scanning old photos

allo1939

what is the best way to scan multiple old photos.Have a flat bed scanner but it will only scan one photo at a time.it will take me years at this rate.
Thanks in advance

Ghost Train

can you fit a few on the scanner at a time?

sometimes when I'm sort for time I will photograph photos to copy them quickly, but quality of scans are much better

5uspect

Do you have photoshop?
If not grab the 30 day free trial from Adobe.com

Arrage a few photos on the scanner leaving a clear white border between each image when scanned. Open photoshop and click File>import and select your scanner and scan your set of photos.

The images will open in Photoshop as one big image, with your while border between them. The go to File>Automate>Crop and Straighten and watch the magic.

Here's an example. The black squares are my sample photos scattered on the scanner.


Since you have the clear white edge photoshop will wrap a box around each rectangular object and automatically rotate it. Then all you have to save your files. I'm sure there's a script to automate that too.

allo1939

Thanks ghost train and 5uspect,for advice I will go with the photoshop suggestion
Regards allo 1939

thepallasbull1

if you know someone with a 4 in 1 printer they have an automatic scanner on top , use this hell of a lot faster
then you can copy from their computer to cd and delete them from computer afterwards

allo1939

That's another option for me,thanks thepallebull for your suggestion.

smelltheglove

My scanner takes forever so i actually take photos of the photos, you get higher resolution and if done correctly can save yourself a hell of a lot of time.

210

I had a lot of old photos and I found this little toshiba "journe" automatic feed scanner to be very quick. The photos just be fed through the scanner. The quality seems to be pre set and wont be as changable as with a flatbed but the speed really is the big benefit. The quality of older photos often isnt so great so you dont realy always need fine scanning. The other big benefit is that you dont need to connect the scanner to a pc to run and it will save the scans straight onto an SD card. Cost should be about €100. Minus point is that it wont take photos bigger than 6 * 4 so you still need the flatbed for these. The total length of the scanner is about six inches and about two deep.

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clickhere

Hi 210 seen these on tv3 today would you recommend them . it will be just for a few old pictures i have lying around. Any one know where i might get this online cheaper . Thank You.

Nisio

Sinead,

Can you use take photos of negatives in the same way rather than getting them scanned?

Ghost Train

Nisio wrote: »

Sinead,

Can you use take photos of negatives in the same way rather than getting them scanned?

Think scanning is better but you can take photographs of negatives. You need a camera with a good macro mode, some light behind the negatives, tripod is handy to keep the camera steady.

What I found worked well for me was to use an lcd screen displaying a cyan colour http://www.foxpup.com/printertest/Cyan.gif (this cancels out some of the red of the negative), the negative a few inches above the lcd (so the pixels don't show through) and the camera focused as close to the negative as possible

Could also try putting negatives up against a window, when it bright out and then photograph

mindundalk

Ghost Train wrote: »

can you fit a few on the scanner at a time?

sometimes when I'm sort for time I will photograph photos to copy them quickly, but quality of scans are much better

Yeah try putting a few on at a time that usually works for me.

Heebie

By taking photos introduce a lot of parallax error to the images. You only get higher resolution by taking photos of it if you either have a very poor scanner, or you scan at a very poor resolution. (I can scan at 6400dpi [non-interpolated] which from a 4x6" image is 983 megapixel.. not 98.3 even.. nearly a gigapixel... probably way higher res than the photo actually has in it.. especially if it's a digital print. You're also going to be introducing color inaccuracies, as you're not likely to have complete control of the lighting unless you buy expensive daylight-color-balanced bulbs & turn all other lighting sources off. (using the white-balance on the camera just doesn't do as good a job as in a scanner..where the scan knows exactly what color it's light source is.. and checks it before scanning each image.)

Taking photos under a lighting setup with 45 degree angled lights at each corner was the only way to make even remotely accurate copies for a long time... before the advent of digital.

smelltheglove wrote: »

My scanner takes forever so i actually take photos of the photos, you get higher resolution and if done correctly can save yourself a hell of a lot of time.

Heebie

What is your scanner? I haven't heard of many that won't do batch mode.

If your scanner won't do batch mode, then what the guy suggested of putting them together & chopping them up in photoshop or gimp or whatever should work just great.

Some scanner software can be confusing if you've not played with it a lot, or used scanners extensively... and I've used scanner software that was confusing even after scanning things on various scanners all day long for several years.

The best interface I know of is on Nikon's CoolScan film scanner products. (I missing having access to a D8000! SUCH a nice scanner!) but alas.. most consumer products don't have an interface that good.

So..what do you have?

allo1939 wrote: »

what is the best way to scan multiple old photos.Have a flat bed scanner but it will only scan one photo at a time.it will take me years at this rate.
Thanks in advance