Could This Be the Most Ingenious Way to Scan the Backs of Your Photographs?
When I started scanning my photo collection, I had no plans to scan the backs of my prints.
This is even considering that maybe 60% of my family's prints have handwriting on the other side. It's either a date when the photo was taken, the names of people in the photo, or sometimes — like in the photo above — a lengthy description.
All of this information is very important to me.
But my idea was that after I finished scanning a group or envelope full of prints, I would then spend a little bit of extra time and type all of this information in the blank “description” or “caption” field in my photo manager.
If you aren't sure how to do this, you might be interested in the “how-to” article I wrote on adding captions to your photographs.
Why Even Scan the Backs of Photos?
Over the last several months, I've really been considering digitally capturing the back and archiving them away too.
A true list with all of the reasons why one might want to do this would be quite long. So here are just three reasons — enough to convince me.
Caption Deleted — What happens if you accidentally delete the caption in your photo manager one day? (Accidental keystrokes happen to the best of us) By the time you realize it's gone, will you still have a backup version that has it in there? And if you no longer have access to the original print, you are now completely out of luck!
Identification of Handwriting — It's hard to easily note in a caption field in your photo manager exactly who wrote the identifying information. And sometimes it could even be multiple people who contributed. It would be nice to be able to reference a copy of it later when in doubt.
Important Document — Much of this information is very personal and sentimental. This can be handwriting by your relatives that either aren't, or in fact someday will no longer be here with us. Now, I almost think these backs are as important as the fronts to preserve.
Common Ways To Scan The Backs of Your Photos
Flatbed Scanners
So sure, you could use your flatbed scanner to scan the backs too. You could even do it at the same time as you scan the fronts — just flip them over and do another pass while you already have them handy.
Or, you could set those prints aside and scan the backs at a later time. You might want to do this if you've decided to change your scanner settings when doing just the backs.
For example, if you want to scan the backs at a lower DPI than the front. Doing a lower DPI pass all at once could be less stressful for you than remembering to keep changing the setting back after each pass.
But, scanning with flatbeds is considered tedious by some. Just getting someone to do the front side is almost asking too much from some people, right !??
So there must be other ways.
Portable Photo Scanners
A slightly less common option, and one that would presumably be quicker, would be to use a relatively inexpensive portable scanner — like those made by Pandigital.
There is definitely a tradeoff with the image quality and also the “consistent image quality” with the portable scanners I've tested.
But we're not talking about scanning your images where near-perfect quality is often desired. In this case, it would be just for capturing handwriting.
And something else to keep in mind with these little guys. The rollers inside are making contact with your photos as they push them through.
So without using one of their special transparent “sleeves” that most of them include to protect the photograph, there is a small but still possible chance you could damage one of your prints. I personally wouldn't put a delicate print through one of these!
Still, there must be another option. One is for people who don't want to take the extra time with a flatbed but also don't want the extra expense of buying a portable scanner. Some of them cost up to $150.
Capturing Handwriting Captions With Your Cell Phone Camera!
How about using your smartphone to capture the backs of your photos? With the right lighting, the quality of the latest cell phones are rivaling point and shoot cameras and a few DLRs.
Now, this isn't quite my ingenious idea — not exactly. So bear with me another second.
Why I like this idea is because, for one, its a cheap. Many of us already own nice cell phones with good cameras, so it's not an added expense.
And secondly, because this method doesn't tie up your computer like scanning with a flatbed or a portable scanner does (unless you buy one that records to a memory card), you can take photos of the backs of prints you just scanned at the same time as you are scanning the fronts of the next few!
Right?
There is that period of time while you're waiting for the flatbed scanner to do its scanning thing it does where you basically are doing nothing but prep the next photos and wait around. Why not use that extra time to your advantage?
There is a problem with this method, however — cropping.
If your camera shoots “rectangular,” and your image just happens to be “rectangular,” then you can hold your cell phone close enough to get a tight perfect shot.
But often, because photographs come in all different sizes (ratios), the composition will typically leave lots of extra space around the image. The only way around this is to manually crop it out in the software after you've taken the shot.
Now, it's possible you are the type of person where this won't bother you. Maybe you will think of it as just a “reference image” to file away. So who cares how it looks as long as you can read it?
If so, then you may have a perfect solution here!
Okay, so I think we are getting somewhere now. But I think we can still take this even one step… better!
Here's the Possible Ingenious Twist
It occurred to me the other day that software developers have really been pushing the envelope on what they can make a smartphone do.
And there are some applications out there now that are specially written to photograph documents on the go using the camera in our phones.
They are designed so that a special agent like James Bond 007 can be out on a mission, find a secret spy document, whip out his phone, and take a special picture of it.
And arguably, the best reason to use one of these apps, and what sets them apart from just using your stock camera application, is they assist you by automatically finding the edges of the document.
To put it simply — they auto-crop!
Couldn't we use this “secret spy” technology too?
Putting This Idea to the Test
I picked out two applications that would run on my Apple iPhone (iOS).
The first one appeared to be the best one available — the highest user reviews, slick-looking user interface, and a $7 (US) price. (It's currently only available for iOS)
The second still looked really good and is available for free. (This one is available on both iOS and Android)
I think it's worth bringing up that this isn't meant to be thorough application reviews. There are far too many features to critique them on that I didn't take the time to evaluate.
This is merely meant to introduce you to the main features available in this type of app. Think of it more as a “proof of concept” evaluation just to see if this type of application could even serve our purposes.
Scanner Pro Review
For $6.99 (US), Scanner Pro by Readdle does, in fact, give you a very slick-looking user interface. Their short description is:
Scanner Pro transforms your iPhone and iPad into portable scanners. It allows you to scan receipts, whiteboards, paper notes, or any multipage document. Scanned documents can be emailed and printed, uploaded to Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote, or simply saved on the iPhone/iPad.
I was very impressed with the nice textured background, the colors they chose for their design, and how easy it was to figure out how to operate.
And just as I had hoped, “scanning” something was a very simple process. Basically, you aim the camera, focus, shoot, make an adjustment (only if you want to), and save it.
For the sake of these tests, I didn't manually adjust any of the corners (Step 2) in either application.
I decided not to because this was more to me about how good I could get these to look, running as efficient a workflow as possible.
If I had to manually adjust every corner on hundreds or thousands of images, I doubt I would consider these apps a viable option.
Scanner Pro, from my short experience running it, didn't really live up to my expectations for what I was trying to use it for. So to be fair, it's really probably meant to scan black-and-white documents. You know, like office paperwork, bills, and tax documents.
No matter how hard I tried, going through all of the settings, I couldn't get my test image to look like a “real photo”.
Instead, it just turned out looking like a facsimile — a “photocopy”.
Scanner Pro is really good at taking the image and altering the exposure so that the text or drawings etc., really “pop out.” The handwriting in my image became ultra-contrasty between black and white, so it's really easy to read.
But this is done at the expense of the colors around them. See how the bluish ink is now dark black? And the edge of the table that shows through hardly even resembles the same brown color.
And, like my un-cropped photo example above (using just a cell phone), if you are fine with this, then great!
Again, for some, the goal will be just to have a version to file away that is simply legible.
For others — myself included — the goal is probably to preserve a really good photographic replication.
Genius Scan Review
For free, Genius Scan — PDF Scanner (iOS App Store) / (Google Play Android) by The Grizzly Labs is by no means an ugly-looking user interface. And their short description is:
Genius Scan turns your iOS or Android device into a pocket scanner. It enables you to quickly scan documents on the go and email the scans as JPEG or PDF.
The app worked very similarly to Scanner Pro. Once you understand one, you pretty much understand the other.
In my limited testing, the automatic “cropping” seemed to be a little bit more accurate in Genius Scan. Or maybe I was just swayed to the pretty shade of orange in their outline!
And I was very relieved to find that Genius Scan has the option to choose an “enhancement mode.” Let me tell you, this made all the difference!
As expected, in the “Black and White” enhancement mode, no color is left at all. Colors are made black, and whites remain white.
In the “Color” option, the text is made black and really contrasty, but the colors around them appear to be left in.
But, when switched to the “no enhancement” setting, the entire image is left unprocessed and looks “raw” — like well, a real photograph.
This was perfect for my wishes!
Because if someone chose to write on the back of a photo in blue ink, I don't want the handwriting in my images to come out as black. At least, that's how I feel about it.
For me, it's not just about recording the important information. It's about preserving how the information was recorded, to begin with.
And let me add, if you are bothered by the advertisement at the bottom of select screens in Genius Scan, The Grizzly Labs currently also offers a $2.99 version called “Genius Scan+ PDF Scanner” that appears to be the same UI but with a few additional features and no ads.
Additional Features Worth Noting
Manual Cropping Adjustments
Both applications were pretty good at automatically estimating where to crop at all four corners. Not perfect, but fairly close.
If you really want to get in closer to make it exact, each application lets you grab a corner with your finger and drag it in or out until you are pleased.
And here's a time when that $6.99 for Scanner Pro really pays off.
As you grab a corner, covering it up with your finger, a magnified circle pops up and out of the way so you can see exactly where you are dragging the corner.
In Genius Scan (at least the free version), there is no magnified “pop-up.” Instead, you kind of have to guess where to move the corner because your finger is covering up the corner of the document where you want to be looking.
It's not as bad of a situation as it sounds. It just made me really appreciate that feature in Scanner Pro even more once I realized what was possible.
Separate Document or Continuous
In both applications, you can easily choose if you want to create a new “document” each time you snap a photo or add it to a previous “document” to make it a multi-page PDF file.
Depending on how you want to store and use your images, a multi-paged PDF file could actually have advantages for you.
For example, if you have a 3,000 print photo collection, you could possibly make a 3,000-image PDF file “document” if you wanted — assuming the application doesn't have a limitation. Then you could have all of your images in just one file.
Here's How I Might Use a Multi-Paged PDF
The image manager I use, Apple's Aperture, does a cool thing. If you drag a PDF file on top of the application icon in the launch bar, it will give you special import options menu. From here, you can tell it to turn this multiple-page PDF file into separate JPGs — one for each image inside.
This is probably what I would do if I went the route of using one of these document scanning apps. I would probably make a multi-page PDF file for every scanning session. So if I scanned 32 prints that day, I would make a PDF file in my app with 32 images.
Then when I was done scanning that day, I would import that .PDF file into Aperture and turn it into 32 separate images that I can store away with each “front image” it correlates to.
Rename Scans
Also worth noting is that each application allows you to rename the scan inside of the application itself.
So if you aren't content with having the filename named generically using that day's time and date, you can click on the image name and rename it whatever you choose.
Verdict
I think these two applications definitely proved to me that a portable scanning app could serve the purpose of recording the backs of our prints.
And we wouldn't have to just stop with prints. It could even be used to record the writing on the edges of our slide mounts too.
Really, anything you can think of that you don't want to use a flatbed or dedicated negative scanner for. Consider postcards, letters or newspaper clippings, etc.
So, the only reason I may choose not to use an app like one of these would probably be because of the image quality or my workflow.
If it turns out that it takes longer than I think to line up, tap-to-focus, shoot, save, and get them into Aperture, then I might as well just take the time to scan them with a good scanner.
And knowing me, how particular I am, I still may decide to use a flatbed scanner or even a portable scanner just because the images would probably turn out, on average, much sharper and of better quality.
But remember, I'm pickier than most people out there, I bet!
I still just haven't made up my mind. (sigh)
Honestly, all three options — flatbed scanners, portable scanners, and smartphone document scanners — are all great choices.
What about you? After reading this, do you think you might want to scan the backs of your prints? Which method might you choose to go with?
Let me know in the comments below.
Cheers!
Thank you for this post! My cousin mailed a bunch of photos to me of my children with my late mothers handwriting on the back. My mother had a unique and beautiful cursive style and I was trying to find a way to save the photo with her inscription on the back side. You helped me tremendously! Thank you so much for sharing! The Genius Scan worked better than I expected.
Billy, you’re so welcome. I am very pleased to read this really helped you. And thanks for taking the time to let me know. 🙂
Nice post. Received a box full of old family photos. Scanning them to try to identify the people on them. I don’t know many and the owner who gave the photos does neither, so what better to scan and share digitally. Of course, with capturing the back sides of the photos.
But my first obstacle is deciding which back I scan and which I don’t. Should I scan every back side that has at least a scribble, photographer’s details, or number on it? Or should I only scan the ones with real notes? I think I’ll go for the real notes and the photographer details. The latter only to be able to pinpoint the date of the photos.
I scan my photos on a flatbed (HP Office Laserjet MFP) and use the extended scan application to capture more photos at once. However, this doesn’t seem to work for the back sides when the types of photos differ (yellowish and white background, especially with little notes.
But as to your question, yes, definitely scanning backs when I sort out which ones and how to scan the back sides at once when I scanned the front sides first.
MS Office Lens – I don’t normally plug MS products, but this one I forgot about until reading this article. It’s for whiteboard and document scanning, but will auto trim and then flatten any image. You can adjust the trim/crop manually, and it will get you a nice flat, true/right image. Add to that an easy save to multiple locations such as your OneDrive, OneNotes, word doc, PDF or local phone camera roll.
What about saving the front and back images into a multi-page Tif file? Some scanning software will do this, but if yours won’t, there are freeware programs that can do it. Has anyone tried this?
I have considered this, but I’m concerned about the ability to import multi-tiff files into various applications. I like the idea of keeping the images together in the same file (Multi-tiff) and not having to rely on file names to connect them (front, back).
Does anyone know if theres a program that will take the 2 images (front & back) and put them together digitally so you can flip them over like you would an actual print? that would be a cool app. It would be even cooler in a 3d environment like virtual reality to make it a more tactile experience, without endangering the originals.
I’m sorry Ian. I know I am not aware of such a program.
That would be a nice interface though — even if it was just a viewing option in a program like Picasa or Photos (Mac). Doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to implement at least in a 2D fashion.
Harder than you think, Curtis! You’d think it would be the next number along in the scanner’s system, but then you start sending copies out for ID, and they get separated.
Robin
If you use Lightroom and put all the backs with the fronts, you can “stack” each front with it’s respective back. If you want to look at the back, just dbl-click the photo and it unstacks the two so you can see the writing.
Excellent tip Clif. I know it’s not the slick animation that Ian had specifically asked about, which is all I was focusing on in my answer. But, I like your contribution here for anyone reading this just merely looking for a method to easily keep both “sides” together in ones collection. :thumbs:
I have had stacks in Apple’s Aperture all these years, and know once you get used to using them for things like this, you never want to go back! Stacks is almost essential to me now.
Hi oggo loggo,
From an archivist’s point of view, ideally, each image would be scanned WITH the border (if any) and again with the border cropped out. A border, especially a white one, can lead to inaccurate exposure of the scan because of the undetailed bright white portion of the image. Thus, it can be better to scan a second time to include just the actual image to get better exposure. HOWEVER, borders sometimes have dates (processing date, not necessarily related to actual date the image was made) printed on them. They might also have handwritten information written. The rough edges were very common on prints made in the 1950s, so they can help establish an approximate date for the print, which would often be within at least a few months of when the photo was taken. One way to ensure that such an edge is visible in the digital file is to place a piece of middle gray or black construction above the print but below the scanner’s white reflective surface. That will visually distinguish the white of the border from the white background of the scanner. Such rough borders were usually done by the processing lab, rather than somebody carefully taking special scissors and adding them later. Any border can also show that a print was not properly aligned parallel with the paper when it was printed, if the border has uneven widths around the image. That might indicate that the print was made by an amateur in a home darkroom instead of in a commercial lab. If the photographer is known, that might indicate that he/she was interested in film developing and printing as well as in taking pictures. Such information may be important to genealogists trying to learn about a particular individual.
Hi Art,
Thank you for sharing! I tried scanning photos with and without a border. I didn’t understand why the change in a crop setting sometimes impacted the exposure. This makes sense!
I don’t know if you have covered this, but I’m how about whether to scan the white borders of prints or not?
I’m kinda embarrassed to admit that I scanned and kept them. It seems pointless, but then again as with almost duplicates, you could argue that it’s part of capturing how the family chose to have the pictures. Some of them were cut out with a scissor that makes the edge “curly” or what to call it.
It’s not actually any extra effort, so I guess it’s ok, but probably nobody is going to care.
oggo,
I like that you are kinda embarrassed to admit you scan the borders. That just shows you how many ways there are to do this whole process and how it’s so easy to feel you’re doing something the wrong way. 😉
I too scan prints with the borders. I actually even scan them with some extra space around the edges as well to make it easier if any additional straightening in Aperture later is needed without cropping any of the image/border.
As you might have guessed, this means later if you want just the image, you will have to crop out the border. But, I also feel this is worth it to preserve how the “family chose to have the pictures.” In addition, I’ve found many of my prints have dates and sometimes writing in the borders that I’d like to archive as well. Scanning everything just gives a consistency I appreciate across my entire collection.
Art brings up an interesting possibility in his comment below that the exposure can be slightly off in a scan if you include an “undetailed bright border” in the scanning area. I decided for my collection, doing double scans like Art lists as a possibility to avoid this problem, was just too much work and beyond (even) my goals for my 10,000+ photos. It’s a compromise in possible image quality that I’ve made to keep my workflow simpler.
I agree that scanning the information on the backs is important. I have been scanning backs since I started. Unfortunately the ones I scanned a long time ago never got matched up to the fronts. I have a folder of early scans with backs and fronts that have the file names given by the scanner. I probably intended to go back and match them up but got interrupted and never did. For most of them I can’t guess which backs go to which fronts. What you are doing if you scan the backs on a different device could create a similar situation unless you make sure to do your matching right away. You never know what will happen, a machine might break or something more urgent takes your time. By the time you come back you forgot exactly what you were doing when you quit, or have to spend time locating the photos to make sure everything gets paired up right.
What I am doing now is to use my flat bed scanner to scan the backs and fronts during the same scanning session. I will choose a manageable group of photos from the giant mountain and do the ones with writing first. I fill the table with fronts and usually scan at 600 dpi. Then I fill the table with backs and scan at 300 dpi. Before I start the next batch I rename each front with a number and the backs with a number and a letter. So image 1 is a front that goes with 1a that is the back. Sometimes I will add the name of the person if I know it and it is not on the back. I don’t try to capture the entire back, just the writing. Later I will figure out how to give the files better names. Right now my goal is preservation rather than organization. I am taking a paper pile and making a digital pile. If I don’t live long enough to get it organized then hopefully one of the kids will do it. At least I was able to capture that image before it deteriorates further.
I love it! I haven’t spoken to that many people yet that have admitted to actually taking the time to scan the backs of their photos!
Yeah it’s a lot more work, and you gotta have a plan. But, it sounds like you have a good one all figured out that you are happy with and that’s the hardest part sometimes — just figuring out that workflow.
That’s too bad about that original group of photos you scanned a long time ago. I bet that’s frustrating for you since you had such good intentions.
It sounds like you are doing something very similar to my workflow. If you’re curious, the filename numbering system uses a 5-digit number that I write on the back of my prints and slides. Then I tell my scanning software to add this to my filename as it’s being saved. Finally, when I scan the backs of the prints then or at any later time, these scans will now visually have this 5-digit number in them so they can always be “paired” back to the original scans of the fronts.
I also appreciate hearing you’re into focussing on preservation over organization first. I can so relate on that one too!
I scan the backs at the same time as the fronts–well, you know, on the next scan–and take a few seconds to label both, like Grandma 1955 front and Grandma 1955 back. Obviously I need a better naming system and am reviewing what you have posted. But in the meantime, I sure as heck scan the backs! It’s a historical document, as you’ve said, and sometimes has more data than I can put into the file name.
That’s great to hear Robin! It’s definitely more work, and a bit challenging to keep up with both “versions,” but I think in the end, the extra work will REALLY pay off for those of us who went to the trouble.
I think anyone who’s looking for a way to make sure the backs and front scans don’t lose their pairings could benefit from the “barcoding” idea that I talked about in this post:
https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/numbering-system-filenames-linking-scanned-photos/
This identifying and unique number could be included in both filenames and could therefore be searchable in any file system. You could even keep all of the “backs” scans in 1 giant folder and whenever you want to see what was on the back of a particular photo, you could just look in this one folder for that particular identifying number. I think this could work for a lot of people. 🙂
Great article, Curtis.
I’m 100% in favor of scanning the back of any photo with any information written or printed on it. While any of the methods you mention will do for recording such information, even though it may be slower, the use of a flatbed scanner will probably yield the best results in terms of preserving any color, such as the ink color you mention, and most likely will have higher resolution. If the writing is faded or discolored, as it may well be on older prints, software such as EpsonScan or VueScan and the flatbed scanner will allow easy adjustment of brightness and contrast to make such writing more legible. If the writing is extremely small, it’s easy to scan at a higher resolution or to scale the scanned image at scan time to make it larger and possibly more legible.
So far as cropping is concerned, I’d be reluctant to crop any part of the image with any information on it. In the example you show, with the 7-7B at the lower left and 02235 at the lower right, these numbers possibly identify the negative frame number (7-7B) and either the film roll number or at least the processor’s envelope identification number. Both of these numbers can be used to relate the text to a specific print and negative if they don’t get cropped and lost when the text is scanned.
While I’d generally favor the flatbed approach, I can see valid use of the smartphone concept, especially if you’re trying to scan photos that belong to someone else and you can’t borrow them to take home to scan with your favorite scanner. The results might not be ideal, but they’d certainly be better than not getting any digital copies of such photos. The technique might also be helpful in a research library or newspaper morgue to document a microfiche or microfilm reader’s screen for your personal research purposes.
Returning to handwritten notes, in situations where the identity of the writer is uncertain or unknown, a high-quality scan could be printed and compared with any available handwriting samples, such as diaries, letters, or business forms, from identified individuals and perhaps the writer’s identity could be established. The same could be said where the writing on a photo can be identified but not the identity of other documents. In this case, the known identity from the photo might help identify the writer of the other document(s).
The color of ink and the texture of the writing could conceivably help date a photo if scanned at sufficient resolution and quality since a fountain pen’s ink and nib would be noticeably different from that of a ballpoint pen or a felt marker or pencil. Of course, from an archivist’s viewpoint, none of these implements, with the possible exception of a soft lead pencil, is recommended for writing on photos but many, many people in the past have been unaware of such concerns and may have used whatever writing implement was convenient when they decided to write on a photo. Handwriting styles changed over the years so the style of writing might prove helpful in dating a particular photo.
(As an aside, I’ve heard that at least in some school districts in Ontario, handwriting is no longer being taught at any grade level. Presumably this is because nearly everyone today either uses a computer keyboard or a touchscreen for text entry and has no particular use for handwriting. While this is likely the situation, if people no longer learn how to write, how long will they continue to learn to read handwriting? If they can’t read writing from previous generations, how are they going to be able to understand personal or family archive documents such as letters or diaries? This should be a matter of concern for anyone interested in preserving family history and archives. Maybe only a few people will be able to read such documents, much as only a relatively few today can read ancient Egyptian or other early letter-forms.)
If the ink is a particular color, such as turquoise, red, or green, rather than the more customary dark blue, perhaps a specific individual is known to have favored such a color of ink for general writing and thus the writer’s identity may be confirmed or at least considered to be highly likely. Just another argument in favor of preserving original colors, even on the backs of photos.
These are some of the arguments in favor of doing high-quality scans of both sides of photos when there’s any information available on the back.
Art
“Returning to handwritten notes, in situations where the identity of the writer is uncertain or unknown, a high-quality scan could be printed and compared with any available handwriting samples, such as diaries, letters, or business forms, from identified individuals and perhaps the writer’s identity could be established.”
That’s a great consideration I wasn’t even thinking of when I wrote this post — what if you don’t KNOW who wrote the information on the back! There were only like 3 people in my family that seemed to write anything on the backs and they were all the matriarchs for their generation. But yes, what IF it’s someone you don’t know. All the more reason to preserve this like it’s a “document”.
I’ve often wondered about the whole “pencil” route. I think I’m thankful my family kept with ink pens through the years. Very very few seem to have suffered any damage from the ink — either the tip of the pen pressing down so hard it raised up the other side, or bled through.
Since light pencil can be erased so easily, the thought of “barcoding” my photos with ID numbers or even adding captions of my own with pencil always seemed safe to the print but not 100% permanent so therefore…. risky!
What are your thoughts on pencil Art?
I love the discussion about Handwriting not being taught now in some schools. My wife and I have talked about this as well because there are some schools here in the States that are not longer teaching handwriting (cursive) as well!
As sad as this sounds, that many kids may not learn how to write (create) cursive — at least well, isn’t it still possible that many of them will be able to read it? A lot of cursive to me looks like print with little connector lines. Like a capital “B” looks like a printed B with a “smile”. 🙂 But then, I guess a lower case cursive “s” doesn’t look like a printed s. Hmmm… maybe this is sadder than I thought. 🙁
Curtis
Hi Curtis,
While I’ve personally had little, if any, experience with pen ink either soaking through to the face of a print or rubbing off onto the face of the print beneath it in a stack, many of the comments I’ve seen on sites dealing with archival storage and care of photos caution against using ink to avoid any such problems. I have occasionally noticed a problem where a heavy-handed writer has pushed a ballpoint pen down so hard it has made an impression on the face of the print with raised letter shapes.
So far as pencils are concerned, a soft lead, like a #2 which is sometimes recommended by professional archivists, should be OK, especially if the print is placed face down on a firm, smooth surface like a glass or metal desktop before any writing is done. BE AWARE of pressing too hard on the scanner platen if you decide to use it as a writing surface! You don’t want to damage the scanner. Using such a surface should, at least in theory, also eliminate the possible problem of a pen pressing into the back and raising the face of the print. I do agree that pencil can be difficult to see and read, especially if a hard lead pencil, like a #6, or a drafting pencil, is used since these are designed to leave a light, easily erased mark unless a great deal of pressure is applied. In this case, the problem of embossing the face of the print again becomes likely.
For difficult-to-read pencilled notes on the back of prints, doing a high-quality, medium-to-high resolution scan and adjusting the contrast, via curves or levels in the scanning software or in editing software for the scanned file, can significantly increase the contrast between pencil and paper. If by chance a colored pencil (or ink) was used, use of a ‘photo filter’ in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, can help further increase the contrast, IF the scan was done as a color one rather than grayscale or black-and-white.
A background knowledge of color contrast filters used in black-and-white film photography can be helpful here. To increase the contrast between white clouds and blue sky, photographers often used a yellow, orange, or red filter mounted on the front of the camera lens. The yellow filter more closely reproduced the gray values as the human eye sees them, while the orange and red filters respectively introduced more contrast since they blocked more of the blue light rays and gave the blue sky less exposure on the negative. Similarly, to increase the contrast between a red flower, such as a rose, and its green surrounding of leaves or a background of green grass, a red filter on the camera lens would pass more red light from the flower than the green light from the background so the flower would print as a lighter value of gray. The general rule of thumb to remember is: A filter increases exposure for objects of its own color and decreases exposure for its complementary color. In terms of R-G-B (red-green-blue) and C-M-Y (cyan-magenta-yellow) which are the additive primary colors of light and the subtractive colors of pigment/ink respectively, red is the complement of cyan, green complements magenta, and blue complements yellow. See any reference to ‘color wheel’ or just Google the term to see a diagram of these relationships.
Since both of the Photoshop programs offer a range of traditional photography color filters under the filter menu, just choose a filter of the complementary color to that you want to add contrast to, apply it to an adjustment layer in your image, then convert the image to grayscale to see the result. If the contrast is not sufficient, delete the adjustment layer, and use a stronger filter on a new adjustment layer, then convert to grayscale again. Repeat until you’re satisfied with the results. This technique also works well for converting any color scan to grayscale and may be quicker and easier for some people than using the channel mixer and will likely give more pleasing results than use of the automatic grayscale conversion menu option. A good way to get to grips with the concept is to take any image with a large variety of colors in it, apply each of the color photo filters to it in turn, especially varying the intensity of each filter from say 5% to 100%, convert each image to grayscale, and save it as a copy with the intensity and filter color as part of the respective file names. Then look carefully at the relationships of the various values of gray for any particular color in the original. These samples can be saved for future reference, if you want, or they can be discarded. This is just an exercise to become familiar with how colors can be reproduced as different values of gray but can be extremely useful if one is interested in creating black-and-white digital images. (While I realize many cameras today let one shoot originals in grayscale, simply by making the appropriate menu selection, doing so gives up any creative control by the photographer and lets the camera make all the creative decisions. The same applies to scanning color originals in grayscale instead of color. Shoot or scan in color, then use your discretion as to how to convert to grays to emphasis the part(s) of the subject that you want to.)
For anyone concerned about preserving the original color of the actual notes on the print, simply use a copy of the file to do the grayscale conversion to increase contrast and legibility.
Since many of our photos don’t have any labels on the backs anyway, my personal recommendation would be to create a .jpg copy of the original image and add any identification labels to the face of the COPY image. Another option would be to make an outline sketch of each person or item to be identified, again on the COPY image OR on a separate layer that could have its visibility turned on or off, and either add the identification directly to the copy or, if there are many people in a group photo, just add a key number to each individual, then in a corner of the image with no important detail, or in a wide border, include a key with the numbers opposite the respective names.
In the case of wishing to add some file reference number to each original photo to be able to relate it to its digital counterpart, I’d suggest printing the reference information on the back of the photo, but keep it within the white border area or at least near the edge of border-less prints to minimize any chance of pressing into the surface of the image.
If people are no longer being taught to write cursive, eventually, they will likely no longer be taught to read it since it will no longer be common in daily life. Just think of how few people today can either read or write early Egyptian or Cuneiform writing, as an example. At some stage, it’s conceivable that only scholars, who have made a deliberate practice of it, will be able to read our cursive writing from the past. To the vast majority, it might as well be ancient hieroglyphics, written by aliens from another planet.
There may be some hope for retaining the ability to read cursive writing if suitable fonts are used on computers. However, many such fonts, at least in my experience, do tend to resemble printing with little connectors, rather than the true cursive style such as is found in BrushScript, English111 VivaceBT, RageItalic, or Wedding Script. While I agree that some cursive writing may well resemble print with little connector lines, there’s a fair amount of cursive writing that bears little, if any, resemblance to printing, especially in signatures. Years ago, when I worked in Audio Visual at a hospital, I had to sign at the reception desk when I picked up packages of developed film for our department that had been delivered there. The receptionist often remarked that I’d make a good doctor, my signature was so illegible!
Labels written on the backs of photos may often be relatively easy to read, but if anyone is scanning older postcards or letters, especially air mail letters (when very thin, special air mail paper was used before all mail was sent by air for any distance) or wartime (particularly WW I or WW II eras), writing was often small, written normally horizontally across the page, but because of the scarcity of available paper, writing parallel to each edge of the page was frequently found to enable the writer to squeeze in the maximum amount of information on a minimal amount of paper.
Handwriting’s legibility varied with the amount of formal education the writer had received and his/her amount of formal training and practice with cursive writing. Since many older folks (of today), had to leave school early to help support the family, some of them had minimal formal cursive writing training and practice. Different cultures also sometimes used slightly different letter forms, even though they may have been writing in the same language. People who write backhand (with the letters slanting to the left instead of the more common to the right) may also have writing that’s more difficult to read, at least for readers who are not as familiar with backhand writing. The same can also apply for left-handed writers. I do not intend or imply any criticism of any of these groups of writers, I merely mention that there can be a wide variety of writing styles with varying degrees of legibility.
Unfortunately, most of my photos don’t have labels on them but I do have an extensive collection of older postcards with writing on them. I’ll try to get some of them scanned and forward them to you so you can post them as examples of the kinds of writing people might encounter in family history documents. I’ll email you a .pdf showing some samples of different fonts at 14 and 18 point sizes to show the differences in legibility and variation in visual size among them.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these topics in this forum so others can also learn.
Art
Honestly, it’s just never going to be important enough to find out exactly who wrote it, to be worth this effort. We tend to imagine these very unlikely scenarios, where someone finds an interesting photo in this collection, and need all these details, but how likely is it to happen? How much extra time is spend getting such great extra detail? I doubt it will ever be justifiable to spend that time. It’s like we imagine our family will someday be investigated by someone. It’s not happening to that extend.
That said, I did scan the backs of all photos with writing on the backs. The half an hour, I took pictures, and wrote notes to remember where they belonged. Too much trouble. Then I started simply turning the picture over after scanning it, and scanning at a lower resolution (for speed), so a backside would always come right after the front side (pictures autonumbered by scanner software), so I could easily name it all properly after a batch/day.
One of my main reasons to scan the backsides, is that I can’t actually read a lot of the handwriting on there. I know my parents can read it, so I definitely should get them to read it, so I can also type it and put it in the file name.
That’s a nice little system you have there. Since you already have the photo in your hand, you’re right, you might as well go ahead and scan it.
Something I’ve thought about doing with mine is getting one of those really inexpensive CMOS auto feeding print scanners like Pandigital makes and use them for scanning the backs. They are very fast and a high quality JPG for the backs seems very adequate to me.