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Family History Documents and Artefacts => FH Documents and Artefacts => Topic started by: I forget on Wednesday 14 August 19 11:11 BST (UK)
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Hello :),
I'm stopping my FH research in order to try (desperately) to return to archiving my collection of old and newer photos. I feel like I've at least made some progress on the 'old prints', (storing in archive quality boxes, scanning etc) but have realised, with some panic, that my 'new' photos taken with digital cameras, have not had the same thought or storage.
I have been musing on hard drive types etc, and multiple copies of my files, but have also been trying to print 'hard copies' of many of these digital prints as another (safer?) way of storage. (I may try and do another post on file storage at some point)
My practice has been to get the photos printed by big well tested commercial printing companies, such as Photobox, Snapfish/Boots, etc. I have extensively read reviews and tried them out. Ending up with Photobox as my 'go to' printing company. (there are smaller 'better' professional printers but they are too expensive for the sheer volume i have printed over the years).
The idea being that they can afford better printing machinery and dyes than i can. The fading of several 'printed at home' on our inkjet printers (admittedly ones that are on the wall) has put me off home printing (that and the cost).
On browsing some photography forums (all too technical for me) I find warnings that 'pretty much all commercially printed photos fade badly in recent accelerated ageing tests' and that 'home printing is better'. With certain printers being mentioned as 'better'.
This surprised me greatly.
But then I haven't 'updated' any of my practices in printing and storing modern prints in over 10 years.
So my question is:
From a purely archiving point of view, what is best?
Printing your digital photos from a commercial printer ???
or printing at home? ???
Also, are 'photo books' and 'canvas's', which are so heavily promoted these days, better/worse/ the same for keeping those precious prints long term. ???
Looking at the old black and white pictures, which have survived pretty well, vs. some dreadfully faded 1970's prints, but then some better ones from the 1980's, how do the modern inks/papers compare? (I mean since digital has taken over).
I suppose I really want to know if it's a waste of time/money me printing so many out, or if I should just print a small selection that the family can enjoy as photobooks or smaller albums (My husband has been 'commenting' on the number of albums and boxes stuffed full of prints that line so many of our book shelves) and if so, what printing is the best one to buy and what to look out for. ???
Help!
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Whatever the quality of the paper/ink/printing method, they will fade over time. Some papers are supposed to be archive quality and last up to 100 years. If they are kept in light proof conditions, they should last a good while.
My solution has been to keep a good, non-compressed scan of each, just as we keep our old negatives of chemical processed photographs. I still have negatives in special sleeves from many years ago and can still get a good print from them.
Make sure the format of the digital file is upward compatible - i.e. check every so often - and keep backups.
Gadget
Just to stress - LIGHT and MOISTURE are the big enemies.
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Thank you,
Just as a side issue, what do you recommend for scanning old/non digital prints these days?
ie: dpi is '300' ok? (with 100 for documents) which was the 'standard' when I scanned most of the black and white photos we have. Or should it be 600?
I don't want to be re-scanning every few years (plus I haven't even started on the colour photos yet. I need to get my external hard drives sorted out ready.)
Best file type? Tiff or Jpeg? (I've heard that Giff is being superceded by PNG or some such.)
I've been trying to find out if there is an 'archiving standard' I could adhere to for scanning.
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Hello,
I have been told to scan at the highest resolution you can on your printer and scan as few times as possible (once is best) as the light on the scanner will fade your photos if scanned repeatedly. Another way to do it is to take a digital photo of your photos and any historical documents. That way the light from the scanner won't damage your photos.
I was also told, save/move your photos to new drives (whether that be external hard drives, memory sticks...) every 5 years as after 5 years the drives get old and fail at some point.
Keep documents and photos away from direct sunlight/light and moisture.
I seem to recall that the conservator, who told me the above, mentioned to save your photos to TIFF if you can. Having said that, my notes are at home so I can't double check.
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It depends on the size of the original image and what size you want to print at. 600 -900 would be sufficient for most needs - see for example
http://howtoscan.ca/photo-scanning/photo-scan-best-resolution.html
Also, you need to save without any compression so Tiff is still the best as far as I can gather. Most of my old photos are saved as tiff. Some recommend png but it does compress.
Gadget
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Thank you Gadget and Imfamilyresearch,
That is really helpful.
I don't really want to re-scan, I did most at 300 with the first black and white albums in TIFF, (as this was said to be the best compromise between size and quality at the time). A lot of them are tiny, so higher scans for them will be better.
I will need some serious storage though, as I don't think my desktop can take all the photos in higher res TIFF.
But these are precious photos and I don't want to keep re-scanning as it will damage them. So if I'm doing it twice, this must be it. I still have over 6 albums worth of family photos to do (in colour) and more of my own, which haven't been scanned as yet.
Think I'll need to re-read that link and see what storage I'm going to need. (yikes!)
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External hard disks are much cheaper these days for your local storage - have a look at some of the external storage options. Also, backups using Cloud storage could be considered.
Added - I've just looked at random for 2TB and 4TB external drives - WD do them for circa £53 and £87 resp. That's a lot of photos :)
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...So my question is:
From a purely archiving point of view, what is best?
Printing your digital photos from a commercial printer ???
or printing at home? ???
From an archiving point of view you have already got the best archive of the image it is possible to get. The original.
The next best format is DNG followed by TIFF.
If your camera originals were JPEG files then simply copy the file in that format to your archive hard drive. Note,copy do not open and save.
Also, are 'photo books' and 'canvas's', which are so heavily promoted these days, better/worse/ the same for keeping those precious prints long term. ???
They are no better and no worse than professionally processed prints but are probably more difficult to archive than standard individual prints.
Looking at the old black and white pictures, which have survived pretty well, vs. some dreadfully faded 1970's prints, but then some better ones from the 1980's, how do the modern inks/papers compare? (I mean since digital has taken over).
Black & White generally last longer than colour prints.
I suppose I really want to know if it's a waste of time/money me printing so many out, or if I should just print a small selection that the family can enjoy as photobooks or smaller albums (My husband has been 'commenting' on the number of albums and boxes stuffed full of prints that line so many of our book shelves) and if so, what printing is the best one to buy and what to look out for. ???
Help!
I would suggest archive photos digitally (at the highest possible optical resolution your scanner can produce, (note the optical resolution will be a fraction of the highest possible resolution but will be the best possible resolution before interpolation) and print photos as photobooks or smaller albums for daily or frequent use.
Cheers
Guy
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Thank you Gadget,
I will be looking into buying more storage asap. I have stuff copied on flash drives and on photobox (plus in process of copying onto another computer), but definitely need to do more. (want to leave a copy with a relative 'off site' as well). I am getting a bit hung up on durability of SSD vs. cheaper HDD. But still, my husband has bought a cheap one, which will do for now.
Thank you Guy,
That is a very comprehensive answer. :)
I think I'm pretty sussed on what I need to do about the prints (ie: photos from negatives etc, pre dating digital): let me know if I have missed something...
Scan at highest resolution possible.
I've not heard of DNG before, but I've got TIFF as an option on my (old) scanner) I'll need to check what the scanner is capable of and if I might need to invest in a new one that does negatives as well.
Keep all originals in archive conditions as much as I can.
Print 'new' copies of a small selection of the best for family enjoyment.
Keep several copies of the scanned files.
However, can I please clarify your opinion on digital camera pictures:
Copy the original files in the original formats and keep as many copies as possible, check regularly
Is that it? So is printing out digital camera pictures to keep them as a 'hardcopy' of these files a waste of time?
I always thought 'hard copies' was a good back up? (hence boxes of all the prints cluttering my shelves, I also print out downloaded census sheets etc).
The alternative is to only print out a small selection of the 'best' and hope that the multiple copies of files will be sufficient. (which would make my husband happier!!! Maybe I just need a museum standard shed ;D ;D )
If I have misunderstood anything, please let me know. :-)
Cheers.
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DNG is a raw format developed by Adobe (Photoshop, Lightroom, etc). DNg produces larger files and tend to be used by professional photographers. I use that format for my 'prof' photos but not for old pics that have been scanned. You can think of them as like old negatives that are then processed to get the best quality pic.
To use them you need a specialist program like photoshop/lightroom, etc. I'm not sure if Gimp and other such progams can convert them/manipulate them for printing.
I would stick to tiff for what you require.
Gadget
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For more info on DNG see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Negative
I see that they say that it is based on Tiff
DNG is based on the TIFF/EP standard format,
Gadget
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Thanks Gadget,
I'll stick to Tiff and I know my scanner has it as an option.
:)
Oh ok, that is interesting, learn something new every day.
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Thank you Guy,
That is a very comprehensive answer. :)
I think I'm pretty sussed on what I need to do about the prints (ie: photos from negatives etc, pre dating digital): let me know if I have missed something...
Scan at highest resolution possible.
No scan at the highest possible optical resolution, most scanners use interpolation (looking at adjacent pixels and adding a pixcel(s) equal to the average tone/colour of those pixcels) in other words to gain a higher than optical resolution the software will add pixels guessing what colour they should be
I've not heard of DNG before, but I've got TIFF as an option on my (old) scanner) I'll need to check what the scanner is capable of and if I might need to invest in a new one that does negatives as well.
Keep all originals in archive conditions as much as I can.
Print 'new' copies of a small selection of the best for family enjoyment.
Keep several copies of the scanned files.
However, can I please clarify your opinion on digital camera pictures:
Copy the original files in the original formats and keep as many copies as possible, check regularly
Is that it? So is printing out digital camera pictures to keep them as a 'hardcopy' of these files a waste of time?
I always thought 'hard copies' was a good back up? (hence boxes of all the prints cluttering my shelves, I also print out downloaded census sheets etc).
The alternative is to only print out a small selection of the 'best' and hope that the multiple copies of files will be sufficient. (which would make my husband happier!!! Maybe I just need a museum standard shed ;D ;D )
If I have misunderstood anything, please let me know. :-)
Cheers.
When you archive something you want to archive the original or near to original copy of the item, in the case of digital images that is the RAW file, however RAW files are manufacturer specific so there may be problems in the future reading such files.
DNA files are RAW files but they may be read on any software that can properly read the DNG format in other words it is almost a standard. In addition the DNG format includes checksum information in the file to detect and prevent file corruption.
In archiving terms printing the files is a waste of time and money as the resulting images will not last as long as the digital data and will not be as good as the original digital image, though I would print a number of interesting ones.
Cheers
Guy
PS good quality commercial scanners (Planetary Scanners) do no damage to the item they scan as they do not require high intensity light to scan the image/book etc.
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Phew! Thanks Guy, that's given me a lot to think about. I think you've probably also made my husband happy as I won't be printing out as many in future. Though I guess I'm going to need the money to sort out the scanning side.
Have to say it's strange for me to hear that hard copy isn't the extra peace of mind back up I thought it was (having read so much about how computer files are not to be trusted, become obsolete and can be lost so easily).
*goes off to read more about optical resolution and file types and rethink my whole strategy*
:o
This is getting more complicated than I thought. eeek!
I forget
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A simple answer given to me by a professional photographer friend was to use the tiff format for scanning. For storage, use photo storage boxes layered with acid free paper. As a collector of old photos, I also use postcard albums with 6 up plastic wallets, some landscape and some portrait. The ones I have come in red or blue and are ring binder style at a cost of around £24 including 10 wallets.
Carol