Old pictures into iPhoto

[Flynnstone]

What is an efficient way to scan or get older media typically on 4x6 into iPhoto?

I have a bunch of pictures in photo albums that I want to get into iPhoto.
I just scanned a bunch using my Canon MX860 all in one. It was a pain. For this task I am making a DVD for my father in law birthday. It would have been easier if they are in iPhoto.

On a related task, my mother has boxes and boxes of slides. We need to preserve those too.

Is it good enough to just scan from the picture ? or should I try to find the negatives?
What are reasonable settings for scanning pictures, 300 DPI?

Any help will be appreciated.

 

[skybolt]

I scanned about 5,000 old family photos into iPhoto using a Canon LiDE 60 scanner and had great success. It has a "Multi-Scan" feature that will allow you to place several photos on the platen at one time and scan into separate files. Works great. I'd use the highest DPI available - I thinkmost of mine were 300, maybe 600. You would need a different scanner to scan negatives, though. This one does not. For slides, we found that Costco (and I'm sure many other places) will scan them to a disk for you for a nominal price. Very satisfied with the results. Would probably also work with negatives, too.

Suggestions: Organize your photos before you start scanning -- set up by date, place, or whatever makes sense to you. As I saved them, I named them consecutively (1, 2, 3, etc.) so that the order would stay as I had organized it (dates were very important to me). Scan in smaller batches into appropriate folders on your desktop and then import into iPhoto. Once there, you can adjust the name, date, etc. and do any cleanup you want. Getting them organized first saved me a LOT of time and trouble. Also, I found that if one scans B&W photos as B&W, sometimes they do not come out. I left my scan settings to color and all went very well.

Good luck!

 

[ftaok]

For this task I am making a DVD for my father in law birthday. It would have been easier if they are in iPhoto.

On a related task, my mother has boxes and boxes of slides. We need to preserve those too.

Is it good enough to just scan from the picture ? or should I try to find the negatives?
What are reasonable settings for scanning pictures, 300 DPI?

For a DVD, scanning the 4x6 photos directly should be sufficient. Scanning negatives will involve extra work (converting from negative to positive) for every photo. As for dpi, I would think that 300 dpi should be more than sufficient for DVD viewing. A 4x6 at 300 dpi will give you an 1800x1200 picture ... way more than 720x480.

For your mom's slides, do you have a slide holder for your scanner? Also, when scanning slides, the actual surface is slightly above the platen of the scanner. I've read where you need to adjust the focus setting so that it knows to focus a little bit above the platten.

 

[MisterMe]

...

What are reasonable settings for scanning pictures, 300 DPI?

Any help will be appreciated.

Scan your pictures to the highest resolution that your scanner can achieve. Here's why:

Nobody ever wants to do less with their pictures.
You may think that a 4 x 6 scanned at 300 dpi looks great. However, a relative sees the picture and wants you to print a 6 x 9 copy of it. A friend wants her ex-husband cut out and and the picture recropped to 5 x 8.

The picture files scanned at 300 dpi will just not cut it if you want to satisfy all of your friends and family members. You will have to rescan at higher resolution. It is fun to scan your pictures the first time. It is a chore to scan them a second time.

Avoid the chore. Scan pictures at your highest resolution. You will not regret it.

 

[Flynnstone]

A 4x6 at 300 dpi will give you an 1800x1200 picture ... way more than 720x480.

This is roughly equivalent to 2 megapixel (300 DPI).
What is equivalent resolution of a 4x6 ? 600 DPI?
300 DPI is fine for a DVD, but in the future I will likely goto 1080P HD quality.
And as MisterMe says, you only want to do it once ...

Also what format JPEG, TIFF, JPEG2000, PNG ...? JPEG good enough?

 

[ftaok]

This is roughly equivalent to 2 megapixel (300 DPI).
What is equivalent resolution of a 4x6 ? 600 DPI?
300 DPI is fine for a DVD, but in the future I will likely goto 1080P HD quality.
And as MisterMe says, you only want to do it once ...

Also what format JPEG, TIFF, JPEG2000, PNG ...? JPEG good enough?

At 600 dpi, you're going to get 4x the overall number of pixels (basically 2*2). So you're looking at 3600x2400 or 8.6MP.

If 1080p is what you're looking for, 320 dpi will give you 1920 along the x-axis. So if you want a little extra for oversampling, scan at 400 or 450 dpi and you'll be more than covered for a standard slide show. Do it at 600dpi and you'll have enough for some extreme Ken Burns zooming.

In the end, it's up to you to determine if the extra time and HDD space is worth it.

As for format ... I really can't answer that. I would suspect that a lightly compressed JPEG would be OK. For the truely important pictures, maybe save them in TIFF or PNG.

 

[Flynnstone]

Thanks ftaok.

Does anyone use fine renaming programs?
Or how to name the file recommendations?
How to control the dates. Do I change the date of file creation to match the date of picture? How do I get iPhoto to "think" the picture is from the date the picture is taken?

 

[Keebler]

Thanks ftaok.

Does anyone use fine renaming programs?
Or how to name the file recommendations?
How to control the dates. Do I change the date of file creation to match the date of picture? How do I get iPhoto to "think" the picture is from the date the picture is taken?

I personally use name mangler.

http://www.manytricks.com/namemangler/

great little app. it's probably an unnecessary step b/c i end up importing my pics into Aperture and I can rename them there, but I like to have the base files (which are backed up before going into AP) with a date.

Not sure how to trick Iphoto in thinking they were just taken b/c the metadata will show it was just scanned.

People do it different ways, but I name mine by year/month/date then sequentially (ie. 2009-09-30_001) etc... Then you can tag your photos with keywords (I think Iphoto has keywords?) ie. by birthday, person etc..

As for the slideshow, only advice I have is don't go nuts on the extras - transitions and fancy stuff. Like weddings filmed in the 80s/early 90s, it will look cheesy as heck in the future with cheesy graphics and such.

I create slideshows for clients often and the biggest rule I follow is:

"Let the photos speak for themselves"

Use the Ken Burns transition and simply cross dissolve.

Nothing annoys me more than seeing a slideshow with stars, page flips and too many transitions. Make it consistently simple and let those amazing photos speak for themselves and let the viewers form their own memories rather than some digital transition force them to think differently or worse, make them think, "Wow...what a cool transition" - instead of "Wow....I really remember the day I caught that massive fish back in 1974" etc..etc..

Good luck!
Keebler

 

[Flynnstone]

Thanks Keebler.

At present, I have 1 transistion - shuffle.
I do the "Ken Burns" to draw attention to the subject. Which happens to be my father in law in this case.
Mostly looks good so far.