How many photos do you have?

My DD made calendars with the photos I took on vacation and with pictures of my family, she used a special calendar maker photo-calendar-software.com to do that. It is a nice way to store your photos because you will be sure that every picture will be looked at. The only thing is that thre are not so many photos you can place in one calendar, haha

Personally I think they are more likely to last and be passed on if printed & in labelled albums. I can’t bear boxes of loose photos with no date and no idea who the people are. And if on computers or cds they will surely be lost in years to Come when technology moves on. I go through all the pics on my computers each year and print the best to put in albums (digitally printed books these days) then delete the rest. There are far too many which I never look at on the computer but the albums do come out and get looked at from time to time.

They are in two underbed boxes, along with some empty new albums - a 'one day' (never) project for editing/organising. Then a lot on my laptop and phone too!

I store digitally and also use albums. I love printed photos, each is stored in an album and labelled. They often come out for a memory lane trip, for questions of the ‘Mum when did I....?’ variety and so the grandchildren can laugh at their parents younger selves. This might sound odd but I also think how useful they will be if either of us get dementia,

Gosh, I am so impressed with you all.
I wouldn’t know where to begin, you are all so super organised.

No, they won't want them. I would go through and thin them out. Most of ours are digital now but I don't suppose anyone will want them either. I have had a few photo books made they are worth thinking about if you have some digital pics

Ive got thousands, all stored digitally and tagged so you can search by date, person or event. I'm a keen photographer and they're a snapshot in time of my life.

When we are altogether we often put some pictures of an event we're remembering on the Tv so we can all have a giggle about outfits, hair dos and loved ones long gone.

So we do look at them. I regularly print out my favourites for frame son my walls and share some also with far flung family.

Mine are well stored both in the cloud and on a backup hard drive.

For those scanning photos, please make sure you have a good back up. I have lost a lot of digital photos from phone and laptop when they died suddenly. I admit I'm still not good at backups. I need to sort out uploading to a cloud.

Looking at my wedding photos recently and realised that most of the guests had passed away!

I'm a great photo archiver and it's a bit of a hobby!
I think it's important to sort them a) family history b) family c) places - this could be family homes, places of work etc. Write on them all names, date and place if possible. These are the ones to keep safely.
Others are probably disposable like friends and holiday snaps. Keep them separate and throw out any not important to you. Make it clear they may be discarded after your lifetime.
The first lot can be scanned and saved as digital. Scan at 300dpi for a good result. Negatives are better than photos for scanning as the colours are perfect, although you can adjust colour, brightness and contrast if you practice with the software. I've scanned all mine and thrown all the snapshots out but I've kept proper studio photos, school photos and old sepia photos (before 1950). Scanned photos should be filed in various folders and backed up. To avoid loss in the event of a fire or flood it's a good idea to store the back up (memory stick) at a different address.
I have a few thousand photos scanned and saved, and if I want to print them for any reason the results will be better than the old photos (if you use good paper and printer settings).

Scan onto computer and back up on external device PLEASE PLEASE make a record of who and where the photo is of and date taken.Have inherited many many photos from parents to find some very interesting/lovely photos from early 1900 and much later, with NO idea who they are. Mam and Dad gone so can not ask them!!!!

I scanned all of the albums onto my PC a couple of years ago, burned ( burnt?) them onto CDs and gave one each to the AC that way if any get damaged or thrown away they have copies.
All old pics of ancestors I’ve uploaded onto Ancestry UK website, again, if any are lost or damaged they are safe.
Any recent digital photos are up on a cloud somewhere, floating I imagine .....

How often do any of us really look at photos? I have certain ones on my walls and shelves, of weddings, AC when small, and GC growing up, well I often pause and look at them, but ones in albums, very rarely. The age we live in now, we just don’t need photos the same as it used to be.

Oh Esther1 ‼️

Would it not be better to spend some hours this winter, going through the lot and keeping only your most favourites. That way, you are more likely to have a look at them in the future.

Ask yourselves, how often really do you open all those storage boxes and lug out those photographs to look at them?

I have hundreds and I have whittled the ‘holiday, scenic no interest to anyone but me’ photos out I still have hundreds about 30 albums and 4 big boxes I also have a couple of thousand on my computer I hope they don’t all get chucked out but they might ?

I spent the best part of one winter in my spare time painstakingly scanning all the photographs in my albums (about 40 of ‘em) so that they are on my computer. Every photo I ever had, and now of course all my pictures are taken and stored on my phone (and backed up). And the count is - please don’t gasp ..... 13 thousand pictures.

Important to write on the back of photos of dead relatives- names and how they are related. My mother did this and though she’s now dead, I can identify relatives.

But, like others I’ve culled a lot of old photos over the years- all scenic ones in particular. I go through them every now and then and get rid of more. I have proper family albums from when children were born till adult- after that they could keep own photos.

I have a few photographs of my grandfather and his brothers & sisters.
It seems to have been the thing to have your portrait taken & then use them like postcards. I came across one yesterday when sorting out a box, that my Grandpa had written to his sister in 1907, when he would have been 22.
It makes it extra special to have his handwriting, and the address where they all lived, on it.

I wish my ancestors and family had kept some photos, I’m doing the Family Tree and would love to have some of my Grandfathers and their families.

I have photos of long-dead ancestors who Mum would say, “Oh, that’s Great Aunt Betsy” or similar. Now mum is no longer here, no idea who they are or how related. This thread makes me realise a cull is required!

That sounds a good idea FearlessSwiftie, I may look at that, but I’m not very technical, may need to rope in my youngest daughter, or one of the grandchildren!

I’ve been thru our albums and taken out the photos of people and dumped the rest. The children really won’t want photos of Crete1994 etc. The ones I’ve kept are filed by year and now need to go in a nice big album. Labelled. I enjoyed going thru the albums and scanned and emailed photos on the way. I knew if I left all the albums they would just get ditched. We’ve got rid of 400 cds and 1500 books ( quite a lot still to go). The more you leave, the less it will be properly sorted thru.

We cleared out father+step mothers house last year as well as helping sister-in-law to clear out her house.

Ended up with lots of albums + loose photos. We have nowhere to store them. Family were over for a family funeral and we ask them to take what they want. A few photos were chosen but it was a drop in the ocean. Like us they had little room to store but wanted a keepsake.

What we selected was enough to fill one album. We set that as the limit.

They show a snapshot over the years. It can easily be passed on if any of the family want more.

I have lots of them, lately I've been keeping my photos in digital form and I also digitized the albums I had. Digital photos are easier to save here and there, the most important thing is that I can save all of my pictures (school and university yearbooks, photos of my friends and family, etc.) and be sure that won't disappear but the problem is that I never re-watch them. When there were the albums I at least took them and looked through them sometimes. So now I decided to make videos out of my digital photos with the help of photo slideshow software called Smartshow. Thus I have 1 video instead of 20 photos, which is much more convenient.

Going through all mine again at the moment - I’ve got most of them stored now in boxes. I’ve decided to make a smaller box for each of the AC with some of their lovely childhood photos - the rest I’ll keep whittling down every so often and just keep a few.