This guide to photo scanning is vital to understanding the importance of preserving your old photos and the process of digitization.
When you scan photos, you’re converting physical prints or negatives into digital images that can be stored, edited, and shared online.
I’ll provide you with seven reasons why scanning your photos this year is a good idea. So, continue reading to learn more.
What Is Photo Digitization?
Simply put, it’s converting physical prints or negatives into storable, editable, and shareable photos.
You can digitize photos yourself using a camera, smartphone, or film scanner such as these. You can also rely on the services of a photo laboratory for a fee or use advanced software, such as artificial intelligence (AI).
Nowadays, AI photo scanning software like Photomyne uses advanced algorithms to scan multiple photos at once, crop and rotate them automatically, and create albums based on dates and locations.
Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom also do a great job at photo digitizing, but they require more manual input and adjustments. So, you have to be tech-savvy to achieve the best results.
Why Should You Scan Your Photos This Year?
There are several reasons why scanning your photos is a project you should undertake this year. I’ll outline the most important ones for you.
1. Preservation
This is the main reason people digitize their photos. Aside from risking losing or damaging your physical photos, they’re also susceptible to environmental factors like humidity and temperature fluctuations.
Your photos can deteriorate over time if you don’t store them in a dark and dry place. However, an alternative is digitizing them.
By scanning your photos, you can ensure they’re safe from those damages, and your family and friends can enjoy them for years to come.
2. Sharing
Scanned photos are easier to share than physical photos.
You can easily share them with your family and friends using email, cloud services, messaging applications, etc., no matter how far they live away. So, staying in touch with loved ones isn’t a problem with digitized images.
On the other hand, you need to give physical photos to a person so they can copy or enjoy them. This raises the issue of losing them or having the person who loaned the photos return them in bad condition.
3. Organization
Scanned photos are easier to organize than physical ones. While physical ones need bulky physical albums and time to organize, you can sort digitized photos into folders and organize them by labels, keywords, time, place, etc.
You can also name scanned photos. So, while physical photos can have you digging around for several minutes to find what you want, scanned photos only require a few seconds of searching.
4. Enhancement
Thanks to the software available today, you can bring your physical photos to the next level by enhancing them.
Software such as Ribbet, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom allow you complete control over your pictures’ contrast, brightness, color range, and more. You can also use them to rid your pictures of scratches, dust, etc.
Artificial intelligence, a recent development, can automate the process of enhancing your photos. However, AI results can vary greatly depending on the software you use and the pictures you input. So, if you ask me, I always recommend learning Photoshop or an alternative.
5. Space Saving
If you’re a photography enthusiast, chances are you have several albums piled up somewhere. That’s an issue—physical photos take up significant space and can quickly clutter your room or storage.
Thankfully, you can store your scanned photos on a drive. You can store an average of 250,000 photos on a 1-terabyte drive, but that number will vary depending on their size and quality.
By the way, that’s 34.24 ft3 of 4 x 6-inch photos. That’s a fridge.
6. Accessibility
You can access your digitized photos wherever you are, as long as you have an internet connection.
You can also seamlessly transfer images from one device to another using cloud services. OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox are excellent choices.
On the other hand, physical photos require you to carry them around for viewing.
7. Security
You can seamlessly copy photos, back them up, and transfer them to other devices.
This allows you to have multiple copies of the same image. So, even if you lose it, you’ll have a replacement ready.
This guarantees protection from many types of damage. But, as always, ensure you use strong passwords and reliable storage services and devices to prevent unauthorized access, theft, or corruption.
Conclusion
You should scan your photos this year to protect them from environmental damage and ensure you have a backup in case you lose the originals.
By digitizing them, you’ll also guarantee your family and friends can enjoy them for years, save space, and organize them better.
Digitizing can be a challenging process if you’re not tech-savvy. However, photo laboratories can provide that service for a fee.
Most people agree that it’s best to learn how to use a scanner and image editing software, such as Ribbet or Photoshop, to digitize your images.
Here’s a guide on how to scan your first document or photo so you can get started.
