Advice on Digitizing old photos, negatives and films

Naveen_Reloaded

Naveen_Reloaded

Adept
This has been in my "to-do" list for very long time. I wanted to save all old photos in my family and digitize it.

Some suggested the easy way - Google Photos , but i wanted to preserve as much details as possible and digitize in much higher clarity.

Some also suggested using DSLR/Mirrorless setup to click on each pic and digitize.. i find it bit tedious..

Any other better and easy way ? And also which software to use to automatically remove the artifacts and color correct ?
 
The best quality would be from scanning the photos. Although, most scanners are designed for documents, not photos, typically they will have Contact Image Sensor (CIS) rather than the better CCD (for an illustration of the difference, see this group test).

Probably the best scanners for photo prints are the Epson FastFoto series, the current model being the FF-680W (Expensive, but can be sold after used). They also have specialised software to make the job less labor-intensive, unlike generic office-oriented document scanners.

There isn't much point in scanning at 600dpi, as photo prints, specially the ones from minilabs, don't get more real resolution than that. Most other scanners are at 300dpi and for documents.
 
I think I saw a similar thread on scanning old photos earlier.
Flatbed scanner -> Scan to tiff -> Photoshop for post processing, is the best way to go. It requires lots of effort and patience. Here is a starting point -
www.dpmag.com

Restoring Old Photos - Digital Photo

Learn about scanning and restoring old photos to reclaim vintage photographic prints from the damage that often occurs with aging images.
www.dpmag.com www.dpmag.com
Alternatively you can get it done professionally.
 
I was seeking a scanner , but it was somewhere around 50k , then thought would setup a dslr type capture , then left it off.

New photoshop has AI models which can restore the old photos pretty well i think.

Is ff-680w available in india ? I couldnt find one.
 
Old photos don't have details. What details are you trying to extract?

Use a normal 2k rupees scanner. Don't use DSLR as you'll have to post-processing. If you have to use camera then mobile is better as it can do the post processing on the device itself.
 
Naveen_Reloaded said:
I was seeking a scanner , but it was somewhere around 50k
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I would have thought that a normal scanner from Canon or Epson is good enough. Prices have gone up considerably though but they are around 8k in Amazon. I had got my Canon Lide @ 2.5k around 4 years back which is still going strong.
lockhrt999 said:
Old photos don't have details. What details are you trying to extract?
Click to expand...
They don't which is why you may want to use the AI image processing algorithms to fill any gaps and for retouching. Most paid S/W provide it out of the box. They will not be accurate but do a fairly good job.
 
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Naveen_Reloaded said:
This has been in my "to-do" list for very long time. I wanted to save all old photos in my family and digitize it.

Some suggested the easy way - Google Photos , but i wanted to preserve as much details as possible and digitize in much higher clarity.

Some also suggested using DSLR/Mirrorless setup to click on each pic and digitize.. i find it bit tedious..

Any other better and easy way ? And also which software to use to automatically remove the artifacts and color correct ?
Click to expand...
Such jobs are tedious unless very few snaps.
You can give it to a professional service who will do it for you but will cost a good money.
Best way is to carefully capture the pics in your phone or digicam or a dlsr and store across multiple hard drives or cloud upload.
My cousin is doing it for his family album and it might take 6+ months as they got some 30-35 albums.

I also wanna do for my family snaps which are scattered in some 60+ albums but really dont have any patience of doing so as it will take me a year or so + I'm a man of perfection so unless I capture every pic it the way it should be the job is never done!
In yr 2004, it was my dads idea to digitize all old albums and we bought a scanner too. but it was not that straight forward job and due to my studies then job and xyz reasons I was only able to convert some 2-3 albums and 15yrs down the scanner was scrapped! I really feel bad even today but responsibilities and priorities took over..

But now I should do something to preserve those memories.. Will restart from ground!
 
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Google gave me deadline of digitising the old photos when they declared Google photos wouldn't be free anymore. When I started scanning old photos my father told me he has scanned all of them already long time ago and they are saved in a CD. :D All I had to do was uploading them to Google photos.
 
For taking pictures using camera or a mobile of any physical photos, they have to be kept as flat as possible. How to acheive that, as old photos have bends at corners and they don't lie flat ? Or you guys use AI mechanisms to "convert" them to become flat ? (like in cam scanner, it makes the documents flat)
 
lockhrt999 said:
Old photos don't have details. What details are you trying to extract?

Use a normal 2k rupees scanner. Don't use DSLR as you'll have to post-processing. If you have to use camera then mobile is better as it can do the post processing on the device itself.
Click to expand...
its just removal of artifacts and capturing the old photos in max resolution , since there might be a possibility in future to have some software which can enhance those pics.
nRiTeCh said:
Such jobs are tedious unless very few snaps.
You can give it to a professional service who will do it for you but will cost a good money.
Best way is to carefully capture the pics in your phone or digicam or a dlsr and store across multiple hard drives or cloud upload.
My cousin is doing it for his family album and it might take 6+ months as they got some 30-35 albums.

I also wanna do for my family snaps which are scattered in some 60+ albums but really dont have any patience of doing so as it will take me a year or so + I'm a man of perfection so unless I capture every pic it the way it should be the job is never done!
In yr 2004, it was my dads idea to digitize all old albums and we bought a scanner too. but it was not that straight forward job and due to my studies then job and xyz reasons I was only able to convert some 2-3 albums and 15yrs down the scanner was scrapped! I really feel bad even today but responsibilities and priorities took over..

But now I should do something to preserve those memories.. Will restart from ground!
Click to expand...
I too have been postponing this for very long time. The thing is we will never know when those pics become unrecoverable , physically i mean..

I am planning to have a good scanner which if enough members here agree , can have a go around. This will also force us to finish the job in time , since we might have to give the scanner to the next person.
 
frozenscotch said:
For taking pictures using camera or a mobile of any physical photos, they have to be kept as flat as possible. How to acheive that, as old photos have bends at corners and they don't lie flat ? Or you guys use AI mechanisms to "convert" them to become flat ? (like in cam scanner, it makes the documents flat)
Click to expand...

recently was informed by someone of the app vFlat for this. he told that he was able to scan around 60 pages (of docs) in under 10 mins (6-7 mins or so) with it after some tweaks & practice.
 
Naveen_Reloaded said:
I am planning to have a good scanner which if enough members here agree , can have a go around. This will also force us to finish the job in time , since we might have to give the scanner to the next person.
Click to expand...
Based on my best exp. and few others, doing it manually on a scanner takes hell lotta time unless you have fewer no. to scan.
I wanted something like a xerox machine type scanner where one can input5-10 or more physically copies at one end and we set the resolution, output and saving options etc. and the job will get done automatically and each snap will come out from the other end.
 
Recently @dexterz was trying the same and his thread is here. In general Epson perfection series with negative scan box was designed for photo scanning and the bundled application will help a lot. But Epson V600 is not available in India, and amazon.com wont ship it. If you want to buy that scanner you need to get it from amazon.de/amazon.jp only. There are other scanners but they are either not good or costs way more.

Scanning the albums is tedious job and I am speaking from experience. If you scan them in batches like everyday 50 photos, it will take time but you will be able to finish it. My advise is to do it in batches and on regular.
 
@ibose Thanks for the link, It appears it is available for sales again, I remember few weeks ago(when dexterz was searching) it was shows as not available.
 
b.life said:
@ibose Thanks for the link, It appears it is available for sales again, I remember few weeks ago(when dexterz was searching) it was shows as not available.
Click to expand...
Yea it wasn't available with Amazon back then. For that listed price, I could probably get a studio to do the conversion
 
b.life said:
Recently @dexterz was trying the same and his thread is here. In general Epson perfection series with negative scan box was designed for photo scanning and the bundled application will help a lot. But Epson V600 is not available in India, and amazon.com wont ship it. If you want to buy that scanner you need to get it from amazon.de/amazon.jp only. There are other scanners but they are either not good or costs way more.

Scanning the albums is tedious job and I am speaking from experience. If you scan them in batches like everyday 50 photos, it will take time but you will be able to finish it. My advise is to do it in batches and on regular.
Click to expand...
can you explain that .de/.jp buying thing ? it wont attract any custom ? or is it only because they will only ship to india ? If so why not other websites who can ship to india ? This is new (de/jp) to me , thats why. I have bought items from aliexpress before indian govt shitty rules.. thats why i am asking.
ibose said:
Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner https://amzn.eu/d/4qlO8SA
Click to expand...
at 28k , is it worth it ?

I can get it , if few others are willing to pitch in for rotation of the scanner among us..
 
Naveen_Reloaded said:
can you explain that .de/.jp buying thing ? it wont attract any custom ? or is it only because they will only ship to india ? If so why not other websites who can ship to india ? This is new (de/jp) to me , thats why. I have bought items from aliexpress before indian govt shitty rules.. thats why i am asking.

at 28k , is it worth it ?

I can get it , if few others are willing to pitch in for rotation of the scanner among us..
Click to expand...
I had contacted one mumbai based studio. They had quoted rs.300 per roll (negative) to digitize it. This was 3 years back
 
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