Turn Your Old Photo Paper Printouts into Modern Digital Format Albums

Although digital cameras have been around for a few years and are becoming increasingly popular, many of us still have a large number of old paper prints, slides, and negatives. Most people keep their paper prints and negatives at home and only use the digital formats for the new photos they take with their new digital cameras. In this article, we will discuss converting your old paper prints into digital format.

Photos are usually kept at home in one of three formats:

Paper prints: the most common format, usually at sizes like 4X6 and 5x7. Over time, paper prints tend to lose their quality. Depending on how they are stored, the paper may be yellow and creased and the colors may fade.

negatives: also known as film. This is the usual 35mm processed film from which the prints were made. Although negatives can be damaged over time, they are more likely to maintain their high quality. Negatives are hardly used unless new paper prints are needed.

Slides: very similar to negatives used to project photos onto a large screen.

Digital photography has many advantages. Having your photo album in digital format allows you to easily print hard copies at home or using a printing service, view your photos on your computer, share photos with friends and family and maybe, especially to practically archive your photos for eternity. So if the digital format is that good, why not convert all those old photos from traditional paper and negatives to digital? Here's how:

There are different considerations when converting from paper to digital. Professional photographers spend a lot of time and money on this process. For most hobbyists and consumers, very simple methods can be used that are both cheap and easy. Scanning prints and paper negatives requires different equipment and considerations. For most home users, scanning negatives is not necessary.

Turn Your Old Photo Paper Printouts into Modern Digital Format Albums

Scanning photos on paper

Photo paper prints are easy to scan. You can choose to scan them yourself at home (buying a scanner that can do the job is usually cheap and costs less than $100). You can also choose to send them (or hand them over) to a professional scanning service who will scan them for you and return the originals and a DVD with the digital scans to you (these services include www.digmypics.com, www.digitalpickle. com, www.britepix.com and many more)

There are pros and cons to scanning at home or using a professional service. If you have a small number of photos, scanning at home is easier. If you have a lot of photos using a service may be easier, but you may end up spending more money. Also, sending your one and only hard copy of your photos is a risk as they could get lost.
If you are going to scan at home consider the following:


strong resolution: the resolution of a scan is measured by the number of dots per inch the scanner can produce. Most scanners can scan at 1200 DPI or higher. Usually, the scanner can be configured to scan at different resolutions. The higher the resolution, the slower the scan and the larger the photo file size will be. For most paper prints, scanning at 300-600 DPI is sufficient, but you can experiment with scanning at higher resolutions if you feel it provides better results.

speed: if you have a small number of photos, speed is not an issue. If you have hundreds or more photos, scanning speed becomes important. To get fast scans, you should scan at the lowest resolution possible, which results in sufficient scans – for most paper prints, 300-600 DPI is fine. Also, if you're going to buy a scanner, check the scan speed (usually measured in a number of scans per minute, be sure to check the speed at the DPI you will be using).

Photo feed: if you only have a small number of photos it's not a problem. If you have a lot of photos, make sure the scanner allows you to buy fast and easy photo loading. Some high-end scanners will allow you to load a stack of photos and automatically feed and scan them for you. These scanners are the right choice if you plan to scan hundreds of photos or more.

Scanning negatives and slides

Scanning negatives and slides are more difficult than scanning paper prints. In most cases, it's easier and possibly cheaper to use a professional scanning service (these services include www.slidescanning.com, www.myspecialphotos.com, www.pixmonix.com, and many more). If you want to scan at home, your standard flatbed scanner won't be good enough. In most cases, you will have to spend money to buy a film/slide scanner. These scanners are more expensive than flat paper scanners. Negatives and slides are small, high-resolution sources and therefore require scanning at a higher DPI than paper prints. In most cases, 2400 DPI or higher should be used.

Considerations for scanning negatives and slides are similar to scanning paper prints. If you need to scan only a few negatives or slides speed and ease are not important, but if you are going to scan hundreds or more you should spend more money on scanners that can feed the negatives or slides automatically or can simply load a roll of film and scan it.

The good news is that in most cases, scanning negatives is not necessary at all. For most hobbyists and consumers, scanning home photo paper prints is more than sufficient and scanning source negatives is not necessary. It is of course recommended keeping the negatives in a safe place. You can use the digital scans for future prints or just to view them on your computer screen and share them with friends and family.

In conclusion, scanning your photo paper prints is easy. You can do it yourself at home or you can use a professional scanning service. You can convert all your memories into digital format with a small investment and ensure that you can enjoy those photos and keep them in their original quality for eternity.