photo storage

[raphelam]

this is not really on topic i dont think, so i apologise for that
but this board seems to be the best for giving advice on photography of any kind so i thought i would give it a go

basically, i have been scanning my old family photos
i think i have the scanning end of it working well enough now, but i am not particularly happy about just putting the photos back into their old paper envelope things
a lot of them are falling to bits now and these are photos i dont want to lose

there are thousands of pictures so i dont think picture albums would be feasible
im just wondering what other way could there be to store them

thanks for any help you guys can give me
and if you want to close this for being way off topic well then fair enough, i dont mind

[simonpaul64]

Sadly they will deteriorate - it's inevitable. Depending on the paper and the way they are stored they will last 20 - 100 years - big variation. I guess you could in theory preserve them longer still if money isn't an issue. However you are doing the right thing in scanning them, because you can have new prints made and find permanent ways top store and access the digital versions whenever you like. After all - what is precious is the image, not the paper the image sits on. There are some things you can do to make sure the photos are scanned and restored well - and that should be your focus - i.e. don't just scan them, think about restoring them. There are some members here that do that professionally - it is probably worth paying to get that done.

With the original prints themselves, if they are important here is an interesting link with lots of info and advice...

http://photoheritage.net/article/

Good luck with that!

Simon

[raphelam]

thanks for that link, it looks like there is some useful stuff on there

i know i cant make the photos last forever, but i cant just let them disintegrate either
i mean, hard drives can fail and dvds can get scratched so having a hardcopy is like having another backup
i found a website that sells archival boxes and acid free paper so i think i might be sorted now

[raphelam]

if only i had bookmarked that site that sells the boxes
now i cant find it again
that was clever wasnt it?