Organizing Photo Scans for Family History

11 LMW photo page

I've been scanning photos and documents for Family History preservation.  Right away I realized I needed to organize the photos so that I can find the ones I need when I need them and so that others can make sense of the files as well. 
I know others are interested in scanning also, and thought I would share some information about how I scan and save my scanned files. 

I scan photos and documents with my HP Officejet Pro 8600 Printer/copier/scanner. When I'm scanning everyday items that don't need to be saved long term or don't have archival value to me, I use a lower resolution, but for scanning family photos and documents to archive and share I scan at a high resolution. 600 to 1200 dpi (dots per inch) seems to be a good balance between quality and the time the scanner takes to do the scan. 

I select 'Save as JPEG' in the settings menu when setting up the scan. Then when the preview is done and I'm ready to start the scan I can either save it as a JPEG file or I can click on the drop down arrow where it says 'Save as type' and choose 'Tif' This will save a larger file, but it doesn't alter when opened and closed multiple times so that I have a pristine scan to go back to at any time. When I save it I include 'tif' in the photo title.

 Then I do the scan again and save it with the 'save as type' JPEG. Then later if I do crops and fixes in Photoshop Elements, when I save them I choose the option 'Save As' and add a dash and a modifier so I know what that version is. I use c for crop, f for a photo I've done corrections on, like lighting or color, or fixing flaws. If I save versions I will add a number like c-1, c-2, for different versions. I almost never choose 'save' because that will erase the original and substitute the changed version. 

When you save a scan you have the option to name the image. This is where you need to figure out how you want to organize the photos. Folders in windows organize files numerically first and then alphabetically. I found out if I just typed a description of the photo they would get stored in a mixed up order. That's ok if sequence doesn't matter, but usually with photos you want some kind of time order to the photos. You can just number the photos and add descriptors after the numbers if you want them. That can get into some high numbers, but that's ok. I mainly do that if I'm uploading into an online album so the photos stay in the order I want them.

11 LMW APW 3 Store

11 LMW APW buggy 1900

11 LMW Enterprise 24th

11 LMW Group Photo

When I'm scanning mom's photo albums I do something more complicated. I know I'm likely to share the photos in any number of online ways, such as Facebook, a family history site, a family website or page, or in creating a photo book. I want to be able to look at the name of the photo and know where and when it is from. For example, when I scanned my Grandpa Winsor's Book of Remembrance, I gave each photo a number that corresponded with the page in the book. Then I typed LMW to indicate it was from Luther Murkins Winsor. Then I added a description of what the photo was. For example, 11 LMW Photo page. Because I also took the images of the pages and cropped out images of the individual photos I would then title the photos, such as 11 LMW Sara A Terry and Sister Mary Ann Huntsman. See the photos above for examples of the photos cropped from the page shown at the beginning.

I save all the photos from one album to their own folder. If there are a lot I may put them further into folders by year.  I have a folder titled 'Family History Scans' that all the individual folders are stored in.

1 album page

1-1 Robert Wixom & Rover Freedom Wyoming 1939

1-2 Olive Wixom & Laura Draney 1939 fix

1-2 Olive Wixom & Laura Draney 1939

1-3 EArl P Wixom Freedom Wyoming 1939

For my mom's album that I'm currently doing, I scan the entire page and then the individual photos. If I can't get them off the page without damaging them I crop them out using Photoshop. So I would name them like this. 1 album page, 1-1 Robert Wixom & Rover Freedom Wyoming 1939, 1-2 Olive Wixom & Laura Draney 1939-f, 1-2 Olive Wixom & Laura Draney 1939, 1-3 Earl P Wixom Freedom Wyoming 1939....and so on numbering each photo after the page number and adding as much description as I can from the photo back or the album page. If there is too much description I use a word document and list the photo description and add the additional information and save that in the same folder. 

For another album I used the year to identify each photo and then a number to indicate each photo in that year. Those albums were falling apart and I was redoing them onto archival paper in scrapbooking albums so I didn't feel like the page number mattered.

So now I can mix the photos in an online album and know where to go on my hard drive to find the originals to share with someone or get more information. If I can, I like to have the people's names, the date and place saved in the photo title, but if not, at least the year and a sequential number to keep them in order help a lot when I'm searching through the folders for particular photos. 

After I started organizing my scan projects this way I read a tutorial by a professional who scans for family history and found he was doing much the same thing as what I'd worked out for myself. The important thing is to have a system, use folders and not just give your photos random descriptive titles that leave them in an alphabetical jumble.

When you look at the reasons why we scan, it seems important that each scan be of as high a quality as we can reasonably make, saved in an organized way so we can find, understand and use the photos for ourselves and others, and backed up to keep the work safe. Additionally, there is nothing worse than photos where no one can identify the people, the place or the date. Including as much as possible with the photo to identify it is also essential to archiving and sharing scans that will bless our families and future generations.