To Digitize or Not Digitize the Family Photo Album? 398
animys asks: "In the last few years, we have begun to witness the inevitable shift from 35mm cameras to high resolution, cheap, consumer oriented digital cameras; with this, the move away from a tangible photo album has also ensued. This change has obviously left many families with huge amounts of developed pictures and albums. For reasons of preservation and usability, some families would like to convert their previously taken pictures to a digital medium - yet many have hundreds or even thousands of pictures. What type of tools can the DIY'er use to make this process easier? Beyond the obvious scanner and graphics package, is there any good quality software that can augment this arduous and possibly over-daunting task?" What about folks looking to do the opposite? Most people take decent care of their albums, and the pictures are always viewable regardless of the changes in technology. What options are there for those folks looking to make near-picture-quality hardcopies of their digital photos for inclusion in their albums?
Both (Score:5, Insightful)
I still have my photos in digital format on CDROMs for safe keeping and for use on my website. But that will certainly not replace the old photo album. Plus think of the pictures handing on the walls in your house with all the children and such.
Gotta have both dude.
Why not make a paper album from digital pics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I use a freeware version of Ulead Photoexplorer to print a copy of every picture in that directory in a 2 by 2 format.
I print the directory name (the date) at the top of the sheet and the filename under each picture.
Then I slide the sheet into a sheet protector and put it into a three ring binder.
Works great, is very portable and if my technology illiterate grandmother wants a copy I know exactly where on the CD (kept in the back of the binder) to print a new copy.
Good way to get chicks! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Batch photo scanning software? (Score:3, Informative)
For Windoze software, it's actually very impressive. Nikon's scanner was expensive, but unlike some slide scanners I've had (*cough* Minolta *cough*) the Coolscan lives up to my expectations.
--Jim
Re:Batch photo scanning software? (Score:2)
If your scanner is SANE-compliant, use a small shell/perl script with scanimage to do the trick.
Re:Both (Score:3)
a photo album is best on a 3rd or 4th date, curl up on couch with your lover and look at embarassing photos. everything from the turning of the pages to the shifting weight of the photo album makes the whole situation much more intimate with plenty of leadways into whatever you feel like.
However the quality of pictures taken by any camera below $1000
There are plenty of really good $400 digital cameras, like the Kodak DX3900. I bought my Nikon 990 a couple years ago, it cost just over $1000 (you can get it for aroun $500 now) and the photos i get from ezprints.com are great, even at 11x14 (anything higher will NOT be sharp). Look for something 3.1 megapixels at least and you'll get just fine 4x6's. Well, provided you know how to shoot. And it helps to know something about photo editing (particularly contrast and light balancing).
iphoto (Score:5, Interesting)
and the picture books that you can create with it are nothing short of impressive. handing one of those out to my cousin from the picture i took at here wedding as really impressive.
Re:iphoto (Score:2)
Re:iphoto (Score:2, Informative)
There are plenty of things in the OSS world that have one-click simplicity. It just depends where you click. And know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. It means you can use the software the way YOU think it should be used, and not the way some programmer has decided is the simplest way.
Since when are options a bad thing?
-Sara
Re:iphoto (Score:5, Informative)
I paid $0.49 per 4x6. This seemed quite steep to me before I realized that I had the privelage of only sending photos that I already knew were print-worthy. Plus I had a chance to crop and color-correct them if I wished. When you figure it that way, it's not so outrageous. The prices for going from digital to photo paper printed are as follows:
4x6 - $0.49
5x7 - $0.99
wallet (4) - $1.79
8x10 - $3.99
16x20 - $14.99
20x30 - $19.99
Gallery (Score:3, Informative)
http://gallery.sourceforge.net/
Apache+PHP and you're ready to go. Gallery is the best photo gallery/organizer package I've seen.
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
You dump all your files into a directory structure, and PHPixDir produces a web site from them. The URLs it makes are carefully chosen so you can just do a "wget -mk site" to make a hard static copy of the website. It's also careful to tell browsers to locally cache pictures etc. This is so I can have pics up for family on slow net connections elsewhere in the world. I can also send them the odd CDR.
PHPixDir is simple with some very well defined goals. Gallery looks like it does a lot more.
Anyway, if you are interested, PHPixDir and a demo site can be found here. [mythral.org]
With PostNuke (Score:2)
It works well in standalone mode, but I recommend taking an extra 10 minutes and setting up Postnuke first.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Feel free to poke around my own PostNuke/Gallery site (Gallery link on the left):
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
I've used Marginal Hack's Album [marginalhacks.com] before, at the time it seemed to be the easiest and best solution. It is a Perl script that generates static html pages with the images you supply. It has template support so you can customize the way the gallery looks and it is popular enough that there are several decent templates already created. One feature I liked was the optional ability to create a thumbnail, a web sized pic and retain the link to the original full sized image.
Gallery seems to do all this and more. One question I couldn't find in the docs, does Gallery dynamically resize images as the users request them or does it resize them as they are uploaded? Album brought my old linux box to its knees resizing the photos I fed it, I'd rather do that once than every time someone visited the page.
Cool, maybe I'll get around to getting some more photos online, my family will thank you :)
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
You need a non-web interface to do this work, and then use XMLRPC or something similar to actually upload the image to the website.
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
Re:Gallery (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gallery (Score:2)
don't only convert (Score:5, Informative)
Re:don't only convert (Score:2, Insightful)
"archival properties of photographic processes"
Wrong. Photo prints fade. Look at family color pictures from 1970. Black and white before then. And once it has faded, it is gone.
film/prints don't last forever either! (Score:5, Informative)
Er....maybe. Most color prints unless sealed under glass don't age well. Maybe ten to twenty years. Better then most inkjet prints, but still not great. The negitaves last longer...normally.
Some negitaves, like the non-C41 color that Seattle Filmworks either sells, or use to sell dies very very quickly. Like in 3 years or so unless you put them in the freazer and are careful not to lot them get too humid.
Even good negitaves, like the thought to be archival Fuji slides from the 70's are starting to suck. Bad.
Quoting from some Apple propaganda: [apple.com]
Be careful of how archival you think reguar photos are. Sure you see a lot of old photos, but those are mostly silver haldide black and white which has much better archival properties then the dye baised C-41 and E-6 that almost all color stuff is these days.
The only arcival color process is Kodachrome...and Kodachrome is rapidly vanishing. I think all pro speeds have been discontinued, and the mature speeds are going. Either that, or at least all pro speeds below ISO 100 are gone. No more Kodachrome 25. Of corse that's because not many people have a taste for that color palette anymore, perfering Fuji's Velvia or Provia, or Kodak's E100SW. Plus Fuji is stealing basically the entire slide market from Kodak...and pro slide shooters are slowly converting to digital SLRs anyway.
Now that doesn't mean JPGs on a CD are going to automagically last 100 years either...but it is not as hard to think that if you recopy them every 5 years or so they will last...and if you stick the source code of something that converts JPG to a bitmap, and some documentation on the current C language...and JPG...maybe in 100 years it can be reconstructed even :-)
(Ok, given the current popularity of JPG, it is hard to imagine you won't be able to open JPGs in a specilty program in 100 years! Still, help the historians out...include file format documents!)
The propriatary RAW formats will be hard to open in just a few years though I think. So convert them to PNG...and make at least two CD's, on differnet dye types! Keep 'em out of the sun. Heck, keep one at home, one at work, and one at your parents house. A family alblum is the kind of thing relitaves love to be off site back up for.
If you have film...keep it in a cool dry palce. Inspect it yearly. Think about getting a high quality scanner and spending time on the best shots. Just remeber though, film brings out more detail then any print...and a scanner can capture more detail then prints, but affordable scanners won't capture as much as the film has (I wouldn't print anything a Nikon 4000 has scanned at much more then 8x10...but you can print a very good 35mm picture *much* *much* *much* larger then that). After you scan, take care of the print, there will be a better scanner in a few years.
Medimum and large format film folks? Your on your own...but you knew that already, didn't you?
Printing at various degrees of expense. (Score:2)
For a nicer picture, if I recall correctly, sublimation printing produces an image that looks a lot like a photograph, but I haven't seen the output from a sublimation printer in years, so my memory could be off.
Lastly, you could just make a printout at fantastically high resolution and re-photograph with an ordinary camera to get a photo that will last decades or longer with minimum fuss. Be sure to use a tripod for this, as small movements will blur the image.
Lastly, the most practical solution for the future is probably just to carry both digital and analog cameras. Use the digital camera for most things, and take a handful of old-fashioned pictures for the images you want to be there for your great-grandkids to see.
As mentioned above, I haven't followed the higher-end printing options for a while. Does anyone have more up-to-date information on this?
Re:Printing at various degrees of expense. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Printing at various degrees of expense. (Score:2)
I would say around the high end for photo prints are things like the Fuji Frontear. Found in many photofinishers, like Ritz/Wolf in the USA. They vary in size from "large copy machine" to "won't fit ina normal size room. The paper is in light tight containers. It takes very little time to make a print, but about five minutes before it drys enough to come out of the machine.
Normally they are used to scan a 35mm roll, and print it, but they can take CDs of images, CF cards, act as an FTP server, or other things depending on what the shop has payed for.
If your original had enough resolution, it will look like a photograph, right down to being on the overly glossy paper 1 hour shops use, and the oversaturated stuff too. Still, it tends to be kind of cheap per print, and easy to find. And only around $300,000 if you want your own. Or maybe $70,000, I can never remember.
There is a step up from that though. The Fuji tops out at 20x16 prints. Kodak makes or resells a "laser jet", which makes prints up to 8 feet wide, and a few 100 feet long. You need a light tight room because the paper has to be loaded in the dark.
Both the Kodak and Fuji use more or less normal RC-type photo paper, and expose it with a laser (or array of lasers). Prints are exactly as durable as 35mm prints. Which is to say "much more then ink jet prints, but less then most people think".
Even if somehow you think these prints are less durable then the "old way", remember that the is exactly how a lot of 35mm prints are made now!
Don't just look at the visual qualities (Score:3, Informative)
On top of that, not all dye sub printing is archival - check into what museums use.
Museums are in the business of making things last - they will be your best resource for this type of work.
As for digitally-stored files, don't trust any one medium. If you insist on putting irreplacable images on a twenty-cent CDRom, do yourself a favor and burn a couple - then also copy them to a hard disk. Personally, I'd love to see a good system for printing the images out as machine-readable codes onto archival-quality paper in something like IBM's glyph format - I've seen 500 year old paper that was showed absolutely no signs of degradation - any longer than that and I think I've fulfilled my responsibility to posterity. (Not that my photos are any good.)
One word of warning, a lesson learned the hard way: Do not use Zip disks for stuff you care about - I recently lost all of the pictures I took from a helecopter of the World Trade Center two years ago to a Zip disk that died the "click of death".
As for old family albums, I have been working on scanning my girlfriend's family albums and it's amazing how much detail we've been able to get out of these pictures that were often the size of a couple of postage stamps. We've been making a slide show and putting it on video tape for family members to watch on their TVs as well - great for older members of the family. An online gallery that allows comments (I have one at http://mmdc.net) is a good tool for gathering "Who's that guy on the left?" type of information.
The next stage is to remove the originals from the dangerous albums that they are in (the so-called "Magic" type albums with the sticky sheet and the plastic over them - they are probably the most damaging.) and place them in albums that won't accellerate their demise.
Search on Google for dealers in archival supplies, like Light Impressions [lightimpre...direct.com]. You'll find a lot of information and resources online.
Also, when dealing with really old black and white photos such as albumen prints and sometimes incorrectly-developed silver prints, if the image has faded away, it can often be brought back through chemical means - talk to a restorer, or at least, don't throw them away.
Hope this helps -
Jim in Tokyo
Distributed Albums (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find even more interesting is techies arn't always the ones setting them up and using them. A lot of people who can barely use a digital camera are getting in on the act.
Not sure if this helps or not, but places like Yahoo Groups work great for setting up albums with a short term storage outlook.
-Pete
Other options (Score:2)
Re:Other options (Score:2)
Identifying those unlabeled photos (Score:5, Interesting)
Upload your grandmother's album and find out: Who is that standing there at the beach with Dad and Aunt Edna in 1952? The database project would be able to figure it out.
What a boon for genealogists.
(And, yes, a problem for people with something to hide about what they were doing in 1952 or who their ancestor was in 1876. But it's going to be a transparent society [kithrup.com] anyway, and we're going to have to get used to it.)
Re:Identifying those unlabeled photos (Score:2)
Usually figuring out if this adult is the same as that adult is no problem... It's finding a picture of a kid that you know he's one of several adults... usually a big problem.
Best way to solve it is to have pictures of two or more kids together. You can almost always figure out who's who by relative age.
Re:Identifying those unlabeled photos (Score:2)
Some features I couldn't find easily in other software was the database stuff, marking a photo with who is in it, and being able to provide someone all the images they are in, easily, web application style. The other big feature is the creating quick easy webpages for posting the good ones. Lots of software does that, but I need to learn PHP better anyway.
Being able to easily be sure what is backed-up and what isn't is something else I want it to do.
Eventually, I'd like to pop the smart-media card in almost any machine I own, and click link which will download the pictures and store them some one intelligently (directory with todays date prob.) and identify they need to be cataloged... then while I'm at work, instead of READING SLASHDOT, I'll catalog my photos.
I also like doing PHOTOMONTAGE with my digi-photos. (www.arcsoft.com)
M@
Printing Digital Prints (Score:2)
There are online services that let you upload images and then order prints, I've used OFTO and liked the results, but its just as cheap and faster to run to my nearest chain camera shop.
Finally, Kinkos can make poster size copies on various media, including foamboard and canvas. They tend to be expensive, but offer some interesting printing options.
VueScan (Score:2)
The question (Score:2, Insightful)
Foofy Software but it works (Score:4, Informative)
I tend to save two copies of each image, one exactly as it is scanned, the other corrected and repaired if necessary.
I have found one piece of software that is fairly nifty, the Canon Zoom Browser EX that came with my Canon G1 digital camera. It lacks some of the features I wish it had and sure it has a very foofy interface but it works well for previewing a couple thousand images and organizing them.
I personally wish that there was a standard and widely used way of tagging each picture for archive and retrieval purposes. It would be nice to tag each picture with the date and names of people or scenes depicted in them. The ability to pull up every picture with great great great grandpappy in it would very handy. As it is now I have to name every picture with the date and the people depicted, then sort them into some arbitrary folder that more directly relates to me than to the overall family tree.
Re:Foofy Software but it works (Score:3, Interesting)
instead of img003.jpg
summer 1965 grandpaw-timmy-danny-and the boat at frelling lake.jpg
Works great and work on any modern operating system incluging windows.
makes sorting easy, and you dont need anything special to read the tags.
Re:Picture tagging (Score:2)
Re:Picture tagging (Score:2, Informative)
I have found gallery to be very flexible, easy to use and easily upgraded. My siblings and their families use it regularly for our family site but it still has not passed the "Mom" test. Not that any other stage of the digital photo process has passed such a test either. So we have one touch scanning for her scanner and it e-mails the photos to me and we edit, and post for her.
We maintain a copy of the photos on our local server on our home LAN with a RAID array. We keep an untouched scanned version and an edited version. And our family site server is in a secure co-lo facility in Utah somewhere. I use rsync for mirroring the data.
Considering that our family is spread accross the world and in many different states, it is wonderful to have online images available. "Hey, look at our recent pictures from Hawaii." We get to see what everyone else is doing as well. There is no way we can all get together and pull out the photo albums anymore.
http://gallery.jacko.com [jacko.com]
T o Digitize (Score:5, Informative)
They work faster, better, and have some automation to them. Unfortunately, most 35mm negatives are chopped into blocks of four, but that will at least 1/4 your time spent monitoring the machine.
If you switched to the newer APS film, the negative scanner can run through the whole row.
Here [imaging-resource.com] is one that does both 35mm and APS. There are also other reviews on that site of different models.
Re:T o Digitize (Score:2)
I don't recommend this as an alternative for people who shoot B&W since color developing is a process, B&W developing is an art. Additionally developing and printing B&W is easier from a technical stand point if not an artistic one and the hardware involved is cheaper.
The other advantage to scanning a neg (Score:3, Informative)
Best bet for color accuracy and widest range of potential use is to scan the neg twice, once with as little adjustment in the scanner software as possible to keep and modify as needed later, then again, adjusting it to get the output you want right now.
As for organization software, I thought Canon Zoom Ex Browser was nice. Then I upgraded to OS X and iPhoto. Amazing.
Web-based galleries: Curator (Score:3, Informative)
I recently started scanning pictures with the intent of creating an HTML-based gallery on a CD that could be passed around.
The best gallery creator I found was Curator [sourceforge.net]. It takes directories of pictures and creates static HTML from arbitrarily-customizable templates. You can create description files for each picture and have them incorporated into the pages. The templates are written in a combination of HTML and Python.
Creating the templates takes some doing, but after that, everything's dead simple.
Re:Web-based galleries: Curator (Score:2)
Automated process required (Score:2)
Personally, I'm not ready to give up physical photos. I think they're the best presentation medium. Certainly the most universal. Most of the suggestions that people make for moving digital pictures in to the physical world don't result in the same quality of production.
What does it take to print a digital picture on photographic quality paper/card with a matte or gloss finish and comparable picture quality to tradition photos? How much does it cost?
Re:Automated process required (Score:2)
Uhm, $0.26 per picture for 4x6 at Walmart.com, and the prints are very good. I like them better than ophoto and a couple of other online printing places I've tried. I still have a nice inkjet (Epson Photo Stylus) which prints just as nice, because, even though more expensive to operate (paper and ink costs), the convenience of printing out a picture NOW is very nice. Disclaimer: inkjet prints will fade over time, keep 'em behind glass if you can, and definately keep the original files! At any rate, whether you print them on a good inkjet or have them printed at a commercial site like vendor, the prints will look every bit as good as "traditional photos".
Gimp (Score:2, Informative)
Also helpful are some of the scanner tutorials out on the web. My scans improved considerably after reading just one. I wish I had read it before I bought my scanner. I would have bought a different scanner if I had.
Epson Photo Paper/Printer (Score:5, Informative)
I prints photolab quality photos on Epson paper, with a advertised lifespan of 25 years. I have figured I can print digital photo's for much lower cost than at the local mall, although I don't know if it can compete with online printing.
I can print photo's directly from my compactflash cards, with previews of the photo on the LCD screen without intervention on a PC...pc doesn't even have to be hooked up. The LCD is a $99 addon. Amazon has the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX Inkjet Printer [amazon.com]
for about $190. I have been absolutely astounded by the quality of the output.
May be worth looking into.
-Pete
Re:Epson Photo Paper/Printer (Score:2, Insightful)
;/
Re:Epson Photo Paper/Printer (Score:2)
Yes it does, nevermind... (Score:2)
Re:Epson Photo Paper/Printer (Score:2)
Slide scanner (Score:2)
1. You get more of the information from the original medium - printing invariably loses some of the details, especially those done by instant photo places. Prints also fade in the light.
2. You get all of your images digitized - even ones for which you've lost prints.
3. You can continue to shoot slides, which offer better quality images that negatives. (Ultimately, its the eye behind the viewfinder that counts, not the equipment.)
"this arduous and possibly over-daunting task" (Score:2)
My wife an I have a Family History Project online: The Arbutus Project [internetgenealogy.com] (very slashdot susceptable! please go easy!). Try going here [internetgenealogy.com] to get to the picture index. We've collected genealogical data, as well as choice scanned photos from our own photo albums and that of family members. Audio interviews are just starting, and video is a few years away (my computer's too wimpy)
On of the really cool things is if you do have an indexing system for your whole family (something that comes with a genealogy project, but is a lot of baggage with just a photo project) is that all your families photos become seamless. You can see a photo album for yourself, or for your wife, or for your kids, or for your grandfather, with just a few mouse clicks.
Today's pictures aren't much better than 300dpi, and I've got an old Microtek E6 scanner (bought new, just before the prices dropped). I scan at 300dpi for new, higher for old (when pictures were much better resolution, try looking at them with a magnifying glass.) Try not to cringe if you happen to get those awful square early colour photos with the bumps or hexagonal cells from the 70's. Save 'em all as PNGs, store those to CD for later, then batch them all to a good web size for online viewing.
It is a LOT of work, and I'd suggest that you focus on only the select shots from your albums, perhaps just the best 10%. Most photos are junk anyways. You don't really really need that pic of the cute neighbour kid your grandad grew up with.
Expect it to take several months of work just to get the photos scanned and organized in any fashion.
Re:"this arduous and possibly over-daunting task" (Score:3, Insightful)
Photo paper (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, they've switched to digital in the lab. If you develop a 35mm roll, thye will scan it and print from the scanned images using their digital enlarger. The result, using a good 3.1 megapixel camera is indiscernible from traditionnal pictures for sizes up to 8x10.
Have a great 3 day week-end for the other fols up there. And the store is LLLozeau in Montreal, QC.
JP
Film and print life (Score:3, Informative)
If you're looking to make prints on an inkjet printer, be aware that MOST of the inks sold for inkjets will fade VERY quickly. Accidently leave them in the car on the passenger seat and they'll be totally washed out when you leave work. Several printers are starting to have archival inks, which when combined with archival paper will last as long as color prints and some will last longer.
Prints from digital are decent from places like ezprints.com, ofoto.com, adorama.com (my favorite), snapfish.com and others.
For people who normally would shoot 35mm or APS and get nothing but 4x6's and an occasional 5x7, the consumer digital cameras are a replacement. Not because 3 megapixel is equivalent to 35mm, but because most consumers don't take advantage of even the resolution that 35mm uses, much less medium or large format film.
I consider the storage and organization of a photo archive a sort of separate problem from web and print albums and photo sharing. An archiving solution will let you find a file or negative easily and make a decision based on some sort of thumbnail or contact sheet. From an archive, photos can be pulled to be shared in albums, sent in email, posted to a website, printed for framing etc.
Epson Photo printers, or LightJet prints (Score:2)
Epson Photo printers like the 1280 or 2000p give photo-quality output with longevity comparable to most color prints. I know a number of pro photographers (including me) that sell images output from these. A few people have had problems with color-shift due to ozone, but properly framed and cared for (e.g., not left hanging in the sun, same as with a regular photographic print) they will last.
For really important digital images, get a LightJet print. Starting with a digital image (whether scanned or pure digital), it uses lasers to expose the image on normal photographic paper like Fuji Crystal Archive. At that point it is a regular photographic print, with the same longevity. The process isn't cheap, though, but the quality is unbeatable. Some big-name pros sell their images only in this format.
One thing to consider though is that no color images have the longevity of those old B&W prints. For current photo albums, having digital copies of important images made *before* the images degrade is important -- they aren't going to last.
I wonder about the opposite: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wonder about the opposite: (Score:2, Insightful)
For pictures, JPEG and GIF. What determines if a standard survives is how open and widespread it is. ASCII is the ultimate example. It's 35 years old, still readable on any computer that an average person is likely to use (and virtually all other computers as well), and is in no danger of going away any time soon. I have no doubt that ASCII will be readable in 2025, and in 2125 as well.
As for JPEG and GIF, they're also very widespread and open. GIF is useless for photographs, so stick with JPEG and you'll be fine. When I digitized my pictures from a trip to Europe in 1997, I made up a simple HTML "album", with pictures and descriptions; it's just as viewable now as it was five years ago. And since HTML is just annotated ASCII, I seriously doubt it will become unviewable in my lifetime. Note that web browsers will display pages that are local files (i.e. not on the net), so setting up a local web server is not really necessary.
Re:I wonder about the opposite: (Score:2, Insightful)
"what digital format will still be readable in 25 years?"
Open formats will. Here's an idea: save your pictures in an open format and along with them the description of the format and some libraries that implement reading it.
Then, when formats change too much and you have trouble using your old pictures with moderm software, implement a tiny program that converts from the old format to a new, supported, open format.
Of course, if by then open formats will be illegal, you'll still be able to convert the old format to a raw one, and hope to find an application that supports raw pictures...
The most important factor (Score:2)
If your digital family album is not based on open standards (jpeg for example) it will be useless and completely lost in a much shorter time. There are plenty of "special" family album packages out there, that REQUIRE their viewer to see them.. nice now, but worthless in 95 years when that windows/intel X86 based software package is inserted in a Linux based Quantium computer (Yes linux will be around then... that's the beauty of having the blueprints!)
Me? I store everything as TIFF files. there is no encoding, no compression and a moron with a rock can figure out how to read/display that format.... That is for archival.. distruibution to family is Jpeg + simple HTML templates.. anyone can view them no matter what they own for a PC.
Archiving family photos digitally: cat-photo (Score:2)
1) Provide tools for increasing productivity in archiving digital photos, both scanned and those taken by digital cameras, together with descriptions and other information about the photo (-> use as little time per photo as possible).
2) Provides a well defined and easy readable file format that makes it easy to preserve photos (like family photos) for many decades (and still be compatible with future computer equipment).
3) Provides tools to publish photos (and associated textual information).
Today, there are Win32 tools, php tools, Linux commandline tools and java-based tools available from this project.
Currently, we seek java developers that are willing to help our java-based GUI productivity tool to reach a state where it can be released for the average end-user.
Dybdahl.
What To Do With Pictures After Digitizing? (Score:2, Insightful)
I just finished reading an interesting book that is somewhat related, called "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper" ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375726217/ [amazon.com] ).
The book discusses how libraries are "archiving" old newspapers and books using microfilm and, now, digital techniques. The problem is, in most cases, they are throwing away the originals which have some nice properties (they are more tactile, look better, etc.) because they got so excited about the new technology and were happy they didn't have to set aside space for the old materials. Of course, it turns out that most of the microfilm is deteriorating now, and the original digital versions are low resolution and on obsolete platforms.
While the book deals with archiving our collective paper-based history, some of the lessons in there are relevant to archiving your own personal photographic history. The biggest lesson--don't make the mistake of throwing away the originals because you have this fancy new digital version!
What are you saving them for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to sound too negative, but how important are your photos, really? Why are saving them? Who are you saving them for?
Unless you're really into it, don't worry about saving all your photos. In 100 years most of them won't be worth anything to anyone. Pick out the few that are most important or representative of your family and its history. Then, have archival prints made by a reputable service bureau and store them to archival or close to archival standards.
A family record can be an interesting thing. And, it can even be historically significant in some circumstances. But snapshots are mostly for people in them. Don't waste your time worrying about something so transient. Making moments in the here and now is more important than waxing nostalgic about the past.
Re:What are you saving them for? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a perfectly fair point of view, but people like you aren't the ones I'm archiving for. I'm making a small effort now to preserve the history of our family for those few people in our lineage 100 years from now who have an active sense of history and who understand, in a similar way to my own, the importance of not losing the past. In a similar vein, I praise the efforts of like-minded family members of mine who lived 100 years ago.
This is a process, and a job, handed down from generation to generation amongst people who understand the need for it. I fully expect that the majority of people in our family tree 100 years from now will have little more than a passing interest in my efforts. That's not what's important to me.
Re:What are you saving them for? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have
There we're pleanty taken , but they got lost, or were ruined by water/snow/rain/sun/dog/cat/sister/parents fill in the blank.
The whole point of pictures is that they capture a memory for you
There isn't a day i don't regret not having photos of my friends who are gone.
so - to answer your question, If i had to worry about what to pull out of a burning house, a box of photo albums, or my computer
[however
Electronic Age (Score:2)
Digital is King! (Score:2, Interesting)
There are several advantages to digital photos over 35mm:
1. Since my microdrive holds 800 photos and each digital photo has no real cost to me (besides a small amount of battery power), I will often take several photos of the same subject / scene whereas with a 35mm I might only take one photo because of the cost of film.
2. Before printing a digital photo, you have the opportunity to crop, enhance and edit it. While you can certainly crop, enhance and even edit 35mm photos, it takes far less time and money to do so with digital. I use Adobe Photoshop for this purpose. Besides providing tools to do simple enhancements, Photoshop also has many built-in filters (and more available third-party) which are a lot of fun to play with.
3. Digitial albums are extremely easy to organize. I use directories to create albums. I create a new folder under the "My Photos" folder for each new event. I use the naming convention "YYYY-MM-DD Event Name" for each subfolder, so it's easy to browse the albums in chronological order.
4. Digital photos are far more permanent than prints. Formats may change over time, but you'll always be able to convert to the new formats. The key is to keep copies of both the original photos AND the ones you've spent the time editing. I backup all my photos onto CD. While you only have one copy of a 35mm negative, you can easily create as many copis of your photos CDs as you like and share these with friends and family members or just store them for safekeeping.
5. Digital photos are much easier to share. I live a great distance from the rest of my family and use my photos to help stay in touch. When I first got my digital camera, I kept my online photos at zing.com. Unfortunately, they went the way of the dodo about a year ago. They made a deal with ophoto.com before unplugging and all my albums were transferred, but I didn't like ophoto's interface all that much and eventually found a new home for my photos at ImageStation [imagestation.com]. It's a free service and it's owned by Sony, so hopefully it will prove to have some staying power. If you're interested, please visit my photos [imagestation.com]. I have over a hundred albums online - I think this one [imagestation.com] is the best.
I also started digitizing my older 35mm and APS photos using a film scanner. A film scanner produces far better quality digital photos than a flatbed scanner does, so consider investing in one if you want to digitize / preserve your old photos. I can recommend the Canon CanoScan FS 2710 that I bought. It was inexpensive and besides producing much higher quality photos than a flatbed scanner, it's also a lot faster!
If you archive, DESCRIBE! (Score:2)
I had to go through my mother's estate a while back, and she had pictures from her mother. My maternal grandmother was born in 1900 - many of these pictures had no detail as to WHO these people were, or WHY they were important enough to photograph. It was really heartbreaking to look at these pictures and not know it they were important to anybody else in the family.
No matter how you archive your photos, do those who come after a favor - write date, place, and a description on the pictures. Be that in magic marker on the back of the print, laserprint in the album, an HTML file on the CDR, or a comment tag embedded in the PNG, do something to capture that context!
Personnally, I wish that my cameras could embed the GPS location on the print, in addition to the date and time as they do now - even better would be to have a flux-gate compass to get bearing data.
OK, so I may be a bit obsessive (I've spent over $300 in film and developing costs for a 2 day trip!).
And I concur with others - if you are serious, get a film scanner. I use a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II, which is a USB device and is supported by Vuescan under Linux. Then I Gimp the pics to clean them up, and save them as 3600x2400 24bpp PNGs.
One approach (Score:2)
I've got a lot of prints without negatives, for those I scan with a flatbed.
I always scan at the highest resolution, then I batch convert everything down to different resolutions, and archive everything with dates/keyword/etc. to a database using a PHP image gallery I wrote.
It's very time consuming, but nice to be able to find images so easily.
For digital prints, use online photo printing. (Score:3, Informative)
These services burn your digital image on to ordinary film paper [photoaccess.com] - the same stuff they use to make your prints from negatives in the lab. How do they do this? Instead of exposing the print paper to a darkroom enlarger with your negative in it, they scan the paper with a cathode ray tube (yea same technology as your monitor) and the results are actually better than a negative transfer because there isn't a second lens in the darkroom to distort and soften your image from the negative, the image goes from colored electrons to the paper directly.
as for reccomendations, I've had good service with all three, Ofoto and Shutterfly use Kodak professional and/or Kodak digital imaging paper (ofoto is owned by Kodak) and Photoaccess uses Fuji Crystal Archive paper, and also offers a beautiful matte finish paper that I use when I'm selling prints.
As for online photo display for the web, I would heartily reccomend Gallery, [jacko.com] which is a set of PHP scripts. I have modified this software to allow print sales of my photographs. Photoaccess and all the other companies have online sharing of albums themselves, but their interfaces are mostly terrible and the preview images are way too small and lossy. (they have to go small to handle the traffic, I don't blame them) so I have my own web galleries, but I print through them.
---Mike
Re:For digital prints, use online photo printing. (Score:3, Informative)
I still use inkjet for when I need instant prints (I have an Epson 1270 wide format 6 color printer) but I never ever sell them, because even when framed and sealed away from moving air, the 1270 prints won't last as long as photoaccess' prints on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper.
To learn about all the gotchas and get started with high end inkjet printing, check out the Epson Inkjet Mailing List on lebenlists, which actually looks like it's been migrated to a Yahoo group. [yahoo.com]
Accessibility (Score:3, Informative)
Better to shoot film and get Photo CD (Score:3, Informative)
Picture CD gives you 1.5 megabinary pixels of resolution, while a Photo CD gives you multiple resolutions on a single CD ranging from 24 kilobinary pixels to 6 megabinary pixels. Pro Photo CD has a maximum resolution of 24 megabinary pixels! And keep in mind that this is electronically scanned from the original negative or slide. One couldn't possibly hope to duplicate this at home.
Now, if you have existing prints for which you have no negatives or slides, then you need to scan at the highest resolution you can and store it in a non-lossy format, high bit-depth format. Note that this is for poor man's "archiving". If you just want to store a representation of the picture to use for printing or something, then you could use a low end compression algorithm like JPEG.
gallery (Score:3, Informative)
Done it (Score:3, Interesting)
Advantages - everyone has a copy of all the photographs, and digital images won't degrade. I'd strongly recommend it. And yes, provided oyu've got the negatives, negative scanners are better.
Here's how I did it... (Score:3, Informative)
I wrote my own software for managing the collection (creating viewable size pictures, thumbnails, etc.), and so far, the best way to organize them is in a directory structure like /YYYY/MM/DD/ so that you can get to any specific day easily, and since you usually don't have that many pictures for any specific day, it manages it quite nicely.
Biggest issue so far is space. I may be living in the past, but having some important directory take up 40% of a HUGE hard drive is kind of unsettling. Backups are also a pain, it takes many CD-Rs to store everything, and even with DVDs, it would still be a major pain requiring several DVDs.
The best parts are that you can easily share it with your family, just startup a web-server and have your family browse through the thing. You can also combine it with other media, for example, my collection has digitized home movies (MPEG format), files, etc.,
There is no worry about it outlasting technology, since I'm sure I'll move it over to the newer machines/technology as those become available. The family will maintain the whole collection. You also don't throw away (shread or burn) the originals, so in case something horrible does happen, you still have some physical backup.
Re:Gallery is some good software (Score:4, Interesting)
On physical longevity, here's some info based on testing by the manufacturers [cd-info.com]:
Well, great. Of course we have some photos in our family collection that are 120 years old, and could still make prints from the negatives. Are you sure the CDs will last that long?File format longevity is the real killer, though. I have quite a few 5.25" floppy disks with documents that were created in industry-leading formats in the mid-1980s. I would like to retrieve some of them, but I (a) haven't seen a 5.25" floppy drive in years (b) can't find any software that will read those formats. And that is only 17 years! Do you really trust your family's history to the idea that JPEGs, for example, will still be readable in 2102?
sPh
Re:Gallery is some good software (Score:2)
But I think the problem of being unable to read certain formats is minimal. For example, i'm in the process of converting a lot of my old VCR tapes over to DVD.
It's just a matter of maintenance. Really the only time you'd have an issue is if someone lost it, and it wasn't found for 100 years.
Re:Gallery is some good software (Score:2)
I wonder what all that JPG > PNG > JP2 > RSD > PP5 > O99 > QLQ conversion would do after 50 years of conversions... Better to go for lossless compression and not worry about it.
(and if file extensions are still 3 chars after 50 years, yes we can all collectively scream)
Re:Stop at PNG but include C source (Score:2)
Not a bad idea. Hell, while you're at it, while not include a copy of the C spec, the GCC source code and a copy of K&R and some other texts?
So how do you compile it? (Score:2)
Sure, why not? The source-code for jpegs is readily obtainable.
Even given that you store source code for libjpeg and libpng, do you really trust your family's history to the idea that C, for example, will still be readable in 2102? What about the Compact Disc format itself?
Re:Gallery is some good software (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but I think the relevant question here is, "what if you hadn't?"
Active maintenance of a data archive is all well and good in theory, but in practice it only takes one foul-up for huge swaths of data to become unreadable. Let's say that something tragic happens, like a war or something. My family's carefully maintained data archive-- about five DVD-ROMs worth, let's say-- gets stuffed in a shoebox and hauled across an ocean. It spends the next twenty years in an attic. Because of any of a number of possible outside factors beyond our control, the archive stays untouched while DVD-ROMs fade and some new technology evolves to replace them, until one day we find that nobody's building DVD-ROM readers any more. Poof. The family data archive is effectively lost forever.
Over a long enough time span-- like a century-- the likelihood of that one foul-up happening converges to certainty.
Analog media, on the other hand, doesn't have to be actively maintained. A photo from 1902 is still useful to me today, even though it has deteriorated over the century.
It's a trade-off. A digital archive is either perfect, or it's dust. An analog archive, on the other hand, can be mostly or partially recoverable for a long time without any human involvement.
Re:What about 10 years from now? (Score:3, Informative)
I guess the best thing you can do is *always* keep actual pictures, whether they are printed or developed. They don't have to always be organized. You can fit over a hundred pictures in a shoebox easily.
migrate when needed. (Score:2)
Re:What about 10 years from now? (Score:2)
I dont care what "the next big thing" is. it will be a really really long time before you see CDROM drives or drive capable of reading them disappear from store shelves and from common use. DVD isnt even out of it's infancy yet... when you see people commonly burning DVD's to move 4-5 meg files then it will be a mature technology... until then it's still just a toy for the rich.
burn to CD, and stop worrying for the next 15 years.... as long as you use standard file formats and filesystems.
Re:It can be a pain...but it's worth it (Score:2)
sPh
Re:It can be a pain...but it's worth it (Score:2)
sPh
Re:It can be a pain...but it's worth it (Score:3, Informative)
Should a fire, hurricane, etc. strike, they're gone
Absolutely. Digital format is less user-friendly for now, no doubt about it, but the point you raise is the single most important factor in why people should make digital backups of at least the most important photos.
Personally I'm currently digitizing some 500+ family photos going right back to the 1880s, all at 600 dpi (greater, for the small ones) in RGB format (then converted to LAB then grayscale for the B&W photos). Once the job is done I'll be burning them all onto sets of those Kodak archive-quality CDRs and distributing them to various cousins and other relatives spread all across North America. I anticipate having to switch the set over to new media about every ten years or so. With so many (say, four or five) extra copies of the complete set it shouldn't be a problem to reconstruct the archive even if a CD goes bad here and there. Call me paranoid, but I've even considered creating some kind of parity-CD system for recovery purposes (ala PAR files).
At the end of the day, I think making this kind of thing work requires that someone in your family commit to being a data archivist, and that this job does in fact get switched over to new individuals as the decades go by.
Re:Digital to Paper in Norway (Score:2)
Re:Converting to all-digital is a bad idea.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless your doing fine art photography a good ink jet should be more than sufficient and quite economical. Personally I still don't feel digital photography is ready for fine art shooting. That aside I'm considering adding the new Nikon D100 body to my arsenal to compliment my N90s, N70 and 6006.
Re:Converting to all-digital is a bad idea.. (Score:2)
Having just completed a course in (excruitiatingly difficult) Color Printmaking (the real/not digital stuff) and seeing full 11x14 prints coming off our G4 lab left me quite interested.
I'll probably never be able to get into a color printmaking lab, but spening $1500 for a good scanner and printer could allow me to keep myself in color photography.
Re:Converting to all-digital is a bad idea.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Get real pea-brain (Score:2)
Re:Get real pea-brain (Score:2)
Pretty much the same way "analog" photos do. The sun, exposure to "bad crap" in the air, crap from people's fingers. Oh, and not being in the stop bath long enough. Not being in rinse long enough. Print one of your digital photos, wait 10 years, and do it again, you will see a big difference. Wait 30 years, and you won't even need to print a new one, the old one will be very visabably faded.
That is for color. Black and white lasts a lot longer.
Re:Stick with the photo album (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus what happens if you scratch the photoalbum> Nothing! What happens if you accidently step on the album? Nothing? Drive over it? Nothing! Pull it out of the pool that you accidently dropped it onto? After drying it off-nothing! Try that with your cdroms or HD, and remember Murphy, he's got a crappy law that seems to come true too often.
I'm really confused here. Are you serious? Photographs can be easily destroyed. They can take more abuse than a CD-ROM or a hard drive, but it is trivial to make multiple copies of digital data. Digital data can be preserved in the event of a fire or even nuclear explosion. Digital data can not be stolen. Digital images can trivially be converted back to print.
Surely if you digitized years of family pictures, you would burn numerous CDs, for your own copy, as a backup, and ones that would be sent to family members across the world.
info I can pass along (very general) (Score:2)
For speed, there are very good digital cameras out there that cost a bit more than the 'equivelant' 35mm ones in which there is no noticable difference on speed. The trade off is one of mechanics however. You must have an enourmous amount of storage that can quickly and easily be switched out for the digital camera. (which I was told is not a big deal, but analog cameras have had the techniques of that problem brought down to a science)
About the quality, the answer was this: If you only view desktop (not computer) sized photos and smaller then you will never see a problem with the mid to high end digital cameras out on the market currently. However, while you can blow up the negative (from a good quality film/camera) to make very large pictures you are stuck with a rather low end for magnification on digital film. His solution was to take his best shots and store them on very high (and thus very large) resolution files and store those on any number of mediums.
Yeah, I know its not that helpful really but I hope it is a jumping off point for more information.