How to Digitize Family Photos

Are your photos from the 90s sitting in an overflowing box somewhere on the top shelf of a dark closet, disorganized and forgotten?  I’ll bet they are. And I’ll also bet this is a project that terrifies you to begin. You’re one part emotionally overwhelmed by the idea of looking through all those memories and one part overwhelmed by the decisions required to sift through the tools and learn how to use them. Am I right? 

I just finished digitizing and organizing 2,816 of my family’s photos. Yes, two thousand eight hundred and sixteen photos.  That’s a couple of slide decks from the 60s, a rolls of film from the 70s and 80s, and all the negatives from the 90s and early 2000s. Let’s not get bogged down in the number, though: yes, you and I can easily take that many photos on a trip to the playground. The point is, those photos are now easily accessible on my computer and in the cloud and it only took me three intense days and one season of Gilmore Girls to make it happen.

The first thing I want you to know: the tools to digitize family photos are ridiculously accessible and much cheaper than I expected. Plus, they are remarkably easy to use.  

I used the DigitNow Film Scanner to digitize film negatives and slides. It’s $60 on Amazon and is truly plug-and-play. The best part? No computer access or fancy program required. You literally just plug it in, turn it on, insert a strip of negatives, and push a button. 

This film scanner saves JPG files to an SD card, which you later copy to a computer. Open an envelope of negatives, load one strip into the frame, insert it into the machine, and start clicking. Because this requires zero technological prowess, I say anyone can do it. Even tech-averse Grandma.  (Note: there’s some technology required to load the photos onto the computer, but the time-consuming part is working with the actual negatives and that’s where I gleefully posit that zero technology prowess is required.)

The DigitNow Film Scanner has frames for both negatives and slides, so there’s your one-stop-shop.

For the scrapbooks and printed photos, I used a three-day free trial of Photomyne and was planning to plow through the photos so I wouldn’t have to buy the app. However, the capabilities exceeded all my expectations and I happily forked over the pennies to buy the app so I could use it longer. 

Using Photomyne to digitize family photos is fast and easy. Photomyne uses the camera on your phone to take a photo of up to five photos and then uses AI technology to auto-crop, optimize, and save each individual photo.

The process of using the app is impressively easy, too. Arrange a few photos on a flat, well-lit surface and then push a button. You’ll watch the app crop each image and save it individually. 

Don’t procrastinate. Start to digitize family photos today.

While it may feel like a daunting project, just do it. Turn on an audiobook or a favourite show and start one scan at a time. The journey of a thousand photos begins with one scan, so just do it – start! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be amazed. The process of digitizing your family photos will likely become an emotionally complex journey but will result in the best stories, the best memories, and the best conversations.This is not just another task to complete; it’s a journey through family history to enjoy.

I found photos I didn’t know existed, reminisced about people I haven’t seen in decades, and heard stories from my parents that were previously forgotten. An important and emotionally poignant journey, rollercoaster though it may be. Also, I was a very cute baby. 😉

The most important tip for using Photomyne to digitize family photos: How to Avoid Glare

If you’re using Photomyne, you’re actually just taking a photo of your photos. With that in mind, your goals are to minimize glare and maintain consistent lighting. Best bet? Find a spot near a window (the goal is diffused light, not direct light) to work with your prints and be sure to turn off overhead lights (to minimize multiple points of unsightly glare).  

Similarly, whenever possible take your photos out of album sleeves. The plastic of the photo album has protected your images, yes, but will add opportunity for that nasty glare to distract from your memorable photos. 

I was very impressed with Photomyne’s ability to photograph a scrapbook page and either digitize it as a whole or crop to individual photos, so don’t despair if most of your ancient photos are cropped into ovals and glued onto colorful backdrops. The scan won’t be as high a quality as the full image would’ve been, but it’s worth preserving the memory nonetheless.

Frequently Asked Questions

How’s the quality?

If you think you might someday want to enlarge any of the photos that you’re digitizing, here’s what to know: the Diginow Film Scanner is going to consistently give you high quality scans. A slide or a negative scanned through the Diginow Film Scanner will easily enlarge to a 12×18 inch print.

A Photomyne app scan of a 4×6 print is going to give you an image file capable of a 5×7 or 8×10 print. An app scan of an enlargement (8×10, in the case of my test subject) will print at 8×10 or 12×18. 

Where do I store the images after I digitize them?

If you have an Amazon Prime membership, Amazon Photos is going to be the easiest and cheapest option for cloud storage. It’s included in your membership so you might as well take advantage of it!

You can easily upload to Google Photos, too, but you may need to upgrade your allocated storage. It’s a low-cost way to have easy access to your photos in the cloud and will be very easily shareable with anybody who may enjoy the trip down memory lane.

My personal favourite cloud storage, though, is Smugmug. I’ve used it for over a decade and have been so grateful for its customization, security, finesse, and consistency. 

You can always skip the cloud, of course, but keep in mind that technology continues to change. Remember floppy disks? CDs? USB drives?

Why did I keep all these blurry photos?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be appalled at the sheer volume of blurry, out of focus pictures that Past Self kept stored in a shoebox from the 90s. Save yourself some hassle and start by curating your digitized collection. In short, don’t scan blurry photos. Yes, that’s right: literally throw away the blurry images.

But, also, save Future Self some hassle and start deleting photos now. Yes, that’s right: delete more photos. In fact, challenge Present Self to delete 90% of the photos you take. You won’t be sorry. (And if you need more help knowing how to take a fabulous photo (AND how to delete a photo), check out my digital photography course on Sage Media Marketing

Do I need any special tools when using Photomyne to digitize family photos?

Photomyne offers a cell phone tripod specifically designed for photographing printed photographs and they also cell a bluetooth remote control that’s designed to work closely with their app. From my experience, buy the tripod but skip the remote control. The tripod is easy to use, fast to set up, and infinitely helpful. The remote control takes a bit more effort to learn but doesn’t exponentially increase the ease of the process.

What if my photos are all just black and white?

Here’s where Photomyne decides to show off. It can actually colorize for you. How cool is that? It doesn’t always work perfectly (I created some humorous renderings!), but it offers a fun twist if you want to see what AI thinks that an ancient photo would have looked like.