What to do with pictures?

[TinkOhio]

We downsized after retirement and now have many boxes of 35+ years worth of photos. We need to downsize our picture collection as well, and have no idea where to start. How did you decide which pictures to keep when your children grew up? And how did you store the photos that you did keep? We have no problem with making digital copies, but we would still like to keep some paper photos for backup. Our children live far away, and it’s difficult choosing which photos are more
special. They all bring back such precious memories! Any tips for saving money with this emotional process?

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[comicguy]

Not at retirement yet but trying to downsize things now (very slowly) and pictures seem to be the hardest. We have photoboxes full of pics! They currently sit on several shelves but like you said. how to decide? This is one of the troube areas that we have no idea at this time what to do with. Hoping to hear suggestions from others!

 

[DL1WDW2]

Definitely keep any photos of your children sitting on Santa’s lap…
My grandchildren refused nowadays !
Stranger Danger I guess

Also anything that would show a yearly Growing up like Standing in front of a Xmas Tree or celebrating NEw Years Eve hopefully taken w/“ Year “every year!
Birthdays especially blowing out the candles

Easter. Valentine Day Fourth of July Halloween
Summer fun playing in snow
Playing w/ favorite toy
First day of Kindergarten
Family vacations…
pictures of Grandmother & Grandfather
Marriages
Any train trips, cruises, trips to remember

The worst part is remembering the years to write on back
Good advice for all photographers

My NY Resolution is to transfer photos onto present I just received , transferring to a digital screen that has a frame and will rotate thru the photos whenever I turn it on …
Nice to have by the kitchen sink

I keep praying for a blizzard but living in Florida Need an excuse to do this or maybe to avoid doing this! Haha


And if you have vintage photos of Disneyland or Walt Disney World
Keep them and post them for us to enjoy, please

 

[BlueGreen5]

Since you've digitized everything, what you need to remember throughout this process is that all you are throwing away is a cheap print that can always be re-printed if you end up missing it. You're not throwing away a memory, you're not disparaging the persons in the picture, and you're not even getting rid of the picture itself. My father went through this recently and it was that mindset that really helped him move this along.

 

[Jimsig]

After digitizing buy a digital frame or more (for different rooms, even one for each kid etc.) and you can see those pictures all the time.

There are many different types of frames and sizes to choose from. I have this one for all my Disney photos. Disney Classic Mickey Mouse Photoshare WiFi Digital Photo Frame. You can choose from and 8 or 10 inch frame.

 

[DL1WDW2]

That’s not correct…something about Jpeg makes printing from digital image poor quality, I think. Maybe I’m wrong
Can anybody explain ?

My family has New Big Screen TV and can display w/ holiday music for our get-together playing in background

 

[DL1WDW2]

After digitizing buy a digital frame or more (for different rooms, even one for each kid etc.) and you can see those pictures all the time.

There are many different types of frames and sizes to choose from. I have this one for all my Disney photos. Disney Classic Mickey Mouse Photoshare WiFi Digital Photo Frame. You can choose from and 8 or 10 inch frame.

Love the option to make Disney borders or add Disney Character !
Thanks …I almost wish it was available without the dark wood frame .

 

[DL1WDW2]

What happens in future if you lose the iCloud or Bluetooth or forget to increase “ storage”
Is digital truly for forever?

 

[Skywalker3]

This thread is inspiring me to start thinking more about digitizing a lot more pictures, having backup to all these prints.
After I cleaned out my parents' house, and brought all their pictures back, I was overwhelmed by a lot of it. Plenty of days, it was just too emotional to tackle. But finally got in the 'zone' as I say, and spent 1 full day, all day, and half of another, in the room with those 2 completely full boxes of pictures. Got rid of all duplicates, lots of blurry pictures, random pictures of trees, etc. etc. It was hard to get rid of black/white pictures of my parents' friends, but there was nothing written on the backs, and nobody to ask who these people were. I still have some that I think are family, but almost all of my older first cousins have now passed away, so nobody to really ask about them. So PLEASE date and identify people in the pictures! I need to take my own advice, and do the same. My kids wont' know who anyone is.
Good luck with the task. I think the process evokes all kinds of emotions, good, bad, wistful, sad, happy memories, so it can be a lot for sure.
I do want to digitize all of them, or a lot more, AND get many off the computer, or at least make sure the kids know how to access everything.

 

[_19disnA]

something about Jpeg makes printing from digital image poor quality, I think. Maybe I’m wrong
Can anybody explain ?

Depends on the original format. I would assume pictures from 20-30+ years ago were printed from negatives since digital photography didn't exist back then. IF the OP still has the negatives (unlikely), then use those to make the best quality images. Scanning printed pictures to create a digital image will result in less resolution and be dependent upon the type of equipment used. The resulting image will never have greater resolution then whatever original format you used. While this might be good for printing of older pictures, it provides less opportunity to crop/enlarge a picture. I don't believe the specific file format used to store photographs matters nearly as much as what resolution you stored them.

If taking digital pictures with your own camera, always choose the highest available resolution for best quality image. Store at the highest resolution possible to get the best quality pictures.

 

[Jimsig]

What happens in future if you lose the iCloud or Bluetooth or forget to increase “ storage”
Is digital truly for forever?

Whenever backing up to a cloud based storage you should always back up irreplaceable things to physical media such as a thumb drive or external hard drive. Best thing is those don't take up a lot of space. You usually can load your pics on a thumb drive and use that as the storage for the frame so you don't have to deal with cloud based storage if you don't want to.

 

[_19disnA]

I would always want to keep irreplaceable pictures on some sort of media you have physical control over (like a thumb drive, CD's or external hard drive). ANY 3rd party online service can suddenly go out of business, lose data from hackers, etc. Best to store the backup somewhere else in the event of a fire/flood at your home. Having it online is not a bad idea IN ADDITION to whatever physical media storage you might have.

 

[Miffy]

Whenever backing up to a cloud based storage you should always back up irreplaceable things to physical media such as a thumb drive or external hard drive. Best thing is those don't take up a lot of space. You usually can load your pics on a thumb drive and use that as the storage for the frame so you don't have to deal with cloud based storage if you don't want to.

Someday in the perhaps not-so-distant future, no one except an antique computer collector or museum might have the ability to read a thumb drive.

 

[_19disnA]

The thumb drives I have plug into the USB port of my PC. I would assume they will sell adapters if the USB port changes to something else in the future.

 

[Miffy]

The thumb drives I have plug into the USB port of my PC. I would assume they will sell adapters if the USB port changes to something else in the future.

Try and find someone to read a 5.25" floppy disk. That's what it's going to be like to read a thumb drive in the future. Not tomorrow or next year, but someday.

 

[_19disnA]

I don't see these as related. The USB port is a standard connection for MANY types of devices such as external hard drives, printers, wireless mouse, etc. I don't see the USB port going away anytime soon.

 

[PollyannaMom]

We downsized after retirement and now have many boxes of 35+ years worth of photos. We need to downsize our picture collection as well, and have no idea where to start. How did you decide which pictures to keep when your children grew up? And how did you store the photos that you did keep? We have no problem with making digital copies, but we would still like to keep some paper photos for backup. Our children live far away, and it’s difficult choosing which photos are more special. They all bring back such precious memories! Any tips for saving money with this emotional process?

Thanks for any suggestions!

This one will probably not be on my downsizing list. My solution would be to build a bigger shelf.

 

[tvguy]

Of course, you can scan them to a drive or upload them to the cloud, but us a big part of the value of those photos is the actual original photo that you can hold in your hands. We have photos going back to a family portrait of my Grandparents with my dad and Aunt from 1911. So we have hung onto all the photos because they are just fun to look at, although some have been uploaded to Ancestry.
Heck, we still haven't yet picked up all my wife's childhood photos, all slides that he dad had. He passed 20 years ago, but his wife wanted to keep them, and she passed 2 1/2 years ago, but they are 2,000 miles away and the estate still isn't settled. We have purchased a digital slide converter for when we get them.
We HAVE digitized all our VHS and VHS-C home movies onto DVDs, a drive and uploaded to a cloud because machines to play them back won't be available forever. We were lucky to find a brand new VHS/DVD burner combo and still have a working VHS machine and VHS-Converter.

 

[TinkOhio]

What happens in future if you lose the iCloud or Bluetooth or forget to increase “ storage”
Is digital truly for forever?

This is something that worries me.

 

[_19disnA]

There are things you can do to minimize you risk of losing images stored by a 3rd party as mentioned about. However, printed pictures can also fade in time. The chemicals used to print older color photos do NOT last forever. Even with B&W photos, how/where you store them will impact how long they last. There are trade-offs associated with whatever means you use to store older pictures. At least with a digital format, you can reprint those older photos anytime you want. If a really old photo fades, there really isn't anything you can do to restore that.