Why Scan Old Family Photos—Before It’s Too Late (and How to)

We all have old family albums that we’d like to preserve and share – but lack the time or skills to scan photos. This how-to guide can help.

Most of us have boxes of old photos tucked away—loose prints, albums, or framed pictures. These are remnants of the pre-digital era, slowly fading away. If you are lucky, you might have their negatives, but often not. Photos and film deteriorate over time, and once they’re lost, they’re gone forever.

So why should you scan them now?

Why Scan Photos?

1. To Preserve Family History
Old photographs are more than just pictures. They’re memories, milestones, and a visual record of your family’s story. Scanning them (and backing them up) ensures they’ll be around for future generations.

2. To Create a Shared Family Archive
Family photos are often distributed across siblings and relatives. By scanning and pooling everyone’s collections, you can create a complete digital archive that everyone can access and enjoy.

3. To Reprint and Share Rare Photos
Some photos may exist as a single print. High-quality scans make it easy to reprint and share those once-in-a-lifetime, cherished moments with others.

4. To Restore Damaged or Faded Prints
Time can take its toll—photos fade, get scratched, or stained. Scanned images can be digitally restored to look as good as new (or even better).

5. To Save Space and Reduce Clutter
As people downsize or declutter, bulky photo albums and shoeboxes full of prints can be hard to keep. Digital copies are easy to store and organize, taking up virtually no physical space.

Why Do People Keep Putting It Off

Let’s face it—scanning sounds like a project. Most people postpone it because they feel they lack:

• Time and commitment
• Technical know-how
• Equipment or software
• Budget (to use a scanning service)

But the good news? Scanning photos is really easy, and there are several ways to get it done.

Your Scanning Options

1. DIY with a Scanner
If you have a flatbed or feeder-type scanner, you can do it yourself. Flatbeds are affordable and great for quality, while feeder scanners are faster but work only for loose prints. Most scanners today are plug-and-play and include basic cropping tools.

2. DIY with a Mobile App
Apps like Pic Scanner Gold (iOS) and Google PhotoScan (Android) make scanning easy and fast. Just point, shoot, and let the app do the cropping and enhancement. The quality isn’t as high as a desktop scanner, but it’s good enough for digital albums, social media, and small prints. Some apps for scanning negatives also exist, but none we would recommend. See this for more.

3. DIY with a DSLR Camera
A high-quality DSLR or mirrorless camera can give you high-resolution, professional quality scans—ideal for archiving or large reprints. You could use a simple rig like shown below. This takes a bit more effort, but offers great results. You can even scan negatives this way.

4. Use a Professional Scanning Service
Short on time or have a large collection? You might like to consider a scanning service. You’ll need to sort and ship your photos, but they’ll handle the rest—scanning, organizing, and delivering digital copies on a USB drive, DVD, or cloud storage. Prices start around $0.50 per photo (more for album pages and restoration), and they can even scan negatives and convert them to digital images. Of course there’s a bit of risk in shipping and trusting someone else with your precious, one-of-a-kind originals.

The Easy Way to Do It

• Start small. Sort and select photos. Shortlist a couple of hundred for the first phase.
• Scan photos using a flatbed scanner or a digital or smartphone camera. With scanner, scan up to four loose photos or one album page at a time. With camera, scan one or two photos at a time – otherwise the resolution will suffer. Save the scans in a folder on your Mac.
• Crop and save photos from each scan. Doing it manually will be too laborious, so download SnipTag – an inexpensive macOS app that automates this tedious task (Mac App Store link). Launch the app and drag 10-15 scans at a time into its Snip pane. You’ll be amazed how fast all the photos get cropped and saved individually.
• Edit the photos’ creation dates. By default, scanned photos show when you scanned them – not when they were originally taken. Switch to the Tag mode in SnipTag, click open a photo, and add the correct date. Also consider adding the location and a short description. You can also do this in batch mode – e.g. if you have 20 wedding photos, all taken on the same date and at the same place. Select them all and change their metadata simultaneously.
• Export the scans to a folder on your computer. As a result of your editing the EXIF dates, the photos will be sorted in the correct chronological sequence in the folder, and also when you view them with any program on any computer.

When exporting, SnipTag also gives you the option to imprint captions under the photos.

Congratulations – you have scanned the first batch, now repeat with more photos. Don’t forget to back up the exported scans on an external drive or a cloud storage service.