3 Best Tips To Organize Your Old Family Photos

by Alex Melen on December 19, 2022

Family photos are an important part of our history and legacy. They can help us reminisce about the past and preserve memories for future generations. However, if you don't organize your old photos in a way that makes sense, they may end up sitting in a shoebox for years before anyone even looks at them again. Organizing your old family photos isn't difficult, but it does take some time and thoughtfulness. Follow these steps to organize your photo collection:

Sort Your Photos

To get started, sort your photos by date. This will help you see how old they are and organize them in chronological order. Once you've done that, start sorting your photos by event. If all of the photos are from one event, like a vacation or birthday party, put all of those together in one folder.

Next up is sorting by person who appears in each photo—that way, if there are multiple people in one photo, you can easily find them all together when looking for certain pictures later on (like baby photos). After that, sort by type of photo: Do you have black-and-white portraits? Color snapshots? Old film negatives? Old slides? A mix of formats? Now's the time to separate any duplicates or similar images so that each picture stands out as unique among its counterparts.

Last but not least comes size! You might end up with some small 4x6 prints mixed in with larger 8x10s or even bigger ones! Use this opportunity to make sure every frame has its place before mounting and framing them.

Choose A Way To Digitize Your Collection

There are two main methods for making digital copies of old photos. They are scanning and using a digital camera. The best way to determine which plan is right for you depends on what equipment you have, how much time you want to invest in the project, and how many photos need to be digitized (you can only scan so many at a time).

Scanned images generally look better than those taken by your camera's built-in lens or phone camera—they're sharper, clearer, and don't suffer motion blur like their moving counterparts. However, they can take longer if there are many photos because each one needs to be individually scanned—and depending on what kind of scanner you use it may not work well with certain kinds of photo paper (such as glossy).

Digital cameras can also take blurry pictures if not held still enough during exposure; however, this problem can be avoided by using a tripod or setting self-timer mode on your camera so that it has plenty time between shots before taking another one without any movement from yourself!

Don't Be Afraid To Dispose Of Damaged Photos

Feel free to destroy damaged or too-damaged photos for digitization. You can always take a photo of the photo and save it digitally, but this is not always an option. If you have a lot of very old photos that are being stored in albums, consider destroying some of them if they're too damaged to be scanned in order to free up space for other old family photos.

Conclusion

While it's true that you may never find the right time to organize your old family photos, it's easier than you may think. All you need is time, patience, and care when organizing them so that they can be preserved for many generations to come.

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