I daresay that all of us have numerous photos that have been around for years. Some are becoming yellowed and are deteriorating more each year. I, myself, attempting to be an amateur photographer years past, have accumulated an immense amount of photos. Starting with the old reliable "Brownie" camera, which did a pretty good job for its time, and gradually using better equipment that allowed sharper focusing and better depth of field. Then on to the development of color photography and through the lens metering with electric eyes, we were rewarded with a much better end product.

So we've taken all these mementos of our families, children and friends through many occasions and holidays as the years passed and carefully sorted, segregated and preserved them in photo albums. But time and humidity has taken its toll and the realization occurs that we cannot preserve these forever. Then we are faced with the specter that after we are gone, what we have treasured might not be treated with the same care. Also, there is always the possibility of tragedies happening. This comes to mind when we see the homes that were lost in California this past year during a disastrous forest fire. It is very doubtful that these poor residents were able to save all their photos and mementos when they had to evacuate. Others have lost everything to floods. An incident that has always stuck in my memory is of a fellow worker who became very despondent one day. Upon asking what was wrong, she informed me that she had to pick her parents up at the airport as they returned from a vacation in Europe. But the kicker was, that she had to inform them that while they were gone, their house burned completely, leaving nothing to be salvaged. Lost was every photo in their possession, plus all their other mementos.

Today however, computer technology has given us a surefire method to preserve these photos and other important documents. Scanning is a fairly easy operation to perform. A familiarization with the scanner and its accompanying software will not take much effort and then the procedures to begin preserving your photos and documents can begin.

The scanner that I used is the Visioneer One-Touch purchased some time ago for $149.00 Today the price is about $80.00. I have found this unit to be very easy to use and quite satisfactory. It came with Paperport software, which makes the task easy to accomplish. The scan window will offer a few settings to be made. First of all, the scan mode and resolution has to be set.

The first rule of scanning is that the resolution is determined by the final output. If a scan is to be printed out, then the requirements of the printer will determine the scanning resolution. However, if you are scanning only to archive, then output determination can be set aside. Using archiving as your end result, then other parameters can be undertaken. Assuming we start with our oldest black and white photos, the mode should be set to Gray Scale, and the resolution to 75 or 100 dpi (dots per inch). The main idea is to have the scan so it looks good on the monitor and keeps the file to a moderate size. The larger the file, the longer it will take to move through your system after scanning.

For colored pictures, an appropriate resolution would be 100 dpi to 150 dpi. Colored prints stop yielding additional data at about 200 dpi. Scanning at a higher figure will produce a larger file but not more detail. Doug Gennetten is the engineer with HP Home Imaging Division who did the HP PhotoSmart printer and scanner introduction. At this event, he posted a message on the web that among other things said that 200 dpi is the maximum resolution you need if your original is a normal silver halide color print.

After scanning, the file can be sent to a graphic application, usually through a link on the Paperport screen. I currently have 3 graphic applications with links on the Paperport screen. They are MGI Photo Suite 4, Microsoft Picture It 99, and Photoshop L. E. (limited Edition). I have found that Photo Suite 4 is the one that I prefer to work with. It makes easy work of the tasks required. You start by cropping the photo to size. Many times I will scan 4 or more, whatever will fit on the scan glass, then crop them apart one at a time. This saves scanning time and reduces the number of scans. After cropping, necessary tasks can be performed, such as adjusting brightness and contrast, (I am able to improve 90 per cent of these old photos), removing red eye, removing creases and unwanted blemishes. More complicated exercises such as cloning and removing unwanted persons or objects can also be accomplished.

All of these small graphic applications can handle all of these things. Also Corel Draw and Adobe Photoshop will do an excellent job on all these procedures. However, that's a bit of overkill as these programs are large and expensive, and are used for much more demanding applications.

Finally, the pictures are finished and ready for labeling. It is a good idea before starting labeling to give some thought how to identify many pictures. Set up some sort of system that will allow you to recall what each picture is about when viewing its description. As you get into the hundreds, this becomes a daunting task, as no two titles can be alike. A good way is to set up a set of folders that will allow sorting of pictures into various family groups or time line designations. I know. I scanned a total of about 5000 photos so far and was very careful to put them in the correct folders as I went along.

The last description that has to be applied to the photo is the format that it will be saved as. For general purposes, there are 3 or 4 common file formats, and for the home scanner type, these will be sufficient. They are TIFF, JPEG, GIF AND PNG.

TIFF - Tag Image File format
TIFF has been a format of choice for use for master copies of images for several years. Not the only one, but a good one. TIFF format was developed by Aldus, before Adobe bought them, and is the most widely supported format across other platforms, PC, Max, Unix, etc. TIFF writes a large file, and it optionally uses lossless compression meaning there are no quality losses. Ideal for important master images. If you might modify and save the file a second time, then use a non-Iossy format like TIFF. TIFF files are large, but it's the price we pay, it's how large the data is.

JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
This is easily the best format for scanned photographs to be used on web sites, or for sending your photographic images in e-mail, because the file is wonderfully small, often compressed to only 1/10 or 1/15 size, which is very kind to modems. However, this fantastic compression efficiency comes with a high price. JPEG uses a lossy compression (Lossy meaning "with losses"). Lossy means that some quality is lost when the JPEG data is compressed and saved, and this quality can never be recovered. Even worse, more quality is lost every time the JPEG file is compressed and saved again, so even editing a JPEG image is a questionable decision. JPG discards image pixel data that is inconvenient for its compression method, allowing phenomenal size results. This "lost data" is seen as lost purity, or lost integrity due to mild corruption of the data, rather like added noise. There is no magic answer providing both high compression and high quality, but some quality losses are acceptable for some purposes.

GIF - Graphic Interchange Format
This is an older format developed by CompuServe, and it was fantastic in its day, with relatively small LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch, same compression as used for PKZIP) compressed file sizes (but nothing like JPEG's small size). However, GIF is limited to only 256 colors, a great match for the older 8 bit video boards, and for graphics, but which makes it poorly suited today for 24 bit photographic images. The file is also large if used for photographic images, as compared to 24 bit JPEG. And GIF files do not store the images scaled resolution dpi value, making scaling necessary every time the file is printed. GIF uses lossless compression like TIFF. JPEG is much better for 24 bit photographic images, and the JPEG file is very much smaller too (although lossy)

PNG- Portable Network Graphics
PNG was intended to be the replacement for GIF, due to LZW patent problems, and due to GIF being limited to only 256 colors. PNG was designed with the advantage of knowing all that went before. PNG supports 24 and 48 bit color with an awesome set of technical specifications and features, sort of the modern universal "be all, end all" of file formats, including superior lossless compression. The PNG basic compression is called the ZIP method, and is like the "deflate" method in PKZIP, but the big deal is that PNG also incorporates special preprocessing filters that greatly improve the compression efficiency, especially for typical gradient data often found in 24 bit photographic images. PNG may be of great interest for us today, because it is lossless compression well suited for master copy data, and because PNG is noticeably smaller than LZW TIFF. Looks like about 30% smaller than TIFF LZW for 24 bit files, and is about 10% to 30% smaller than 8 bit GIF files. Web browsers Netscape and Internet Explorer at first did not support PNG on WEB pages, but they now include support for PNG files on web pages and it might become popular, not to replace JPEG, but to replace GIF. Most image programs like Photo Impact, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro support PNG, so compatibility transferring files is probably not an issue.

I have picked PNG for saving all my pictures. I have no need to print any of them out and am only interested in archiving them. I feel that in the future, if these need to be reworked or printed out, then the PNG format will work out just fine. I also use the ACDSee program to save my folders with corresponding pictures in them. This program allows me to use thumbnail display and to make the thumbnails any size that I want. By making them small enough, I am able to view 40 photos at one time on the desktop. This is helpful in sorting and rearranging.

When I accumulate 650 MB of photos, I transfer then to a CD-R. Then it is a simple matter to duplicate the CD and make as many copies as I want. At this point, I can give a copy to everyone in my family. This makes the selection of photos available to all interested persons and assures that the pictures will never be lost due to any one incident. So far, I have scanned and put on one CD, 1900 photos, many of them black and whites. On the second CD, I have 1100 photos. I estimate that I am about 70% finished with all my photos. Then I will undertake to do the same with about 3000 slides that I have. That, however, will not be as easy, as I will have to see about acquiring a slide scanner.

I have also started to scan all my important documents and put then all in one separate folder. I got the idea about a year ago, when I could not find some very important papers, most notably my college degrees. I sweated about three months and really turned things upside down, and lo and behold, there they were in a very "safe place". At that point, I decided to scan every paper that meant anything. I dragged out all the birth certificates, my children's school and college records, military discharge papers, and anything else that I didn't want to have to search for again. Scanning text is much simpler than photos. You scan at line art mode. On some scanners, the designation is Editing text (OCR) Using this instead of Gray Scale will make the file about 8 times smaller. This should be scanned at 300 dpi. After scanning, the software can perform the "Edit for Text" operation. At that point, it can be transferred to a text program. There you can delete parts if necessary, label it and save it as a PNG file. I have done this with all my papers and put them into a folder that I named "Certificates" I now rest easy, and, of course, that folder of originals is always underfoot. I'll have to find another "safe place" to keep it.

Richard T. Robusto
Las Vegas PC Users Group
Southern Nevada Users Group
ricmar2@cox.net

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This article is © by Mr. Richard Robusto. Published by permission.

Date Revised: 23 December 2003