PIXEL TO PORTRAIT- Digitizing and Scanning
PIXEL TO PORTRAIT-Digitizing and Scanning PowerPoint PDF Black and White Handout version
Link to Other Memories PowerPoints
I have always loved old photos and studying the field of photo preservation. I was taking classes and studying the field back before we even knew about pixels. In fact, I decided to write a book over twenty years ago because I couldn't find a comprehensive book on the market.
As I called around to verify information from photo preservation labs and distributors, I discovered information that dissuaded me from writing the book. I learned that there were a lot of scare tactics that marketers were literally banking on. I realized the information I had was not what people wanted to hear. They had already spent too much money unnecessarily.
For example, photos can fade due to time, poor processing of the prints, or due to sun exposure. Some damage to our photos we can control and some we cannot. Because of bad photo processing in the 1970s, many photos faded but people didn't realize the cause. Anxious to avoid having that happen to their precious memories, they were willing to pay good money for archival claiming products. The later 20th century developing of photo prints encased the photo in a UV plastic which offered a great deal of protection to prints. (Except those crazy magnetic albums!) All of the buffered and acid-free paper was really unnecessary. Then there were the plastics, but we won't go into that!
Don't get me wrong, we do need to properly care for our precious memories. There are good archival products that are necessary for the preservation of these items. There are some reputable companies listed at the bottom of the page.
With the advent of digitization, we could stop photo deterioration in its tracks by taking a scan of the photo before any more deterioration could occur. We could also make photos look better than the original by repairing flaws (scratches and tears) and correcting faded color. Unfortunately, most scans lack the quality and detail of the original photo. Especially scans of good black and white photos that have crisp details.
Today's traditional recommendations are not going to hold up in the future. The young people of today have such good cameras, even in their cell phones, that they rarely ever see a pixel. They are not going to tolerate our pixelated scans and there is no reason that they should. People naturally zoom in to different areas of a photo because now ... on the computer ... they can. You don't want to lose any detail that you might want to zoom in on or enlarge. Especially in a face! File sizes are no longer an issue and since scanning takes some effort we might as well take the time to do it right. (Bear in mind that even with our nice cameras they cannot match a photo scanner in the quality of the digitized photo produced without a great deal of effort, knowledge, and expense.)
In my PowerPoint, you will learn more than you probably ever wanted to know, but hopefully, you will be educated in making decisions for your photos.
I haven't seen many scanning and digitizing webinars or classes that I can recommend. However, this webinar is one I can, but you have to be a member ($40 and well worth it) of the Southern California Genealogical Society to view it:
Preservation of Photographs and the Importance of a Good Scan - (03 Jan 2015) by Brett Payne
(Brett scans photos at 1200 dpi and negatives and slides at 4800 dpi-Pretty hardcore!)
This following website I mentioned in the PowerPoint and is better than anything else I have found:
Scan Your Entire Life
Archival Companies:
Gaylord
Light Impressions
University Products
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