Old Photos Made digital. What now?

They sat in dusty old boxes in a loft for decades. The house movers moved them from one home to another. Then, one day, a miracle happened. All hail the saviour of the old printed family photos! You have had them digitised.

But NOW what do you do with them?

That’s a very good question and we get asked it a lot. 

Afterall, there’s no point just having gone to all that trouble to simply have the equivalent of a dusty old box of photos sitting on your hard drive. And that is just what one could consider a gigantic ZIP file to be. Mountains of JPEG files in a number of folders, still hidden from sight. Still waiting to be shared and enjoyed. 

At Vintage Photo Lab the first step we recommend is to get those photos integrated with your other photos, wherever they might be. For a great many people that means Apple Photos or Google Photos. And there’s a separate article which walks you through how to do that here. 

The next part of your quest to preserve those old photographs for future generations will be to make a plan for how you’re going to share them. And this is where the fun starts.  

Here at Vintage Photo Lab we categorise photos into three different types:

1. Analogue – old family snaps, printed, albums, slides - the boxes we returned to you after scanning
2. Digital – currently sitting somewhere in the cloud or on a USB or on that supercomputer in your pocket
3. Legacy – the finished file - organised, labelled and accessible for generations yet to come

Most people have a good chunk of 1). Sharing these means picking your favourites, posting some with a letter to choice relatives, framing or sticking them into albums.

Nearly everyone has a ridiculous amount of 2). Sharing these means picking your favourites, posting some with a caption to social media platforms, making them into photo books or printing them on cushions, handbags or cakes as you see fit. If you’re looking for the best place to print a photo book we highly recommend Bob Books, you can visit their website here.  

The really important one, however, the one that only the most organised, thoughtful and visionary people ever get around to, is 3). Organising all those photos in a way that makes them accessible and secure for generations to come.

Moving your photos to the Legacy category means choosing a photo storage site. The best not only help you keep everything in one handy place, but also provide security and peace of mind, organisational features and tagging systems. Finding the right site all depends on what your needs are. Here’s a handy run down of some of the best. (https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-photography-sites)

Our own Vintage Photo Lab technicians recommend the following:

1. Apple Photos
2. Google Photos
3. Dropbox
4. Flickr
5. Amazon Prime Photos
6. Adobe portfolio 
7. Photobucket

If you still want some help deciding, or have some additional old photos you’re looking to digitise for your family, get in touch with us here and speak to a real human who can explain things in plain English and help you narrow down the options to something that works for you and your loved ones.