Scanning Photos

If you already own a digital camera, you are well aware of how easy it is to share your pictures with friends and family either via email or your own website. With the popularity of home DVD creation software, it is also very easy to archive your digital photos to DVD, allowing you to view all your photos on your television. Much easier on the eyes than a photo album, and a great idea for large family gatherings.

But what about your older photos? With the popularity of easy to use scanners, be it an All-In-One printer-scanner combo, or a stand-alone scanner, isn’t it time to put that technology to use? Imagine having a permanent archive of every photo you own, or perhaps archiving your mothers photo albums!

Scanning an older photo is very simple. I use a Lexmark All-In-One printer/scanner to scan in all my older photos, as well as my mothers. I then use Adobe Photoshop to clean up a lot of those scans, both color correcting and removing any scratches from them before archiving.

Creating a DVD photo album is simple. Programs such as Apple’s iDVD, Sonic Solutions MyDVD, and Roxio’s Toast 6 with Jam are all popular choices, as well as easy to use. Combine any of these software programs with a scanner, a DVD burner, and a little time, and you could be creating your very own digital photo album DVD’s in no time at all.

One of the most overlooked benefits to scanning in all your photos is protection. If the most unfortunate happened, and your house either burned down or was swept away in a flood, chances are you would miss all your clothes, toys, and furniture. Insurance will replace all that, but what they cannot replace is your photos. Once those are gone, they are gone forever. By scanning in your photos and archiving to DVD, you can keep a copy for yourself, and give another copy to a friend or family member for safe keeping.

Consequently, scanning all your important documents, such as the deed to your home, important insurance information, marriage license, birth certificate, and treasured newspaper clippings and saving those to either a CD-ROM or DVD would also be worth your while, and piece of mind.

Each scanner software brand is slightly different from the others, but all give you the ability to select the resolution of your scans. A low resolution scan of 150DPI or less will give you good results for computer monitor or television viewing, but not so good print quality. Most professional graphics come at 300DPI, but remember that the larger the DPI (Dots Per Inch) the larger the file size.

For my important and most treasured photos, I always scan at a high resolution, and always archive them to CD-ROM. I then give a copy to a trusted family member for safe keeping, just in case.

Put that scanner to good use, and start scanning your old photos today!