Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

I realize that PS is a great program, but I have over 15,000 photo's that my family have gathered and now they want to preserve them. Some are photo's, some are slides, and some are negatives. Everyone wants to both digitize them, and enhance as needed. I guess I will be busy until 2041. What would you suggest for programs?

David283 Loc: Duluth,GA

I firmly tell you to not do it. Your family does not appreciate how much work this would be. 15,000 is ridiculous and some ruthless culling should be done. I would recommend that they cull to best 1000 photos and send them to LegacyBox. They scan them and make corrections and then return the originals with your choice of DVD or thumb drive. I have used them and have been very satisfied (I have all the equipment and programs to do it myself - BUT…).

therwol Loc: USA

You could probably do this in 1-2 years if you spend 8 hours a day on it without interruption. I started 7000 pictures 3 years ago. I don't have 8 hours a day to spend on it. Just the scanning took months to accomplish. I'm not even a quarter of the way through it, and after a while, the cleaning up the images becomes a chore. Seriously, the advice to do some culling is the best you'll get, even if you send out the work. If your family sat down at a table with 15,000 pictures in front of them, they might comprehend the magnitude of the work. At the very least, those who want these pictures should contribute to the cost of likely having it paid for unless you insist on being a martyr. To answer your question indirectly, I bought an Epson V800 scanner and also photographed some of my photos, and I'm just using Photoshop and Lightroom to improve my images. Someone else may know of some better software for this.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Serious and comprehensive photographic restoration is an art form in and of itself. For many years, at my studio, we offered this service to our clients. It requires copying of the original, production of a workprint, expert airbrush restoration and yet another comy of the work prints to enable print on a high-quality double-weight chloro=bromide paper. We would print and frame the restored image in the appropriate period style using toners and/or hand colouring. Lots of steps- internegatives, negative and positive retouching and polarized copying techniques.

Nowadays, scanning the original when possible, and restoring the digitized image requires fewer steps but a different set of skills.

1500 originals would be quite a task, just copying with a camera or scanning would rely on many hours of work. If the original is not damaged but slightly faded, a decent degree of restoration can be done simply by increasing contrast, adjusting brightness and saturation. Some spots, small cracks and surface damages can be easily cloned out. If, however, the is serious damage, this can be a tedious job that requires lots of skills and practice.

There is, however a software that can address some of the major damages and it is not terribly expensive to obtain. Here's a link:

https://pixbim.com/remove-objects-from-photos?fbclid=IwAR0GRctTCZGl_Vw-xRLjTPdGK5TAQJrX5LznYrAns3HOdMY0nMB

It is not touted as being absolutely perfect but I can see it as a great headstart on restoring a badly damaged image whereby you can tweak it up with some additional manual work.

Check it out.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

That is a task I would not take on. A modestly damaged image could take several hours to restore and correct, and even longer if you need to scan it.

Photoshop is an outstanding platform to use for photo restoration.

This website - https://www.retouchpro.com/ - is a trove of information.

The image below shows what I was given - a scan of a water damaged image - and the result after about hour of work.

Retouching requires OCD-level attention to detail, and a comprehensive familiarity with the tools and techniques available in Photoshop. The good thing is that once you get good at it, you can make decent money doing this. Good retouchers are few and far between. This was a relatively easy retouch.

(Download)


(Download)

Bbarn Loc: Ohio

This year I scanned a thousand or so slides dating from the 1950s to the early 1990s. I scanned them at a fairly low resolution.

I learned:
Most of the photos were not "good" photos.
Not many people were truly interested in the photos.
I kept the slides so the few photos of interest could be scanned at a higher resolution for restoration.
Even scanning that many slides at low resolution was a lot of work.

However, your situation may be different.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Many ways to do this but start by culling out 80% or more. Prioritize the heirloom family photos.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

No one in your family is going to look at all 15,000 photos. It's intrusive to drop that load on you.

When I started learning how to use postprocessing, I got my photopile up to 65,000 images. Included duplicates, different edits, and junk. It took me a couple months of free time to whittle the pile down to 18,000. And it still contains minimally useful photos.

Is someone in your family interested in the family genealogy? Get them to help. You can get them to select photos of your ancestors (maybe 2-10 of each, depending on how wide your genealogy gets into cousins and peripheral family).

Otherwise, it's your call. Just whizzing through the photos and picking out the best ones will take you a month of free time.

Organizing and documenting them adds to the job.

It's a family. Get them to pitch in.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Actually, my dad was into photography and computers even owning a TRS-80. I started with computers and remember using a VHS tape recorder for storage. My family is all over the world and we plan to all contribute to the effort with lots of hours already put in copying prints and such but unfortunately, that was started 15 years ago with vastly inferior technology.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Between the removal of creases and the ability to colorize it to a degree, this looks very promising for a start. It will give us a basis to determine which will be easy to finish corrections and which will sit on the back burner for awhile.

THANK YOU

david vt Loc: Vermont

Hi. I agree with all of the above that leans from don’t do it to extensive culling. We did some of this for my parents for couple of digital frames to help them with their Alzheimer’s as conversation starters, but it was a huge amount of work - much bigger than we had thought.

A friend had a suggestion: As your skills, time, and equipment are being treated without value, say you will do it, but you need $5 per photo for the equipment and processing costs, divided up among those whom want a copy of the finished files. 15K of photos would be an absurd $75K. Then have them start culling, and see how fast and far that list gets down to below 1000 photos!

If that seems like too much, price out how much 15K of photos would be from a commercial site

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Not no, but hell no. Don't do this. It will take a few years, and no time for anything else. As someone else started, cull, cull, and chill again, till you have 500-1000 of the best and send them out.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Thank you, Just signed up.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Actually, it will be hard to "prioritize" as there are a lot of different family members in the photo's and don't want to miss one person. Being able to add a photo to genealogy brings the family closer together.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

It is already a group effort from around the world. We all are into the genealogy and one branch of my family is back to Alexander the great. Wish I had a picture of him.....