The best photo scanner options to digitise old photos

We all have old printed photos sitting in albums or in boxes in cupboards that we would really love to digitise. But which photo scanner should you choose?
In this video Amanda Littlecott The Photo Organiser give you the lowdown of the range of scanners that are open to you so you can truly understand what is out there and what is right for you and your photo collection.

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
01:29 - Option 1 Phone Apps: Photomyne
03:48 - Option 2: High Speed Photo Scanner: Epson FastFoto
05:50 - Option 3: Flatbed Photo Scanner - Epson Perfection & Expression Ranges
08:06 - Option 4: Camera Scanning
10:40 - Option 5: Get a professional to scan them
11:34 - What Next?

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Are you struggling to actually start organising all your photos and videos, don't know where to start I have put together a FREE simple straight forward QUICK START GUIDE TO ORGANISING YOUR PHOTOS click through and I will see you there!

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MY GO-TO PHOTO-SORTING TOOLS
SORTING TOOLS

DUPLICATE FINDING

FOLDER SORTING

REDATING & RENAMING

KEYWORDING

PEOPLE TAGGING

DOWNLOAD FROM APPLE PHOTOS

DVD CONTENT EXTRACTION
Got a DVD that won't give up its content try out CDRoller

VIDEO FORMAT CONVERSION

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES
My favourites include

EXTERNAL DVD DRIVES

SHARING TOOLS

BACKING-UP

Find a Professional Photo Organiser to help you

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CONNECT WITH ME

[amandalittlecott]

Which scanner do you use to digitise your photos? I would love to hear about them...😁

[Dubinvero]

Thanks for a very good overview of the hard copy scanning alternatives. You were a little kind to the time and effort required for the flatbed scanner.
I used to use the Epson Perfection 4800 flatbed scanner before I purchased the Epson FastFoto 640 the week it was released. The FastFoto is a great timesaver and does not damage the photos.
I think a video of your detailed FastFoto process and settings would be very popular with your subscribers.

[AndrewWatson]

Are you planning to do a video on dedicated negative scanners? I think is the best way to scan your photos.

[davidplate]

Great video. Thanks. How does scanning on a multifunction printer compare with a dedicated flatbed scanner? I have an older Epson WF 3640 that prints, copies, and scans. It can scan at 600 dpi and has a photo setting. The few photos I've scanned to jpegs seemed to turn out well. It's just pretty slow at scanning. It came out in 2014.

[lyndonthejohnson]

Thank you very much for the illustrated, systematic overview of this topic!

[Lia_T]

I've used lots of methods over the years, often depending on the photos and where I was at the time. For instance, my mother lives in another country so when I visited I used my DSLR and a stand to photograph a large number of her photos but then took the rest to a photography place that offered a service like you do. They put the photos on a DVD and they were excellent quality. My own were fine too but they needed more work to get them sorted and saved. Since I already use Adobe products that's not too much of an issue. I have also used my flatbed scanner when at home. It has a lot of features to capture and adjust photos, name them and save in several formats. But I didn't have a negative scanner, so I bought one separately and have used that for slides and negatives. I use Adobe scan on my tablet or phone for capturing images of documents and clippings. Also for scanning music that has been fine as well. You can adjust white balance, straighten and do spot removal etc. and it saves to Adobe Cloud which is useful. Being a family historian it's often been my job to document events, past and present, so I'm never without a camera. I've ended up investing in a NAS to handle all my storage needs as well as several hard drives as backups. Not a job for the fainthearted or time-deprived!

[blacksheep]

I bought the V600 for digitizing all my old family photos 🤞

[dougmichaelroossien]

interesting few videos I've seen so far...thank you. I am a songwriter and actually have a song about those kodak memories and polaroid moments ...Some one from Ireland produced it for me...(Called "Only just a picture") ...so I think I found a good person here to follow. I was wondering id you had any videos on capturing and saving old sony 8's and other formats to digital. There seems to be a lot of comments out there ...but who to believe. You seem honest and knowledgeable

[dsan]

Perfect. Just what I was looking for. Thanks

[cathyhayman]

Thank you. I'm just starting the journey of scanning MANY water damaged photos and looking at a flatbed scanner. I aslo want to file/label them as quickly as possible. Any suggestions?

[kevinrush]

You didn't talk about the topic of resolution. Which resolution is available for each option. Which resolution is best for what purpose? What resolution do museums use?

[potvinplanpotvinplan]

Hello, re; FastFoto dating feature, Q1; can you edit photo date after it has been scanned ? I have literally thousands of photos in numerous albums, with most albums spanning multiple years & events. I would like to batch scan the photos per album (maybe 10 or 20 at a time) and go back to each photo and edit the date. Will the software allow me to do this ? Q2. Along the same line of thinking, the photo digitizing project/task may be divided bt siblings, some who only scan, some who would 'at a later date' take care of dating and naming each photo, .. will the software allow this 'back editing' ? 😇

[JJ-ofng]

good review, much better than what you get on a google search which is all advertisement

[gregdavidson]

Amanda, Question. I have an Epson V600. for example: You set it to scan a photo @ 600 dpi. The photo is only 4 x 5. If you scan it without cropping it in the software is the 600 dpi going to be dispersed over the entire flatbed glass (81/2 x 12) and the 4 x 5 photo will only get a portion then of the dots? Compared to cropping the photo and then scanning, which I think would get the full dps. Make any sense what I said? TY

[rong]

Looking for some help. I'm not sure if I need to purchase a new photo scanner or use my HP Envy 4502 to scanner a mixture of old polaroids. Thank you.

[fireice]

I'm learning to do camera scanning now, and it is indeed expensive. I had to buy a camera, some good quality lights, a light meter, and an expensive color target. And then it took hours to tweak to get even lighting and to avoid reflection. What was the toolset called at 8:16?

[gastromacho]

Thank you. This is useful information

[blacksheep]

I bought the V600 for digitizing all my old family photos 🤞

I have a $6, 000 camera that I could potentially use for camera scanning, but I don’t think that would be the best way to do it at home because of how many other factors can effect the resulting image. Museums probably have like a $100k rig for doing it

[PedroChehoud]

Amanda, what dslr do you use when photo scanning?

[coonea]

Anyone recommend any specific software for scanning bulk photos with a flatbed scanner? It would be really helpful if the software could handle multiple images on the bed at the same time. I'm running either linux, or windows.