How to Digitize and Preserve Old Family Photographs

Old photographs are irreplaceable primary sources. A portrait of a great-grandparent taken in 1895 tells you what they looked like, approximately when the photograph was taken (based on clothing and photographic technology), and sometimes the studio address printed on the back — which gives you the city or town where they were living at the time. Photographs also carry emotional weight that a birth certificate cannot. Digitising them is one of the highest-value tasks in any genealogy project, and it costs almost nothing to do properly.

Why Digitise Now Rather Than Later

Photographic prints are unstable. Black-and-white prints from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are relatively durable, but colour prints from the 1960s to 1990s — the snapshots that document recent family history — are among the least stable photographic formats ever produced. Dye-coupler colour prints fade significantly within 30“50 years under normal storage conditions. A box of colour snapshots from the 1970s is already measurably faded and will continue to degrade with each passing decade.

Physical accidents — fires, floods, water pipe bursts, moves — destroy physical collections permanently. A digital copy stored in three locations survives any single point of failure. Digitising now, while the originals are still in reasonable condition, produces better results than digitising a faded or damaged print later.

Equipment: Flatbed Scanner vs. Smartphone

Flatbed Scanner (Recommended)

A flatbed scanner produces significantly better results than a smartphone for most photographs. The controlled lighting, flat glass platen, and high optical resolution capture detail that smartphone cameras miss, particularly in shadow areas and fine textures.

For genealogy purposes, an entry-level flatbed photo scanner (around $80“$150) is sufficient for most print formats up to 8×10 inches. Look for a scanner with an optical resolution of at least 1200 dpi and a maximum optical resolution of 4800 dpi or higher for scanning small prints at large sizes.

Smartphone Scanning

A smartphone is a practical choice when you are digitising photographs at a relative's home and do not have a scanner with you. Results are acceptable for sharing and identification purposes, though not ideal for archival preservation. If using a smartphone:

• Use the highest resolution your camera supports
• Shoot in a shaded area with even natural light — avoid direct sunlight and flash
• Hold the phone parallel to the print surface to avoid perspective distortion
• Use a scanner app (Microsoft Lens, Google PhotoScan) rather than the native camera app — these apps correct for glare and perspective automatically

Scanning Resolution: What Settings to Use

Resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi). The right setting depends on the size of the original and how large you want to be able to print the digital copy.

• Standard prints (4×6 inches and larger): 600 dpi is the standard archival recommendation. This produces a file large enough to print at the original size without visible loss of quality, and to crop and enlarge sections of the image.
• Small prints (wallet-size, 1×1 inch portraits from lockets): 1200 dpi or higher. A small print scanned at 600 dpi produces a very small digital file that cannot be enlarged significantly.
• Negatives and slides: 2400“4000 dpi. Negatives are very small originals that contain enormous detail. A 35mm negative scanned at 4000 dpi produces the equivalent of a 24-megapixel digital photograph.

Save your scans as TIFF files for the archival master copy. TIFF is a lossless format — it compresses nothing and preserves every pixel. Also save a JPEG copy (at 90“95% quality) for sharing and attaching to your family tree, since TIFF files can be very large.

Naming and Organising Your Files

Consistent naming is the most important long-term investment you can make in a photo archive. A file named "IMG_4832.jpg" becomes meaningless the moment it is separated from the folder it was in. A file named "Harrison_Mary_c1920_WeddingPortrait.jpg" is self-describing forever.

A reliable naming convention for genealogy photographs:

• Surname_Firstname_Year_Description.jpg — for example, Kowalski_Anna_1935_ApartmentStoop.jpg
• Use approximate years when exact dates are unknown: c1890 means "circa 1890"
• For group photographs: Harrison_Family_1952_ChristmasDinner.jpg
• For unknown individuals: Unknown_Female_c1870_CabinetCard.jpg — never discard an unidentified photograph; a relative may be able to identify the subject later

Organise files in folders by surname first, then by individual or event. Add everything you know about a photograph to its metadata — most operating systems let you add tags and comments to image files, and this information stays attached to the file even when it is moved.

Backup: The 3-2-1 Rule

A digital archive on a single hard drive is nearly as fragile as a shoebox of prints. Hard drives fail. Computers are stolen or damaged. The 3-2-1 backup rule is the standard recommendation for any irreplaceable data:

• 3 copies of every file
• stored on 2 different types of media (for example, an external hard drive and cloud storage)
• with 1 copy off-site (at a different physical location, or in cloud storage)

Cloud storage services (Google Photos, iCloud, Dropbox, Amazon Photos) provide automatic off-site backup and are sufficient for the off-site copy. For the local copies, an external hard drive kept in a fireproof box provides additional protection against physical disaster.