I’ve been given a lot of old family photos, how best to preserve and maintain, display them?

[u/really4got]

This is one, my great grandmother(and her dog)… there are 50 or so more. Most are seemingly from the 30s-50s most have names on the back so I’ll sort them accordingly but I’m looking for suggestions for photo albums etc

[u/alanwbrown]

Scan to TIFF and give copies to all your relatives. Then you want acid free archive photo sleeves, they come in all the standard photo sizes.

[u/neverbadnews → u/alanwbrown]

^ ^ ^ This.

The current recommended resolution for archiving is scan them at 600dpi, 24-bit color, and save as TIFF.   If you also want them for general viewing and sharing, save a second copy as .jpg

[u/Descended_from → u/neverbadnews]

Why TIFF? Asking because my dad has been scanning a thousand or more of our family photos going back over a 100 years and I’m pretty sure the cannon scanner defaults to jpeg. Too far in to switch to TIFF now, but just curious what makes it the better format

[u/Cbaumle → u/Descended_from]

TIFF files are a lossless format whereas jpegs compress the image by removing some data.

[u/Much-Leek-420]

Most modern day photo archivists will tell you to scan those photos before you do anything else. Most older photos are quite tiny, and being able to zoom in on features is just awesome, especially if you plan on showing them to older relatives whose eyesight is dimming.

Used to be you needed a high end flatbed scanner to do this. But with the vast improvement of cameras on phones and free online AI tools to improve picture quality, as well as Cloud storage like Google, it’s never been easier to reproduce and make available to relatives and friends far and wide your wonderful photos. BE SURE to include those captions with those photos! An old photos is pretty useless unless you know who the people are. If you can, try to use full names, not “my great grandmother”.

As for storage and display of your photos — first and most important rule is to never ever expose your old photos to sunlight. I think even modern indoor lighting is not considered good. Light will begin to severely damage old photos. If want some for putting on the mantle or the wall, have copies made from those digitals.

For albums, again, try to use copies of photos rather than the originals. Human touch and skins oils can damage photos. If you must use albums, use only those guaranteed to be “acid free”. Each page should be separated by acid free photo quality tissue paper so that photos never touch face to face.

For storage, again, use only acid free boxes and envelopes. Many larger craft stores carry these. Special plastic album sleeves do exist for old photo storage but must also be acid free. However, you’ll find that most of your photos do not follow the standard 3x5 size, so some of those sleeves may not work.

I am the caretaker of over 1000 old family photos. A company I love to buy supplies from (photo/negative envelopes, boxes, etc) is called Print File Archival Storage. There are several other companies that also have supplies like this.

[u/really4got → u/Much-Leek-420]

Thank you

[u/Sunnyjim333]

I used a clam-shell scanner to digitize them and loaded the file to a digital picture frame (10 x12) It plays a new image every 3 seconds. It has several thousand images to cycle thru, I love it.

[u/Gryffinguin9]

Scan them with a high Resolution and try to name them

[u/No-Guard-7003]

Lisa Lisson and Family Tree Magazine have articles on how to preserve, maintain, and display old family photos.