I had some pictures that have all of my girls in them. I wasn't sure which child to give the original copy. I wanted them all to have a copy but didn't and still don't have the time to "scrap" them.
The other day, I went to WalMart to scan some items from my mothers life and took the piles of family photos that I have been holding so I could "scrap" them and color copy them and give them to each girl.
I had my oldest come with me and she worked on scanning the family photos and I worked on scanning all the newspaper articles and photos of my mothers life. It doesn't begin to touch all that my mother has but I had pulled out a few things from each "pile" so I had a good covering for a few main years.
We went to WalMart and they have 3 scanning "booths" and two other machines to order from different media. We were there for over 3 hours scanning and cropping the photos. I liked that they had the program to scan many items at the same time and it for the most part captured them and we just had to flip and sometimes move a border and it would save them and then put them all on a disc.
I used one machine and she another. She scanned almost 600 family photos while I scanned almost 200 photos and news articles. Here is my favorite part. It burnt them all onto a cd and gave us thumbnails all for $3.15 each disc. Now, all our family photos before we owned a digital camera are on one disc.
The next day after going and picked up the discs, (we had to order them because it closed while we were still working on scanning.) I had the thought, "If the house went, flooded, burned or after they move out and something happens to their scrapbooks, we have nothing."
So, I thought to myself, if we take down each girls photos/albums and scan each girls stuff onto its own disc, we will have all the photos we would need for a wedding album, etc on one disc. Then, I can put them all onto our backup drive that I store off site and if anything happens to our computer, back up drive, etc, we will still have all their pictures available from their life. All for $3.15.
We are going to go down this week hopefully and get started on my eldest daughters albums and take down the pages that she has already scrapbooked and get those scanned also.
I can't tell you how many times I wanted to add photos about something I was blogging about but didn't want to take the time to go sorting through their bins and albums looking for it just to have to scan it etc. This way, I will load them all onto the back up drive and I can search and pull them out easily.
I think I am grateful that WalMart is in town and that they don't charge for scanning. If you are going to do this, take a clean t-shirt rag to clean the scanner every few scans as your fingers leave oil marks which can mar the photos or scans.
Try going early in the morning rather than after school or after work hours /evening when the scanners and photo booths will be busy. Make friends with the workers and they will help you figure things out. Lastly, take a few sheets of white printer paper so if you are scanning something smaller, you don't get the top of the scanner in the shot as it makes you have to "crop" the items.
Some people said they would rather scan at home but that leaves one person doing it. If you go to Walmart on a slow morning, you can have three scanning 5-6 photos at a time. It goes VERY quickly compared to doing it at home. Plus, if anything goes wrong, Walmart can reprint your order. They ended up printing mine again as we thought there were two Cd's on one order and 4 on the other when they all actually fit onto one CD. So, I ended up getting a copy CD for free with the thumbnails so I can share the CD of my mom's stuff with my sister. Another thing to be Grateful for in my life!
I am looking forward to being able to post more "older" photos soon.
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