Batch scanning / organising of my printed photos...ideas?

[Marcel]

I have literally a big box full of photos from my time on this earth (And my wife of course), that I want to basically scan in and digitise, for posterity.

I have a few questions, I plan on scanning them in with my Canon 1240 (Not the most expensive of scanners, granted, but not 'arf bad).

1 : What sort of software should I be looking at? I want to batch scan them. I could use Photoshop, and Import > Twain, scan, fiddle, save, Import etc etc, but that's going to be very time consuming on a photo per photo basis.
I want to scan them in one by one, have it save them under a generic, numbered filename, where I can categorise and sort them later.
Naturally alot of the photos are the same size, so I won't have to do too much fiddling in my scanner settings with the 'preview' option / resize etc.

2 : What file format would you recommend? Normally I'd go for a nice big fat 16 bit TIFF to be on the safe side, but with all these photos, I think that's gonna put a massive dent in my HD space . After scanning I plan to tweak and resave them.

3 : As a side question, can anyone recommend any organisational software? I did take a look at Picasa once, but it seemed a bit fidgety (didn't like the UI TBH), I may take another look if it's raved about enough....Bear in mind it's something I want to carry on through for future years, so I don't want my organised collection to not be understandable in 10 years, if that makes sense

So...onward and upward with some answers I really need to get alot of it out of the way this week, so I can print some shots out for my kids baby books, ready for christmas when I get to fill more sections in..lol

Regards

 

[Marcel]

Anyone?

Forgot to mention, these are your bog standard 7"x5" or 6"x4" prints.

 

[Steve]

I have not done much work in this area but tbh from what little I know I would have thought that you will need to attand to each scan as it is done to get the best results. I know it is time consuming and allot of hassel but if the pictures are important (and as thay are you children I am assuming so) than the extra time you spend at the scanning stage will return better results.

Crud in = Crud out

 

[Matt]

Adobe do a picture organizing thing but i dont know what its like

my cx6600 scans very well, one of my colleagues lost his wife and wanted his wedding photos duplicated and reprinted so i did that for him on that, imported to PS, tidied the colours, fixed a small blemish and reprinted, looked better than the original

 

[GfK]

Couple of points that may be applicable to your situation.

There is a program called ImageRobot. It was by Jasc (of Paintshop fame) and its for batch-processing photos. Useful tool, not free, not sure if its still available but you might have a look around for it.

Second, if you want a comparitively small, lossless file format, take a look at PNG (Portable Network Graphic). It has all the benefits of TIFF and JPG.

 

[RobertP]

I would guess its the scanner interface that is the decider on how you go about it. My scanner brings up the same interface for scanning whatever app calls it up. When I lift the lid PS starts by default and then goes to the scanner interface (although sometimes it all just crashes but thats another story).

I load something onto the scanner + click scan. Scanner whirrs and when done I can see the image appear in PS in the background behind the scanner interface window. Change pictures on the scanner, press scan. change picture, scan and so on. All the scans stack as open windows in the background.

Close the scanner interface and work through the open PS windows tweaking + saving + closing. Other than automating the tweaking (but could you do that?) I don't see what could be done to accelerate the process with a manually fed scanner.

I don't use any organising software but have also heard good things about the adobe photoalbum (or whatever its called)

 

[DJW]

In same manner as RobertP has described, I'm sure the interface for my Scanner allows one button processing to save scan straight to JPEG file (would have to double check manual if I can find it). You could then selectively PS the shots that are critical to you.

 

[stepheno]

I won't comments on the scanning - it seems pretty much covered and I think Robert made the main point. However, about photo-organising I have tried the lot :smilenod: and I have always come back to Picassa2. The UI takes a while but I have all my photos organised through it. Just give your files a meaningful name and date - eg I would use 20051217-canalwalk01.jpg. HTH.

regards