Photo Archive and Sharing Project

Background

Scanners have not changed as much as I thought they would have over the past 10 or more years. The scans I made of the vintage photos a decade ago are essentially as good, in terms of resolution or DPI as ones I'm making today. However, the editing software and my knowledge of the process has changed greatly.

In general, I scanned the photos at 600 DPI (dots per inch) which results in a high-quality scan that can be reprinted at sizes much larger than the original. In the rare cases of small, postage stamp sized small photos, I'm scanning at 1200 DPI.

The final output stored here on my shared Google Drive folders are JPEG (.jpg) files at the 85–90% "quality". That results in an optimal sized file for cloud storage, yet high resolution enough for displaying on digital devices and for reprints up to poster size.

I'm archiving the scans and high-resolution TIFF (.tif) files to future-proof my work. If the proposed JPEG XL format becomes ubiquitous om the near future, I will convert to it over TIFF files.

Software

At this writing, I'm still playing around with my workflow. I have a four-foot stack of totes and boxes, likely containing thousands of photos. If I don't find a consistent workflow and an organizational system for triaging the photos, saving the digital files, and storing the original prints, then I'm going to do more harm than good.

I have Photoshop, which most would say is the app of choice for this task, but macOS has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to photo editing software. I have found Pixelmator Pro to be my choice in terms of how it interfaces with the scanner, how the UI is laid out, and the ease of cropping and editing the scans.

From Pixelmator Pro, I save the original scans and the edited scans before exporting to lossless TIFF files. I use Adobe Bridge to add the metadata (Description and Photo Capture Date) before exporting to 90% quality JPEGs. Sometimes, I further edit the photo in Photoshop to remove scratches and wrinkles before exporting to JPEG. Most photos I only crop to remove the extra pixels outside the scanned image, so the ratios are all over the place if one wants to print them for framing. In a few cases I have cropped them to 3x2, 5x7 or 8x10 depending on which ratio makes the best photo, but honestly I'm processing for volume here and not trying to have them all ready for printing and framing. 

Methodology

Print Triage and Storage

So far, I'm just taking this one layer at a time. These photos are a mixture of loose photos, old and decrepit photo albums, and some complete photo albums. I'm removing the vintage photos from the tattered album pages and cataloging them in archival photo envelopes and putting those envelopes in boxes. 

I make note on the envelope which ones I've scanned, leaving others for later. The quality and subject matter vary greatly. Many, many photos have unknown (to me) people and in many cases are captioned sparsely. Freda Lickteig Morgan did a good job of dating many of the captions with a year, so that's been very helpful with the pages are tattered and torn from the album.

Physical Photo Nomenclature

I'm using a quasi-decimal system to code the photos. For the smaller photos under 5x7 I'm using the archival envelopes and photo boxes. I have number boxes 1 through 4, for now. The envelopes (Files) are number in multiples of 10. (10, 20, 30, ....) 

This allows me to insert an envelope into the sequence if I find a set of photos that either thematically or chronologically should be between file 20 and 30, for example. That new envelope file would be numbered 25, in this example.

Individual photos stored in the envelopes are number 01, 02, 03, ... etc. So, a "code" for an individual photo numbered 03 stored in Box 1, envelope (file) 20 would be 1.20.03. I will add that code to the END of the filename once that photo is scanned and saved.

Digital Photo Nomenclature

Once a photo is scanned, I try to name it in the following manner:

Date - Description - Code

The date is formatted as yyyy.MM.dd or in English would be:

2024.12.26 for what we'd write December 26, 2025 or 26 Dec 2025. This strict format allows for the sorting of the digital files by date easily.

Example: 

For a scanned photo that was taken of Herman and Anna Lickteig on their 50th wedding anniversary, stored in Box 1, envelope 40, photo 05, it would look like this:

1945.08.22 Herman Lickteig 50th Wedding Anniversary - Dan and Monica (Bowman) Lickteig, Fred (Lickteig) and Rudy Morgan 1.40.05

Knowing this, you can take that file code information and go back into my physical archive and find the original photo.

Shared Google Drive Files

As I mentioned in the Background section, the final output stored here on my shared Google Drive folders are JPEG (.jpg) files at the 85–90% "quality". I have stored these files in nested folders starting with a root folder called Morgan-Lickteig-Young.

By way of an example, I'll return to the Herman and Anna Lickteig 50th wedding anniversary photos.

Photos > Lickteig > Herman and Anna (Steinbach) Lickteig > Wedding and Anniversaries > 1945.08.22 Herman Lickteig 50th Wedding Anniversary - Dan and Monica (Bowman) Lickteig, Fred (Lickteig) and Rudy Morgan 1.40.05.jpg