I recently retire from my job and have come across about 400 photos that I would like to digitize. What would be the best way to import these old photos?
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Ken Vignona
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How Do I Import Old Photos?
Comments: 7 Responses to “How Do I Import Old Photos?”
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The best way would be to use a scanner and carefully scan in each one at a high resolution and save them as digital photos in some standard format like jpeg.
But if you don't have a scanner, or just don't have the patience to do that for 400 photos, then maybe consider a service that does it for you? A quick search for "scan photos service" turned up a lot. I've never done it that way, though. I'd imaging it can be expensive, but would is buying a scanner.
A cheap way to do it if you already have a recent iPhone or iPad is to scan them using the camera on that device. I did a video here, but talking mostly about document scanning. Photos are similar.
https://macmost.com/how-to-scan-documents-with-your-iphone.html
But I think you'd get better quality from a scanner or service.
As always a quick response. Thanks. I do have a scanner (recently hp office jet). It has scanned documents great. Once I scan them do I drag them to my photos app (then change date to original photo??). Once I put them in photo do I then delete the original scan? Thanks Again.
Ken
Ken: You can drag them into Photos, yes. Unless you have specifically changed your Photos Preferences to change it, this will import a copy of the photo. Then you can delete the original (or archive it somewhere for good measure). Change the date if you like, sure.
Instead of scanning each photo (either with my phone or scanner) and then moving photo to the photos app, and then deleting the original scan, would it be easier just to take a photograph of the photograph? Is there any negative reason for not doing it this way? Thanks again. Ken
Ken: Quality. You won't get anywhere as good quality as you would with a scanner. If you do decide to take photos, use the scan function I show in my tutorial above. At least that will correct for the angle you are holding the iPhone at.
Since you have a scanner, why not try a comparison. Scan a photo and then take a picture of a photo. Zoom in to see the details in each.
One last question on this topic: Scanning does have a much higher quality than taking a photo of photo. I scanned them with my HP using their scanning app. The scan formats as a TIF. Do I need to convert that to a JPEG or can I just drop it in photos as a TIF. If I do need to convert to a JPEG how do I do that. Thanks Ken
Ken: You can set the format of the scan to other things. Not sure if you are using the HP software, or maybe Preview or Image Capture, but all have options to set the format.