It’s officially spring!—the time of year to clean and declutter. Digitizing old photos is a great way to consolidate space while preserving old memories for years to come. If you’re like a lot of people, you have closets full of boxes of old photos and feel overwhelmed by their sheer volume. Maybe your photos are well organized, but you never look at them, since there are just so many. Maybe your photos are not organized at all, and you want an excuse to go through them and finally breathe a sigh of relief.
No matter what your photos look like in storage, take time this spring to digitize old photos, and keep your memories safe from harm, taking up less space, and organized for your convenience. You will not regret it.
How to Digitize Old Photos
Your best bet for digitizing old photos is visiting a professional media conversion company like Current Pixel. Though you could try to scan all your photos yourself, you can save a lot of time and money by putting your trust in an experienced photo scanning service by Current Pixel.
At Current Pixel, we absolutely love helping customers bring their memories to life by scanning photos to digital files and DVDs. However, we do have some tips for you to make your photo digitizing experience a positive one. Here are some steps you should take before bringing your photos into Current Pixel for scanning.
1. Make Sure Your Photos Are Clean & Removed from Casings or Albums
In order for Current Pixel to quickly and efficiently digitize your old photos, you need to make sure they are removed from photo sleeves, albums, frames, or mounts. Clean off the backs of photos in case of any glue or sticky residue from scrapbooking or framing. Taking the time to remove and clean off your photos will give you the opportunity to organize them as well, perhaps getting rid of any that you do not need or that are out of focus, underexposed, or overexposed.
2. Organize & Store Your Photos with Care
Cleaning your photos likely helped you organize them, but make sure your photos are in categories that you can remember or that are meaningful to you and place them in plastic or paper boxes, organizer boxes, or plastic zipper bags. Do not use any rubber bands to secure your photos, as they can break, especially if you are shipping photos to Current Pixel.
Photos of the same size should be stored together. Make sure you write labels for each photo category clearly on the container for your photos, or you can use index cards with tabs to provide a label for each separate group of photos. As long as the order and categorization of photos is clear to our technicians, any way you want to organize them is perfect.
3. Safely Secure Your Photos
Before bringing or shipping your photos to Current Pixel, make sure your photos are straight in their containers and are not liable to bend or shift in order during travel. Boxes that are too long or wide can cause photos to shift and disturb your categories. Using soft material to fill empty spaces works great—just like you would do when sending a fragile package. Check out this post for more information on how to organize and prepare your photos before sending them into Current Pixel.
4. Know Your Photos
Have an idea about how many photos you are planning to digitize to make sure you can estimate the cost of your scan. Current Pixel’s standard rates apply to photos from 2.5 x 3.5” up to 8 x 10”, while other photos will need to go on a flatbed scanner for an additional cost. Photos that are non-rectangular, too small, too large, delicate, bent, thick, or high DPI will also need to be scanned on a flatbed scanner. We will also need to charge extra for photos that cannot be safely removed from their containers.
As long as you are fully aware of the state of your photos and about how many you have, we should be able to scan them with no problems. In turn, we can provide you with modernized versions of your old photos, digitized to digital files or DVD that you can enjoy for generations to come and even share easily with family and friends!
If you’re interested in Current Pixel’s services, learn more about how to prepare your photos for scanning before turning them over to the team. For more information about how to digitize your old photos, visit or contact Current Pixel today!