instamatic cameras make square prints, the miniskirt arrives and the back of the paper says A Kodak Paper: the clues for a photo from 1960 to 1969.
How to date a photo from the 1970s: orange tones, textured paper and the first SX-70 Polaroids
Flares and wide collars, small 110 prints, square SX-70 Polaroids, silk-textured paper and colours that have turned orange: how to recognise a photo from 1970 to 1979.
How to date a photo from the 1980s: one-hour prints, disc cameras and orange date stamps
Bright colours and big hair, one-hour minilab prints, grainy disc-camera photos, the first single-use cameras and a date burned into the corner: dating a photo from 1980 to 1989.
How to date a photo from the 1990s: APS panoramas, disposable cameras and the first digital photos
4 by 6 inch glossy prints, APS panoramas with data on the back, disposable cameras at every wedding and the first digital photos: how to date a photo from 1990 to 1999.
How to date cabinet cards and cartes de visite: size, corners, mount colour and the back
Two card-mounted studio formats from the Victorian and Edwardian years: how to tell them apart and date them by size, corners, card thickness, colour, edges and the photographer's back.
How to date a Polaroid or instant photo: peel-apart, square SX-70, 600 and Instax
Sepia peel-apart prints from 1948, colour pack film from 1963, square SX-70 prints from 1972, 600 film from 1981, Kodak instant from 1976 to 1986 and Instax from 1998: how to date an instant photo.
How to date slides: Kodachrome, Ektachrome, mounts and processing dates
Kodachrome slides from 1936, Ektachrome from 1946, cardboard and plastic mounts, processing dates printed on the mount and colours that faded or held: how to date a box of slides.
How to date old colour prints and negatives: the back of the paper, borders and colour casts
Kodak backprints by year, glossy, silk and lustre surfaces, white borders and date stamps, colours that turned red, cyan or brown, and nitrate and safety negatives: how to date colour prints and negatives.
Which family photos disappear first?
Accounts nobody signs into, services that close, burned CDs, old drives and old phones can lose a whole collection at once. Polaroids, magnetic albums and colour prints from the 1960s to the 1990s go more slowly, but faded colour cannot be brought back. A ranked list with the first thing to do for each, and sources.
Family photo album: how to organise it and share it privately
How to gather the family's photos from phones, old computers and shoeboxes, put them in an order that lasts, give every photo a name and a year, and share the album privately with relatives.
Scanned photos show the wrong date? How to fix it
A scan carries the day you scanned it, not the day the photo was taken. How to write the real year into the file on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Google Photos.
Wet, mouldy or stuck-together photos: how to save them
The first 48 hours: air-dry or freeze wet prints, separate stuck ones without tearing, brush off mould once it is dry, and know when to call a conservator.
Old photos, slides and negatives: scan, phone or service?
Scanning, photographing with your phone or sending photos out: time per 100 photos, quality, cost, dpi for prints, slides and negatives, and real prices.
Digitising VHS and MiniDV: equipment, services and costs
What you need to digitise VHS, Hi8 and MiniDV yourself, the honest difficulties, verified prices from services in the UK and US, and which files to keep.
Digitising old photos in France and Belgium: prices
Family photos or slides in France or Belgium? The resolution the French culture ministry advises, and verified prices from three scanning services there.
Digitising old photos in Spain: services and prices
Family photos or slides in Spain? The resolution the Spanish culture ministry sets for photos and 35 mm film, and verified prices from four Spanish services.
How to remove the date stamp from a photo
How to remove the orange date printed on an old photo: crop, use your phone's eraser, Snapseed or GIMP, what works best, and what to note before you erase it.
Free old photo restoration tools compared (2026)
Nine ways to restore an old photo: what is really free, who adds a watermark, who needs an account, how long your photo is kept, and who labels it as AI.
Is this old photo AI-restored? How to tell, and why labels matter
How to recognise an old family photo that was restored or coloured with AI, where the label hides in the file, and why a label matters for the next generation.
When was this photo taken? How to find the date and year
See when a photo was taken on iPhone, Android, Windows or Mac in a few taps. Why scans and WhatsApp photos lose the date, and how to date a whole folder free.
Missing photos from the 2000s? Where they usually are
Old laptops, memory cards, burned CDs, old email, Facebook and relatives: where the photos from the first digital years usually ended up, and how to get them back.
Fix a faded, scratched or torn old photo free, no Photoshop
Make a good scan or phone copy first, then repair it automatically in the browser or by hand in Photopea, GIMP or Snapseed. Free options, and what repair cannot do.
Family History Month: 30 days, 30 photos with a name
October is Family History Month in the United States and the Month of History in the Netherlands. A small plan for the month: one photo a day, and under each one a name, a year and a place.
Share family photos privately: WhatsApp vs Google vs iCloud
WhatsApp compresses, a shared album depends on who has the link and who owns it, a Facebook group needs everyone on Facebook. Compared, plus a place that lasts.
Digitising home videos: VHS, Video8, MiniDV and Super 8
The First Communion on VHS, the holiday on Video8, grandad's films on Super 8: why now is the time, what you can do yourself, what is better left to a service and how to store the tapes in the meantime.
Old letters, diaries and documents: how to keep and scan
Store them flat in acid-free boxes, keep newspaper cuttings apart, leave fragile letters folded and scan at 300 to 400 ppi. Plus the photo album with sticky pages.
Keeping children's drawings without clutter: 4 steps
Choose together what stays, photograph the rest flat by a window without flash, store the best originals properly, and write down what your child said about each.
Can I post old family photos online? Copyright, privacy, AI
Copyright lasts 70 years after the photographer's death, and inheriting a print does not transfer it. A checklist for Belgium and the Netherlands, AI edits included.
How to tell when an old photo was taken: 7 clues
A digital photo usually carries its date inside the file. A print does not, but it has clues: the back, the studio, the card, the format, a printed date, the clothes and the cars. Seven clues, a table of formats by period, and a free tool.
Colourising old photographs: what works and what does not
Colour does not make an old photograph true, it makes it closer. What a good scan is, where colour tends to go wrong, and how to pass on what your family knows.
Where do you keep the oldest photograph of your mother?
Kept is not the same as findable, and findable is not the same as remembered. On the box, the folder, the cloud, and one photograph with a name and a year beside it.
How to digitise old photos: scan, photograph or use a service
A box of prints, slides or negatives: which method suits you, which settings you need and how to avoid doing the work twice.
Organize old family photos digitally in 4 steps
Sort, digitise with your phone or a 300 to 600 dpi scanner, add who and when, and keep two copies. Plus a file name format that sorts your photos by year.
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