How to Scan Old Photos: an Epic Project Update
I've been working on a "scan old family photos" project for the past year (yes, you read that right), and I finally got the right piece of equipment for this particular job. This nifty new scanner, which wasn't even that expensive, made it so I scanned 500 (yes, you read that right) photos in the past four days, which is more than the total quantity of photos I scanned in the 10 months that preceded this one. I'm working on this project as a Christmas gift, but also, I think it's important to scan your old photos and back them up, so I've been doing that as well.
The one thing that was really jamming up this process was the "photo album" photos that were glued into old-school photo albums. The old photo album pages didn't fit into my scanner, I couldn't remove the photos for fear of ripping them, and so the albums sat, on my shelf, while I waited for a better solution.
Finally (finally!) I heard about a new scanner (the Doxie Flip) that is portable and flips over, so you can set it on the photo album (even with the cellophane cover thing still on) and take a clear scan. Yes, you still have to import and crop as you see fit (because I am a little obsessive, I did indeed crop every single photo). It works amazingly well, is fast, and basically solved my photo album problem. It's portable, and this is accomplished with batteries (rather than being rechargeable, which I would have preferred), but I solved this problem with rechargeable batteries. I recommend investing in some before you get started on your own Epic Photo Scanning Project. Doxie also makes a great portable document scanner (the Doxie Go) that I've been using in the Epic Document Scanning Project I have going simultaneously, but I love the photo scanner so much, I'm for sure going to buy more to give them as gifts.
Here is a totally adorable photo I found of my mom and I in 1977. I never knew this photo existed and am so excited to have a new (to me) photo of my mom!
Bottom line: if you grew up in a time before digital photos, get this scanner and put it to work on your photo albums.