Organizing Genealogy Photos: Part 2

The next step is scanning.  I already had a flatbed scanner, an Epson Perfection V300.  I had purchased this scanner a number of years before because I could scan slides as well as regular photos.  It has worked really well for me and I can scan to tiff or jpeg formats.  But it is not fast.  It actually seems to take longer to scan than when I first got it!  Since the Flip-Pal had recently come out, I though that smaller scanner would be great for all the snap shots I had.  The only thing is that the Flip-pal only scans to jpeg.

Usually I scan older or larger pictures with the Epson.  This way I am getting a really clean scan and I already have the image as a tiff.  This does take time but I can scan a few smaller pictures at a time and the scanner automatically finds the edges so there isn't a lot of cropping.  (I like to listen to different podcasts while doing the scanning since I don't have to think really hard about what I am doing and it makes the time go faster!)

I can scan wallet size or snapshots with the flip-pal and move much quicker through a stack.  I scanned over 300 pictures in just a few hours.  I do have rechargeable batteries since it does go through batteries.  After scanning each photo I store the digital file into a sort folder on my desktop for the next step.  Each photo does need to be cropped since the scan is of the entire glass, not just the picture.  I stack the printed photos so that they will be in the same order as the scanned images.  This does save some time when it comes to organizing the photos on my computer.