Are you someone who is just itching to have your entire photo collection converted to digital images on your computer? I mean, you know you want to do it – badly. You know you should be doing it – you can see all of your aging photos over there in a few boxes in the hall closet. But there's just something holding you back.
Shipping envelope full of loose prints I brought home from my parents' to scan
I wanna take a guess and say if it's not a lack of enthusiasm, what you could be experiencing is frustration trying to imagine how you could ever get all of your original prints and negatives chronologically organized and in one place at the same time.
It's sort of like cooking. For those who still practice the seemingly lost art – how often do you start cooking without already having all of the ingredients? Very seldom I imagine.
We are creatures who like to complete all of one step before moving on to the next. For example we mow all of our front yard before starting on the back and we put on both socks before putting on a shoe.
So it makes sense that for many of us, the thought of not gathering up every single last one of our photographs first (from every closet and every relative), then organizing them (e.g. sorting by date or events), followed lastly by the process of scanning, seems illogical, inefficient or maybe even flat out impossible.
Just Start Scanning
But what's great about digitizing your photo collection is that you don't have to be so structured. Make it fun. Like digital video recorders allow you to watch television on your own schedule, image managers of today (like Picasa and iPhoto) allow you to work through your collection at your own pace and in your own way.
Whether you know it or not, you actually have three choices – not just one. You can:
Organize before you scan
All done by hand with prints and negatives probably spread across your dining room table
Organize while you scan
Some done by hand and some done on your computer
Organize after you scan
Little to none done by hand and almost all of it done on your computer
Any of these methods will work. But just know that trying to do all of the sorting in the beginning puts a tremendous amount of work – not to mention pressure – for you upfront before you even scan your first picture. It could easily paralyze even the most passionate person from getting started digitizing their collection.
That would be such a shame if you had a feeling of defeat before you really even got started. But you know, once you get into it, moving pictures around in your image manager is not only really easy, but it's also very freeing. It gives you the ability to leverage time by getting the scanning process done quicker.
I say… just get them in your computer, broadly sorting as you go, and finely sorting them later when it's convenient and fun for you.
My Own Experience
I personally have been scanning completely out of any kind of rational order. This is not only by choice, but also out of necessity.
(Left) My entire collection of photos that I currently have to scan at my house. (Right) A bin full of albums I haven't scanned yet stowed away in Kentucky.
My parents live in Kentucky and I am way out here in sunny California. My parents have most of the family collection safe with them. I describe it as “comfortingly inconvenient” for the purposes of my workflow.
When I visit them, I return west with shipping envelopes or nice sturdy shopping mall bags full of pictures. I am still just not comfortable shipping any of our photos through the mail. I know, I know – but insurance won't replace the irreplaceable. And to take it a step further, I don't even let the airlines check them in with my bags. To date I have only brought home with me what would fit in carry-on bags.
So I am without any sort of a complete collection. When I feel like a scanning session, I grab an album full of prints I brought home or an envelope stuffed with loose photos and start scanning.
What's cool is once I type in the date the photo was taken using my 3-part filenaming formula, all of these newly scanned photos in my favorite image manager “Aperture” (“Lightroom” if I were using Windows) suddenly line up chronologically and by event.
For me, this method is so much easier than the time and madness required to have my entire collection physically in one place and in chronological order before scanning. Of course, I still want to organize my original prints and negatives. But by doing it this way, I am free to do it at a slower pace knowing that all of them are safely digitized and backed up for the future.
A project folder full of photos from my latest scanning session. The only order in this batch was most of them were taken in the 1970's. (Aperture 3)
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16 Comments on "Is Organization Preventing You From Starting to Scan Your Photo Collection?"
Thank you for your article on filenames. It’s given me the confidence to start into that jumble of photos in my closet.
I’ve inherited a large number of my parents’ photos. Most of these are out of any order and are literally envelopes full of prints (many of random print sizes). I’ve been scanning them in the order I find them, but then also archiving the original prints in that random order. I bought a large number of archive quality photo storage wallets from http://www.arrowfile.com. Each wallet has a number eg 0101, 0102 etc and then within that each photo has a number eg 0101-01, 0101-02. 0102-01 etc. That way I can always refer back to easily find the original print if I ever need to rescan. The only organisation of the archive is by print size as each wallet hold prints of a certain size.
The actual organising is done digitally in Lightroom using Collections. Digitally I can organise in whatever order I want. By event, or by person etc etc with a lot more flexibility of keywords. The original prints are just an archive, not an album to be browsed (although it takes a while to get used to that idea).
Otherwise, if I was trying to organise before scanning, or whilst scanning, I’d never make any progress. I’d suddenly find a photo from an event and start to reorganise or renumber the archive creating a nightmare!
Thanks for setting up this site. It’s a great resource.
BE WARNED !!!!.
I scanned 12000 negatives into my computer and then went through each one and added a date by inputting my best estimate in the field called “date created” using Lightroom.
When I finished and tried to sort into chronological order I discovered that,
Lightroom and several other types of software I tried, use the date scanned not the date I had entered.
ADD A DATE AS YOU SCAN OR IN THE file name because as far as I can discover there is no way to to it the way I tried.
Iain
Lain, I’m so sorry to hear about what happened with you and Lightroom. Am I correct in assuming from your story that all of your work was lost because your computer over-wrote all of the dates you typed in so you lost all of this information? If so, I bet that was devastating for you. Again, I’m so sorry.
For anyone who is reading this, Lain is so correct. You really gotta be careful with whatever software you are using, and learn how that particular application accesses and saves this “metadata” information to your master image files. It’s very tricky sometimes, because of semantics — one software’s use of the word “date created” might be completely different from anothers’ or what the operating system defines it as.
Maybe it’s moot now, since it seems you may have already learned the solution to your problem. But, if not and if you are interested, here’s what I just found out trying it on my end. Now, I am currently running a Mac OS 10.9.1 with Adobe Lightroom 3. So your setup might be completely different. But, some or a lot of this might be relatable.
I just imported a slide I had scanned a ways back into a new Lightroom Catalog. I then went up to “Metadata” in the menu at the top and then selected “Edit Capture Time.” This appears to be the official way Adobe asks us to change the “shoot date” (the date the photo was actually taken). So Adobe is calling this date and time the “Capture Time.” There are several options in this window that comes up, but the main thing you are accomplishing is to change the date and time in the “Corrected Time” field of this “Edit Capture Time” window and then click the change button.
After I added this new date and time in this window, I can now see in my metadata fields on the right of the main Library window, that with the “Default” metadata preset selected, the “Capture Time” field has now been updated. And if this information hasn’t already been written to the master file on my hard drive, I can hit “command-s” on my Mac to save it. (“Metadata” at top then “Save Metadata to File” from list.)
It appears in more places if I choose the “EXIF and IPTC” metadata preset view. It also shows up now for the “Date Time Original” and “Date Time” — both in the EXIF section. And then further down, in the Image section, the “Date Created” has also been adjusted to this new date and time.
I matched back to the original file on my hard drive and viewed the metadata in a program called “iExifer” and sure enough the new date is in the “Date and Time” field in Image metadata section as well as the “Date Created” in the IPTC metadata section.
Now Lain you mentioned that you entered the time you believed the photo was taken in the “Date Created” field. This is the same field that was updated in my version of Lightroom. You can in fact click on this field and change it. So I did another test and changed this newly updated date from “1962-08-03” to “1962-08-09.” Then I hit command-s to save and then I loaded the master file up again in iExifer. None of the metadata fields changed in the master file to reflect this latest change. So this leads me to believe that the only way you can truly adjust the “Date Created”, or as Adobe really calls it the “Capture Time,” is to use the “Metadata > Edit Capture Time” option at the top.
What’s also confusing for us, is on my Mac for example, where the master image is stored in the Finder Application (This is like “Windows Explorer” for those just familiar with Windows), Apple also uses the name “Date Created.” This is a column of data associated with files as well. But, in OSX’s case (and maybe this is also true with Windows versions), the Date Created is actually the date and time this file on your computer was created. This is NOT the time the photo was taken. This is the time when the image was either turned into a digital file after a photo was scanned, or it was the time a photo was imported off a camera card etc and it was turned into a file on your computer.
So, we can now see how confusing this might all be. So, again I think back to Lain’s point — “Be Warned” and be very careful when you first start dealing with metadata. Test out a few examples and make sure the workflow is carrying over from one application, to the desktop level, and to another application if at all possible.
Thank you so much for your work on this issue.
Your solution should certainly solve my problem which you have understood very well.
I have windows Vista and a PC but do not see why what you suggest would not work.
I can’t check as my machine is currently being repaired.
The difficulty that I still have is that this will be an incredibly big job, to alter the metadata on 10000 pictures will take me months as it requires a number of steps for each one.
Perhaps you would have an opinion on another solution I am thinking about although I have no idea how to go about it.
The pictures are all in a file on my hard drive, and the dates I entered are in a field in this file.
Surely it would be relatively simple for a software engineer to write a small programme which would find my date field and then sort the files on the date field that I entered.
I could then import the data back into lightroom already in the correct date sequence.
Unfortunately I do not know anyone who has software engineering skills to find out whether what I propose is feasible within reasonable price.
Another thought
As I am sure you know MS Excel allows you to sort a file using any column in the workbook.
Do you think there would be any way to import the data from my photo file into Excel?
Does it sound as if I am getting a bit desperate?
Lain, I believe you have the right to feel desperate. You’ve earned a high level of frustration with your situation after spending so much time entering in all of that information. I would do the same thing you are doing right now which is to explore every option you can come up with a solution that will automate the fix as much as possible.
It would be great if we could come up with a solution that wouldn’t use any kind of spreadsheet program like Excel, and just keep it to fixing the metadata already inside of Lightroom and in your master images.
Answer me this: Was I right that you entered all of this date information in the “Date Created” field in the IPTC metadata section of Lightroom? (And not in the “Edit Capture Time” selection in the Metadata menu item at the top). I just want to make sure I know where the information was entered and should therefore be.
If the above is so, I feel like I am close to finding the solution. I found a forum page that’s fairly confusing, but it appears that Lightroom is defaulting to looking at a “XMP-photoshop:DateCreated” field first, before looking at the “Date Created” field where you entered the information. So, if we can figure out how to delete this “XMP” version from the original files, then it should then default to your date you entered. (This seems to be the theory) Then we could tell Lightroom to write all the IPTC data to the master images so they would be saved there as well as in the database in Lightroom.
Dear Curtis
Thank you so much for your continued interest I my problem which you have understood and described exactly.
I like the idea of forcing Lr to default to the date I entered (without realising that it would be ignored ), by taking out the date in the XMP file. But I.worry a little that there might be other unanticipated consequences.
It has also been suggested to me that taking my date and inserting it in front of file name would also work as Lr would then put the pictures in order by simply sorting on file name. I understand that a bulk rename utility could be used to take my date out of the EXIF file and add it to the file name. Quite how to go about this is not clear to me.
If I have to resort to a manual solution inserting my date into the file name would probably be the best way to go since changing the capture time involves several steps.
I have also been told that a freeware program called opanda might be used as a sorting option.
Why do you not favour that option (let’s call it the Excel option) of sorting the files outside Lr and then reimporting them?.
At the moment I am unable to do anything as in my search for solutions I imported a sorting programme which sounded as if it would work but didn’t and brought with it some malware. My computer is now being cleaned up and I will not get it back until, I hope, tomorrow.
I guess that is one argument against the Excel option.
Thanks again for your help
Iain
Lyo
Lain,
You’re welcome for my help. I want to help you because you have worked so hard to achieve a “completed” collection that you can easily sort in order .. and you are SO close! I know you can feel it… but you were just duped in a very confusing place in Lightroom that gave you false comfort that you were doing it right. It’s just terrible you are in this place, so I really want help you push you over the edge so you can reap the reward from all your work.
I totally agree with whoever suggested to you add a date to the head of your filename. One reason is that even if you have the “Date Taken” info in the metadata, a folder full of photos on your hard drive in “Internet Explorer” (Win) or “Finder” (Mac) won’t sort chronologically because these programs don’t pull from that specific metadata field. They just care about when the actual computer file was created — not the photo. If the date however was at the head of the filename, they could sort chronologically there. So, adding it produces a lot of future benefits in return for the upfront time involved. So much so, that I wrote a 3-part post about the way I feel is best how to name your files: What Everybody Ought to Know When Naming Your Scanned Photos
If you ask my opinion, the highest goal you could have for your collection is to not only be able to sort your photos chronologically, which just in itself is huge, but also that the time and date information that the application is using to sort this information is stored in the correct “Date Created” field of the IPTC metadata so that you can reap the benefits that this generates as well. Some photo programs for example, are so strict, they only use the “Date Taken” metadata field to sort photos, knowing that most people leave the filenames of photos as “IMG-2035.jpg” that their digital cameras produced so the filenames are therefore generally useless for sorting. I’m just saying fixing the “Date Created” issue within the metadata has additional benefits as well if you or your family members you pass your collection on to were to use a program that uses this data metadata for important reasons.
The reason I am suggesting we try and solve the problem without going out to Excel or something like that is because you are so close. Your date is already typed into the “Date Created” field which technically IS exactly where it should be! The problem, if I am reading the forums correctly, is that Lightroom is looking first at another date — this XMP-Photoshop “Date Created” field — and ignoring the true date field (Where you entered). So, if this is true, and we just delete the wrong date in its way, then you will not only benefit from (1) sort chronologically, but you will also achieve (2) having your date in the field that is “portable” and is standardized across other applications to harvest the time and date the photo was taken.
With my testing, by typing in the correct date where you typed it in, I couldn’t get that date information to show up anywhere inside of my iExifer metadata photo viewer. So, I guess I’m confused of your workflow. Even if you got all of your photos listed inside of Excel, how would you get the correct date typed in next to them without copy and pasting the dates from each photo one at a time from that “Date Created” field where entered it? In my testing, I couldn’t find any way to get that date out of Lightroom. So, in my mind, the ONLY place that date you entered exists is in Lightroom, in that one field. Maybe I am missing something here. You are obviously much more familiar with your situation.
And so back to what I was saying earlier, even if you can get your date at the head of the filename, and re-import them into Lightroom, now they WILL sort chronologically which is excellent I know, but still.. the true date information for the photo will still be wrong if Lightroom is still reading your date field incorrectly. You personally may be able to overlook this, if your only goal is just to get them to sort in Lightroom one method or another. But, for someone who is kind of OCD like myself,
, if I were to later open up one of my photos in another program that can read metadata correctly, and it visually displayed my caption on top of my photo in a nice slideshow fashion, and it also overlaid the date the photo was taken at the bottom as well (like a text identification “burn in”), and the date was off by 30 years, I would be kind of unsatisfied. But, again, that just might be me wanting things to be too “perfect.”
These are just my immediate thoughts this morning.. after reading your latest response. I’m sorry to hear about your Malware issue. That’s awful to have to go through that as well. When I was 100% Windows based I went searching on the internet in dark places to find software. There’s so much evil stuff out there. Sigh. :/
Curtis
…and the photos are cemented into it!
ugh. that album, in particular is really adhesive.
we have some of our nicest family portraits in it…and there is no way they are coming off those pages without damage.
Haven’t tackled scanning it yet, still working with the boxes of loose prints.
You can certainly still scan photos from them, but it takes time — sometimes scanning just one photo at a time, and then readjusting the album page on your flatbed so that you can get another one. And you might have to go with manual over automatic settings (if you normally use auto settings that is) and draw the crop-line yourself in order to capture the entire photo correctly.
I know there are techniques to remove photos from pages like this. But I myself haven’t tried it yet. In some ways it’s not important to me yet or at all. I certainly wouldn’t want to damage any just so I can say all of my photos are loose and stored in the same type of container. Right now I just want the best scans I can get and I will worry about storage and archiving of these albums and other difficult pages later.
You might have similar feelings for yours as well.
If you are careful you might be able to remove the photos in a magnetic album using dental floss. If you can get a corner started you just put the dental floss behind the photo and use it to cut the glue on the back. It can tear the photo go slowly and stop and move the floss to a different corner if it starts to tear.
There is a scanner called flip pal mobile scanner. It’s only about $150. You can use it to scan album pages, and things too large for a normal scanner, in parts and then stitch them back together on the computer. http://flip-pal.com It looks great to take with you while visiting someone who does not want to let their treasures leave their home. I have not tried it, but I would love to own it some day.
I’ve read about this “dental floss” technique before, but I haven’t had the nerve to try it just yet ;). But, I think I will sometime just to see how well it works.
I have an album or two with those “magic pages” that you peel back and almost all of the photos are pretty much stuck as you would guess. I was able to scan these large album pages using my Epson V600, but if I recall, it took some maneuvering around on the flatbed to get each photo to line up for the scan.
This Flip-Pal scanner looks really interesting. I have never heard of or seen this before. Thanks for letting me know about this. I took note of it and will hopefully get to review it sometime. You seem to be a real “creative” type, so after watching the videos on their website, I can see why you would love to own one.
Ha. Ha.
That top Green Album in the bin on the right?
My parents have the same exact album : )
They must have shopped at the same store…in the same year!!!
That is AWESOME! What are the odds! More than just both of our parents buying that same album. More that they both bought it, then I took a photo of it 30 years or so later, posted it on a website and then you saw it!
Too funny! Thanks for sharing that