Do you have trunks in attics full of loose photos, photo albums, and other
scrapbooks? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the process of scanning each image?
There is NO NEED to feel overwhelmed. Instead,
invest in your sanity and your family archive by outsourcing the job today!
Howdy, welcome to Family History Fanatics. If you are new here, my name is Devon Noel Lee,
and I love helping people find meaning and connections through their family trees.
And while I am a frugal genealogist. I do have some advice on when it's time
to let somebody else give you a hand. Often do-it-yourself projects are less
expensive than hiring a professional. This is not one of those times.
You will either pay with your time or your pocketbook.
With experience, it can take about 5 minutes to scan and correct a single high-resolution image.
If you have a collection of 500 images, it will take about 41 hours to digitize all of the photos.
If you have a collection of 1000 images, it may take 83 hours.
While there may be some times saved by scanning multiple images. you still
have to deal with the correction, tagging, and splitting of those images at the end.
Digitizing slides and negatives may take longer,
depending on how much you spend on the appropriate scanner.
Do you have two solid weeks of free time to digitize your images?
Consider your expenditure of time as a cost. Because it is!
Some photo scanning services charge about $0.45 per image to scan 500 photos at standard
resolution. That amounts to $225. Their costs may be higher for picture touch-up services.
Be aware that some services, which I’ll mention later in this video,
may charge $0.65 per image, which increases the cost by about $100, for a total of $325.
And that sounds like a lot of money. However, if you earned minimum wage
($12 in New Mexico), your time to scan and correct 500 images is equal to about $492.
While that's a cost that doesn't appear in your bank account,
this is an intangible value of your time. We also haven't calculated the time spent
researching scanners and learning how to use the technology.
Add to the intangible cost,
the expense of a quality digital scanner which ranges from $100-1,200.
You'll also need to purchase a quality photo editing program to touch up,
organize, and add metadata to your images. I use Photoshop Elements,
and it costs around $69-100, depending on whether it's on sale.
Now you could use a free program but remember, free doesn't always equal quality.
The actual outlay of dollars to scan 500 photos yourself could start at $150.
If your photo scanning service is $225 - 325 for 500 images, DIY costs may seem like a money saver.
However, you have to factor in the cost of you spending over
40 hours scanning rather than doing other genealogy or preservation-related tasks!
Additionally, there is the intangible cost consideration that scanning
companies often do a better job processing your images than you.
The technicians have the training and more hours of experience than you or I could ever
gather from our home collections. They put that experience to work, and you reap the benefits.
Soon, the question of expense tips in favor of the scanning companies.
Also, do not forget how much overwhelm you'll reduce by having someone else
do the tendinous job of scanning images. Saving your sanity has an
unquantifiable cost you should also factor into your decision.
While digitization companies offer an amazing service,
your costs will increase unnecessarily unless you do the following.
The best cost savings comes from doing batches of photos. In other words, submitting 500
photos at once is more cost-effective than submitting 5 groups of 100 photos.
Additionally, you’ll spend more if you have to send additional photos or photobooks that you
forgot you had in an attic or other hidey-hole. So the first step to saving money is to gather all
of the photo objects together in one location. If you send a disorganized batch of photos,
you will receive a disorganized digital image library in return. Thus,
you'll waste more time sorting your photos on your computer than you'd likely wish to spend.
Instead, organize your photos BEFORE you send them to the service.
Photograph your photo album pages (so you can remember arrangements later, which
might have genealogical clues that you need.) Carefully remove the photos from albums and
scrapbooks whenever possible. (Loose photos cost less to ship and scan than albums). Now
you know why it's important to do the first step of photographing those photo album pages.
Initially, sort loose photos smaller than 5x7 by year and then decade. Set larger photos aside.
Then sort the photos by months and events within a month (or across months).
If a photo doesn't fit, create categories as needed.
If the photo is unidentified, set it aside until all photos are arranged.
Attempt to place the picture in the chronological arrangement of photos.
If you still can't identify the photo, set it aside. You can create a scan yourself later
if you figure out the person's identity. Don't spend money digitizing unidentifiable images.
Now wepending on your collection, you can further organize photos by family unit or surnames.
There is no sense in digitizing photos that aren't worth preserving.
These include extremely blurry or damaged photos, duplicates,
photos where a finger is covering most of the important features in the photo, and so on.
Remove such photos from your collection.
For those slightly blurry photos or those needing a small touch-up,
make a note of those images and pull them out of the chronological arrangement.
You'll send notes to the service company about
your photo restoration needs when you submit those images.
Now hopefully, I have encouraged you to consider outsourcing your photos,
and I've taught you a few tips for how to save money.
Now let's talk about what services will be beneficial for you.
Many companies have digitization services. Several of these are featured annually at
the RootsTech conference or other genealogy conferences.
In other words, they work for and with genealogists regularly.
Larsen Digital can digitize your photos, audio cassette tapes, and various other media. They
have offices in Sandy and Bountiful, Utah. And they have been a long-time supporter of RootsTech.
If you have listed on the ExtremeGenes radio podcast, then you will know about Tom Perry
at TMC. They have a la carte services covering photos, slides, negatives, films, audio formats,
and more. If you don’t live in Springville or Spanish Fork, UT, they will also refer you to
high-quality digitization services near your home. With Legacybox, you fill a box with items you
want to have digitized and mail it in. Legacybox processes your items and sends an archival DVD or
an optional thumb drive for your storage items. There are additional scanning services that
I'm unfamiliar with but are popular in the photo scanning services space. Check out this post, Best
Photo Scanning Services, for additional options. You no longer need to stress out about digitizing
your family history. Organize your material and outsource it.
Better yet, ask extended family members to chip in for the project or collect
donations at a family reunion. You can even request this service for a birthday,
anniversary, or Christmas present. After you have digitized your family
history, you are well on your way to Downsizing With Family History in Mind.
Now it's time for you to tell me what you think about outsizing these services.
Have you used one?
What is one that you recommend? Let me know in the comment section.
Then like this video and leave a comment. Your feedback is important to keep Family History
Fanatics on YouTube. Now, back to learning the next valuable genealogy research tip right here.
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