Need an automated method to scan a thousand photos

[shortylickens]

(did a search, found nothing relevant)


Have a thousand or more photos I dug out of storage. Would like to scan them all over the summer and put them on Picasa (am flexible about this). I dont want to pay for a professional service, just something relatively quick n easy at home so I can share with the family.

Have a Canon MF4270 which is suitable enough for my purposes. I just need software to simplify my life. Ideally I will hit one button for each photo, have it scan, crop and either upload or at least save on the computer. Keeping that process simple and fast will help me get through the project a lot sooner.

Looked at the Picasa program and I couldnt see anything for batch automated scanning. Also have Acdsee 15 and same thing, does not look like it would auto-crop, save and move on to the next all with one push of a button.
Also have Corel Paint Shop pro 5X and its clearly not up to the task.

As this project is important to me I'd be willing to pay for software that does the job right. Image quality is less important to me than speed and simplicity. Also I dont intend to be purchasing any new hardware. If it comes to that I'd just as soon pay for a professional scanning service.

 

[GWestphal]

Maybe use a service? I know there are companies that will scan 10,000 photos for about $800.

 

[shortylickens]

As I said, I shant be using a service except as a last result. And 800 bucks is WAY too much regardless.

 

[randomrogue]

I'd love to know this as well.

 

[corkyg]

Anything automated is going to incur significant hardware costs. Scancafe will do that job for $220. The same question popped up here:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3247692
I would just start doing it with my flatbed scanner, about 6 pics a scan, and move on. That would get the job done in about 167 scans. If you do 10 a day, you'll have it all done in about two weeks. I would do the scanning with Irfanview.

 

[Syborg1211]

If you saved the photos, did you save the negatives? It might be easier to use a negative scanner, and probably better quality.

 

[shortylickens]

If you saved the photos, did you save the negatives? It might be easier to use a negative scanner, and probably better quality.

They are NOT mine. They are grammas and moms and some misc people I dont even know.

All my photography has been with polaroids and digital cameras.

 

[Midwayman]

Any options to get the date from little burned in date marks and put that in the exif automatically when scanned to they organized better?

 

[shortylickens]

Any options to get the date from little burned in date marks and put that in the exif automatically when scanned to they organized better?

As I'll be scanning them in groups of 4 or 6 I'd say it doesnt matter. I will annotate the Picasa page for each scan with some basic info. But the people viewing these will know exactly...........




Nevermind. Mom just interrupted me. Said we are not doing this.

So now I will be sorting the loose photos into albums and putting them back in storage.

Thanks everyone for your help.

 

[Syborg1211]

You might insist she just cull through them for her favorites for you to scan. Printed photos are not forever, especially when sitting in storage, but then again that means more work for you.

 

[shortylickens]

You might insist she just cull through them for her favorites for you to scan. Printed photos are not forever, especially when sitting in storage, but then again that means more work for you.

I will go ahead and send the most important shots to a professional restoration service, but that wont be more than a dozen pics.

Everything else goes into an album, the albums into large rubbermaid bins, and the bins back into storage. (With silica of course).

 

[Gooberlx2]

As I said, I shant be using a service except as a last result. And 800 bucks is WAY too much regardless.

I dunno. Provided they can do a better job than I could with consumer grade hardware (that I'd probably only use just this once), and it saves me the huge hassle... $800 doesn't seem all that out of line for 10,000 images.

But I absolutely hate scanning in images, so it probably seems a better deal to me than most people.

 

[Anubis]

I dunno. Provided they can do a better job than I could with consumer grade hardware (that I'd probably only use just this once), and it saves me the huge hassle... $800 doesn't seem all that out of line for 10,000 images.

But I absolutely hate scanning in images, so it probably seems a better deal to me than most people.

its actually bot a bad deal and they ran a special over the 4th
i just set out 1200 negatives 35mm B&W and Color as well as a bunch of 220 B&W and some 4x5s

 

[Gooberlx2]

its actually bot a bad deal and they ran a special over the 4th
i just set out 1200 negatives 35mm B&W and Color as well as a bunch of 220 B&W and some 4x5s

I have got to get my Dad to do this.

 

[Gooberlx2]

its actually bot a bad deal and they ran a special over the 4th
i just set out 1200 negatives 35mm B&W and Color as well as a bunch of 220 B&W and some 4x5s

I have got to get my parents to do this. They have bazillions of slides, negatives, prints, etc. from their entire lives.

 

[Anubis]

the special they ran on the 4th was 25% off orders of 300$ or more, pretty sweet savings

if all you are doing is old color 35mm its really not that bad

if you need to scan med and large format B&W like i do it can get silly, i only sent them like 1/3rd of what i need to get digitized