You have your entire family's LIFE in photos. SOMEWHERE.
Now lets get them all organized in just
ONE PLACE.
Scan Like a Pro
From Home
Our online video training course will teach even the most technologically-challenged person the basic steps for scanning their photos and documents.
Gain confidence to make all the right scanning choices.
I'm Curtis Bisel — the overly serious looking guy in the photo.
Since August 8th of 2001, I've been working to perfect a workflow to scan and organize my family's 10,000+ analog photo collection made up of prints, slides and various negatives.
From this website and my email list which I encourage you to sign up for, I release insights, tips, and best practices for doing the same with your own photo collection.
Organizing Originals
Scanning Photos
Storing Originals
Best methods how and where to store your original prints, slides and film negatives so they are archival safe.
Organizing Digitals
Learning how to label and organize your digital masters either manually in organized folders, or using the best photo managing software for your needs.
Restoring Digitals
Learning the easiest ways to bring your images back to life, by correcting shifted and faded colors, scratches and dust using your photo editing software of choice.
Backup Digitals
Bringing all of your original photos together in one place. And if desired, creating a suitable order for them before being scanned.
Popular Posts
Epson Scan 2 — Will It Work With My Scanner?
Epson quietly released a new version of their popular scanning software “Epson Scan” that comes bundled with their document and flatbed photo scanners. But, there's already been confusion as to which scanners and operating systems it supports. Could it be possible that “Epson Scan 2” won't even run in the latest versions of Microsoft Windows?
Epson V800 vs V850 — The 5 Differences and Which You Should Buy
So you’re ready to buy a very high-quality flatbed scanner to digitize your analog prints and film, but now you're having a hard time deciding between the Epson Perfection V800 Photo and the Epson Perfection V850 Pro Photo Scanners.
Whether you or an avid hobby photographer, a true professional, or just want to get all the quality you can out of your prints and film, either one of these models is going to give you exceptional results. But, I want to help you feel confident you're going to make the right choice.
Below, in plain English that will make it very easy to understand, I've written out and explained in detail, the 5 differences between the two models.
Are 99.9% of Your Photographs Just Not Important Enough To Save?
If this was your entire photo collection sitting in this trash can in the photo above, would this make you actually feel relief … or utter panic?
What if I added to this scenario. What if to the best of your knowledge, all of your photos sitting in the trash were already scanned and safely backed up on a couple of your hard drives.
Do you now feel relieved … or still utterly panicked?
From everyone I have talked to about this scenario, it seems safe for me to say that I believe the world is in somewhat of a divide whether it's actually okay to throw away your prints and slides once they have been scanned and digitally preserved.
And for some, hopefully not too many, I am sure they would say it's okay to throw away many if not most photos before they were scanned and preserved.
Yes. You heard me.
If You Don't Add This to the Filename of Your Scanned Photos, You'll Probably Hate Yourself Later
Whether you keep all of your scanned master (original) image files in folders on a hard drive, or you allow an image manager like Picasa, iPhoto or Aperture to manage them inside a library file, you will still be required to give each photo a filename.
It could be as simple and non-descriptive as “photo-1.jpg” or maybe even simple yet somewhat descriptive like “mom at the beach 1984.tif”.
But, it's actually a very important part of the process of scanning photos, that if done with a little bit of forethought, can save you a lot of time and headache later.
My Inspiring Photo Scanning Progress Report for April 2012
Welcome to my third monthly progress report!
Last month I covered two complete months of scanning, but I learned that was just too much to talk about!
So this time is only one month and it'll be a lot shorter.
What This Progress Report Is Really About:
Every month, I am posting a detailed report — just like this one — sharing with you how far I have come with my goal to scan and restore my entire 10,000+ family photo collection.
By doing so, I hope to inspire you to do the same!
In my first progress report, I set a goal for myself to do a little bit of work on my collection every single day. I shoot for about an hour a day which turns out to be about 30 scans a day. And I am going to record and detail each one of them so that you can learn from my transparency.
I don't want to be “that guy” — a guy that tells you how you should scan your own photos but then sends all of my own to a scanning service to do the work for me.
How Quickly You Could Scan Your Entire Photo Collection — What I Discovered From My First Week of Scanning
So you have a closet with boxes full of old prints and slides that you are dying to have scanned and neatly organized on your computer.
The problem is, you're worried about it either costing you way too much money to send it to a scanning service, or taking too much of your precious free time to scan them yourself on a flatbed scanner.
Does this sound EXACTLY like your dilemma?
I'd like to share with you my experience back scanning photos for the first week. If you want to make scanning your own photos fit into your busy and hectic life, I think my experience here might give you an idea how much time will be involved and how many photos you can easily get through.
The Best Way to Add a Description (Caption) to Your Scanned Photos
Ah, there's nothing quite like reading a great caption to go along with a special photograph. Sometimes they're so effective, they just seal the emotional experience of being there—as if you were right there when that photograph was taken—even if you weren't!
I think it's so important that you record these “priceless” descriptions as soon as you can. Some of us might think we can remember all of the details. But face it, you probably won't be able to. They're fleeting. And even if you could, you and your memory aren't going to be on this earth forever.
With prints, it was easy to record this information by writing the stories by hand on the back. But, now that we are wishing to move our prints, slides and negatives to a digital form in our computer, how do we easily add this information so that it can live with each master image file?
Use 1 of These Photo Managers If You Care About Your Photo Collection
It was seriously a life changing day when I discovered the magic of a “non-destructive” photo managing program.
With “non-destructive” editing, all of the edits (enhancements) you make to your photographs are managed by the program itself. Your original photo remains untouched. It's like having a guardian angel that protects your master images at all costs. It's brilliant and is 100% absolutely indispensable to me now.
What Everybody Ought to Know When Naming Your Scanned Photos – Part 1
As my own scanned photo collection grows, it has really become obvious to me how thankful I am for the added attention I have been putting into the filenames I give to all of my scanned images.
When you're scanning, it’s really easy to get into a “robotic” mindset where you are just trying to scan as many photos as possible in a sitting. So when you get to that blank field each time that asks you to type in a name for the file, it's tempting to just quickly bang out a few descriptive words with little thought to how useful they will be to anyone later.
The DPI You Should Be Scanning Your Paper Photographs
One of the most important decisions you face when scanning anything with your scanner is choosing what dpi (“dots per inch”) to scan with. And specifically for this post, what is the best dpi to use when scanning and archiving your 8×10″ and smaller paper photographic prints – which for most people, make up the majority of our pre-digital collection.
Making this decision was very challenging for me and certainly a huge part of my 8 year delay. The reason for this is that dpi is the critical variable in a fairly simple mathematical equation that will determine several important outcomes for your digital images.
How I'm Bringing Order to Chaos By Scanning and Organizing My Photo Collection
I have always held onto things that memorialized moments of my life. Ever since I was a little kid, I would make sure to carefully store my grade school class pictures or baseball team pictures. They were important to me then and I knew that I should keep them safe. It took a few years for me to realize what service I had done myself by not letting these precious items get lost or thrown away. They are utterly priceless to me now.
Epson Scan 2 — Will It Work With My Scanner?
Epson quietly released a new version of their popular scanning software “Epson Scan” that comes bundled with their document and flatbed photo scanners. But, there's already been confusion as to which scanners and operating systems it supports. Could it be possible that “Epson Scan 2” won't even run in the latest versions of Microsoft Windows?
You are an absolute lifesaver!!! I cannot thank you enough for posting this solution. I had ‘lost’ ALL of my photos dating back to 2001 until 15 seconds ago!!
I have been searching everywhere (including more ‘iPhoto recovery software packages’ than you can imagine!!) for the last 3 years, basically I had given up finding them until today when I need to transfer my files to my new MacBook.
Everything has been restored and you have saved me from losing the memories from the last 13 years … If I could hug you I would! THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!
What you are contributing to the photography community with your membership is unique. I hope you feel good about that and are energized, knowing you are helping people achieve goals. God bless!
Curtis, thanks for all you do to make learning all of this possible!!
I have now been scanning my old photos actively for about 2-3 weeks. And I'm happy to report that with your guidance I have managed to scan over 400 paper prints already! It seemed such a daunting task but after learning the basics from your videos, it's been pretty smooth sailing.
Your training course videos are, by the way, very professional and easy to follow! So huge credit to you in putting the effort in making these!
AHHH! THANK YOU SO MUCH! I’ve been trying to recover my ‘lost' photos for almost a year now. I’ve read many ‘fix-it' strategies on other websites, but this is the first one that actually FOUND my photos!
My story is that I'm 57 and most of my life is analog. It's time to save it all from fading away, else my kids will not know where they come from.
Yours is truly an interesting, readable, and useful blog. Congratulations on it. It has almost kicked my butt enough to start my own blog.
Your site is GENIUS. Your approaches are the most thorough I have seen. Thank you for this invaluable information.
I am so elated I found this 3-part series of assist articles before continuing the scanning process for my family. I am easily becoming the family ‘Archivist’ at this rate, and I have only just begun the scanning process.
Thanks for the process review, I needed it, and will likely use a similar naming method. (I’m only about 130 photos into the fray, too.)
I love your website, and find it incredibly useful!!
I have a constant annoying worry, that I might lose every picture I have taken…they are the story of my life and my 4 daughter's life too.
I am 74, a former Air Force (AF) pilot, and only recently got my first camera, so I never captured most of my life on film.
Consequently, I have begun seeking photos from my past to digitize and I have managed to solicit some images by email from AF friends that document our careers in the Air Force. I recently visited my sister and convinced her to relinquish most of her print albums and loose prints and negatives.
Curtis, I read nearly all your posts at least twice if not three times. I learn more each time I read them. You are doing ground breaking work never done before. Maybe one day there will be a standardized naming convention called the ‘Bisel Standard'.
You give us all the incentive to overcome that inertia that prevents us from ever tackling a complicated task such as this. I'm better for having discovered your web site. Thank you again.
Dear Curtis, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I thought I had lost all my photos – but with your help, it was really simple to get them back into my iPhoto! Thanks again!
I want to thank you for putting up this AWESOME website! Seriously, a lot of your archiving tips really helped me out.
You are an absolute lifesaver!!! I cannot thank you enough for posting this solution. I had ‘lost’ ALL of my photos dating back to 2001 until 15 seconds ago!!
I have been searching everywhere (including more ‘iPhoto recovery software packages’ than you can imagine!!) for the last 3 years, basically I had given up finding them until today when I need to transfer my files to my new MacBook.
Everything has been restored and you have saved me from losing the memories from the last 13 years … If I could hug you I would! THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!
I am so thankful to have come across your website. I considered buying a scanner about 2 years ago but the more I read the more difficult it seemed to be able to scan my old print photos.
I know so much more now thanks to your website and emails. Thank you so much for your time and the energy you put into your blogs etc to help people like me.
I was at the Apple Store meeting with the Mac Genius and he told me how to create a new [iPhoto] library but not how to look and see the old one! I panicked when I couldn't find it. Luckily people like you have the answers on line.
Your presentation was professional, educational and precise. Thank you so much!
I would like to compliment you on your website. It provides a lot of useful information all in one place. Great Job!
You are the most genuinely humble person I have come across in a very long time… your website is a blessed OASIS to those of us who are panic stricken as we face 1000s of family photos that need archiving.
I am amazed by your benevolent spirit and the gift of the time you take to give us precise details as you empower us to tackle these overwhelming photo collections with a wonderful master plan!
You are a very, very generous man… I don't think you realize the impact you have on so many of us who want to properly honor our family legacies. Thank you.
I've learned a ton from watching your excellent videos. Your videos gave me courage and motivation to start the huge project I have been putting off because of not knowing where to start. So THANK YOU so much!
Thank you so much for putting this membership course together! I am currently spending time with my parents and grandmother due to COVID. I have a rare opportunity to scan their photos – and then review the photos with them and capture the stories. But I found starting the project overwhelming – I couldn't even decide on a scanner.
I put it off for 4 months until I found your website. You gave me the map that made the project doable! I now have all the tools (including an Epson v600) and have started the journey!
In 6 days I've set up my scanner, watched the course videos, developed my workflow (though I am still making adjustments), and scanned 76 photos. (Well, I've made hundreds of scans – but I restarted the project after tweaking my approach.)
In fact, I so appreciated the Course and your above-and-beyond assistance in the forums, that I upgraded my membership to annual. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I cannot thank you enough!
