I scanned hundreds of old family photos last year fro Christmas presents to my 
siblings. Am continuing with more stuff right now and hope to have something 
for them this Christmas.

Like John, I have been very happy with Epson scanners. Mine is an Epson 
Perfection 2450 Photo. Unlike John, I use VueScan software which was 
recommended by someone(s) in the group. I have been very happy with it. 
Scanning photos, B&W, Color, 35mm, also some negatives and lots of newspaper 
articles, etc. Also use its OCR.  It's not too expensive ($39,95), they even 
have a free trial available. I found it to scan a lot faster than the Epson 
software for my scanner.

http://www.hamrick.com/

One thing, if you have a number of photos the same size you can set it to scan 
them about as fast as you can put a new one on the flatbed.

Last year I scanned 41 years of a club newsletter this way. Just named the 
output Vol x, Number y, page 1+. As fast as I could turn pages and replace a 
new one, it scanned, sometimes faster that me and I had to go back and 
straighten out where I was. Each new scan was named with n increase of 1 to the 
page number.

What I do with photos is , after culling, sort into stacks of specific topics 
or year, or person. Set the output with an appropriate name and start with 1+. 
After scanning, I go back and give better names to each photo.

It goes pretty fast but it still takes time. Actually the main problem is 
deciding which photos are worth scanning and in what order. Just do a "few" a 
day and eventually you'll get the job done.

Good luck and I hope you start earlier than I do when I decide to put together 
a group of scans to hand out Christmas.

Anne Cartwright




On Dec 12, 2009, at 10:48 PM, Brian ONeal wrote:

> I am now in possession of several decades worth of family pictures. Most less 
> than 5X7 in size. I can't really estimate how many, but it probably somewhere 
> close to two thousand pictures, possibly more.
> 
> I want to digitize them. Doing it as fast and as inexpensively as possible.
> 
> I am sure that some of you have done this at some point. 
> 
> How have you done it?
> Recommend a fast scanner?
> What software did you use?
> Tips or tricks you picked up along the way?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> Brian O'Neal


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