How do you keep photos?

Are your photos kept inside clear plastic sleeves in the albums? Mine were until a friend told me that photos and paperwork should not be kept in these wallets for long periods. That may be your problem.

Jenny
You could scan them. Then they are there forever.

Sarnia

Are your photos kept inside clear plastic sleeves in the albums? Mine were until a friend told me that photos and paperwork should not be kept in these wallets for long periods. That may be your problem.

Yes, I keep them inside these sleeves. That is probably the answer, thank you!

petra

Jenny
You could scan them. Then they are there forever.

I thought about it, too. It's just that I'd love to have and preserve them in physical form.

Another vote for scanning them, If they're already rather faded, some scanning software can restore them too. You can always print out a copy.

If there are particular photos that are special to you why not get reprints done by either One vision imaging or Loxley Colour? They produce top quality images which really last and do not fade. They can scan your original if you don't have a negative.

I've started to make a yearly photobook. Have done it on line for the past three years. Its like a photo diary of the year. As well as the usual type of photo, I include a page of photos of my garden during that year and a Christmas decoration page. If we've been to a concert or a play I either include photos if possible or, if not, a couple of advertising pictures/posters from the Internet. I add comments and some dates. Its lovely and its fun making it. Then they sit on a bookshelf without taking up the room that albums do. We do a separate one every couple of years for the holidays. I'm going to be doing the 2020 yearbook soon.

Many of our photos from the late 70's/early 80's were fading. DH has taken self-isolating as an opportunity to scan all our photos, and MIL's photos which we inherited when she died, onto a hard drive. He still can not bring himself to throw away photos which have family members on them so has stored them in neat storage boxes which hold 700 photos. All the Albums have gone, the boxes take up far less space and it has freed up much needed space in cupboards.

I’ve got about 15 albums, and family home videos ?

I photographed all my old photos. I kept the ones of the AC’s and bundle them up to give to them and shredded and binned the rest.
My phone is backed up to my laptop so if my phone gets lost I still have them.
The picture quality is quite good on my phone.
?

I scanned all of our photos 8 years ago. I had just had bunion surgery on both feet so was confined to the bed for a couple of weeks. Best thing I ever did, they are now stored on the computer in folders in date order, it’s so lovely to be able to access them easily. We bought a scanner as we had hundreds of slides from the 70’s, no more using a slide viewer or showing them on the wall! The scanner now does the rounds in our village, well worth the outlay.

My DH has always used scrapbooks to keep photos in, that way he can write about each photo. I appear about halfway through the 1st one! It's a fantastic record of our and our children's lives!

crazygranny

If there are particular photos that are special to you why not get reprints done by either One vision imaging or Loxley Colour? They produce top quality images which really last and do not fade. They can scan your original if you don't have a negative.

I'll have to think about it, thanks for the idea!

Toadinthehole

I’ve got about 15 albums, and family home videos ?

Almost same with me

Magrithea

My DH has always used scrapbooks to keep photos in, that way he can write about each photo. I appear about halfway through the 1st one! It's a fantastic record of our and our children's lives!

Wow that's really a wise move. Scrapbooking is a great way to keep memories.

CamPAnn - please could you tell me what brand scanner you bought? We haven’t had much luck using our cheap printer to scan ours and as I have about half a closet filled with random photos, it might be worth investing in a useable separate scanner.

Oh gosh I’m afraid I have thousands of photos in large suitcases, Sadly the majority of them will probably be thrown after my days as there are far to many.

When my mum passed away a few years ago I inherited boxes of photos! I spent ages sorting through them and eventually scrapbooked them with annotation - to pass on to my daughter one day. I also have them stored digitally. Hope that helps.

One of my hobbies is memory albums. I buy acid and lignin free albums available online or in W h smiths and use acid & lignin free papers and embellishments to put the photographs onto. These will last for at least 100 years in albums. The old type of plastic sleeve album destroys photos over the years fading them yellow as well. The way I do it is so I can add a memory to the photos or crop them and at least add a name or date and then hopefully my albums can be passed down generations. My son and his family love looking through the albums I’ve created and friends and family love them as gifts too. When my parents passed away in recent years I discovered a huge box of all the old type of digital (sorry memory lapse ?) that my father used with his projector so I had them all put on disc as they were of us as children with our parents that I hadn’t seen in years. I got them printed out in big batches and made up albums for my siblings and nieces and nephews putting relevant information with quite a lot of the photos. They all loved them especially my brother’s family who live in the States and can’t remember much about their grandparents because they went when very young. They now have access to their ancestors.

Magrithea your husband is a diamond! I too, have been going through photo albums and finding old photos in odd places, but 97% of them have no writing on the back and it is making me so frustrated. I often figure out the approximate date by identifying things in the background, but how I wish I had written on them, or in the album at the time! My photos are stored on my phone and then 'magically or mysteriously' uploaded to my Amazon Prime account and also my Google account. And I cannot for the life of me figure out how to then access those photos for use in making a photo book. I gave up the project I had intended for my daughter's upcoming 40th birthday, but will find someone, a help line or however, to assist me in completing this project for the new year. Much swearing has taken place.

Since Ive been digital, they are all online!!

Yes another hoarder of photos here. Apart from fading (?) the old albums were getting very tatty. I had idea suggested here of doing a photobook for my mother's 100th birthday. I have kept going since and working my way thru the albums with various themes. Then they wont seem so precious. In recent years I had dumped a lifetime of negative films. I use a simple printer to do scans direct (use bluetooth) onto tablet and then can access them for photobook setup. The quality of some of the original pics is not great so do not take to being enlarged/trimmed but still worth doing. I can always take the digital copy to a decent shop for reprints or even the online print company that does the photobooks.

There is a free app called ‘unfade’ which is free and easy to install. What it does is it uses your camera to take pictures of the photographs but it also lines them up correctly for you in seconds, much quicker than scanning them on your computer. Then you can store them on your phone and transfer them to your computer if you want to and reprint.

Photos should be covered in tissue paper between pages.