Share Your Original Photo as well as the Cropped Portion

If your original contains an amazing photograph of a family member, of course you are going to get an incredible scan at a high enough resolution to capture that photo and print it any size you desire. However, be certain to take into consideration what other family members will be looking at if you don't share the entire original image with them, as well. Using these images as an example, look what would be missing from the family's story if all you shared was the amazing cropped portrait. Does your collection contain any photos that cause you to wonder what the original looked like?

Photos Stuck to Glass

Sometimes photos get stuck to flat glass, sometimes to domed glass. Depending on the situation, it might require a professional's help in scanning if you are facing an issue with curved glass. However, if the glass (with photo stuck to it) will fit your scanner bed, place a transparency sheet down on the glass bed of your scanner. Then carefully place the glass and photo down over the transparency sheet so you don't scratch your scanner's bed. Scan at correct resolution for print size. Then carefully lift the glass and photo. Most of the time there will be problems with color, tears, cracks, or changes in surface texture. If it's a one-of-a-kind photograph, it's better to try and get a good scan before the image degrades any further. Digital editing can be done at any time. Preserving the original should be your prime motivation to scan as soon as possible.

Scanning Album Pages

Ahhhh, those wonderful old albums! Family members worked so hard to get photos printed and placed in those little black corners (that tasted awful to lick so they would stick). Each page contains photos and/or memorabilia as well as priceless handwritten notes giving us a glimpse into the thoughts and creativity of people intent on preserving moments in time for themselves or others. If you have stewardship over just such a treasure, you have the ability to keep it preserved as is without ever removing another photo. Yes, some pages might be missing pictures we long to find and fill in that gap. But for now you can scan each page at 300dpi to digitally preserve it. If you are intent on printing any of the items on the page at the same size they are, then you are fine working with the scanned page as is at 300dpi. However, if you need a photo printed at a larger size, keep the entire page on the scanner and move the selection box to scan just the single photo you want. Change the resolution to something like 1200dpi if a close-up image such as the one above is desired. Then put all the digital files of the scanned pages and individual photos onto a DVD and share these files with anyone and everyone in the family! Now everyone has their very own album...well, almost! 

Uncle's Gotta Go...Just Need Dad

This fabulous photo has so many amazing historical details and is truly appreciated by the family holding it in their collection. However, it also holds an opportunity to gain the one and only photo of their ancestor taken at this period of his life. Fortunately it is a very sharp and well-lit photograph, so a close-up of any size was definitely an option.

Cropping this closely means making a higher resolution scan of the original. A closer crop can make for a better image and helps keep the work of removing other people to a minimum. However, it is a personal decision as to how much of the original photo's details will be cut off in the process. Sometimes it is more important to keep the details in the entire photo, especially if it helps link the item to a particular period of time. If you aren't sure exactly how much you want to cut off for the final print, then restore the entire photo and make the decision after you have totally removed the other image(s).

Old Color Negatives Can Hold Treasured Images

If you know of anyone with a stash of old negatives (which are sometimes color "positives" as above), hopefully you will share this blog post with them. It's often tempting to toss what could be perceived as "useless" negatives, especially these days when it's become so difficult to find a place to "develop" prints from anything other than 35mm. An on-line search yields many places offering to handle such priceless items. However, most people are reluctant, to say the least, to let such pieces leave their hands and risk getting "lost in the mail." These days a relatively simple piece of equipment, a "film scanner," can take the above image and automatically turn it into the image below in one step. Obviously there is a bit of color damage and correction to be made to this photo using a computer and image editing software, but this example demonstrates the possibility of reaping family photos held in these old negatives.

Water Damaged Photo

A severely damaged photograph just might be saved by some tight cropping as well as heavy restoration. Before deciding to toss such an image, be sure to look at the background and other parts of the image to see if anything can be "borrowed" to cover the damage. Sure the waves and sand are similar, but the main focus of this priceless image is now back on the girl, and that's how it should be! When scanning such images, you will want to increase the resolution enough to make a 300dpi print of the final cropped image. So if the original photo is half the size you intend the final print to be, scan at 600dpi. Scanning at above 600dpi increases your options regarding print size when the restored photo is cropped tightly.

Yellowing Photo

Ah, those yellowed 70's photos...They just might hold enough color to recover an amazing print. Scanning an image printed on that "bumpy" paper of old yields "dots" which can be overcome by blurring the scanned image a bit. However, if your original is blurry to begin with, you might want to keep the speckled look rather than risk having too blurry a final print. Many of these old pictures need some cropping, so be sure to scan at a high enough resolution to increase the size of the wanted images. In this instance, the original 3.5" square was scanned at 1200dpi, producing a cropped 5" x 7" print.

Frowns to Smiles

This photo was known as "that really frowny picture" and, truth be known, never prominently displayed except in genealogy books my mom has written. We decided to change Susanna's countenance by "skewing" the corners of her mouth just enough to let a bit of a smile peek from this now-restored photo. The updated Weddle book will now include this matriarch's more endearing photo. Sure this might upset purists wanting exacting restorations. However, for those families hoping for a better glimpse at an ancestor, damage restoration might just include turning frowns upside down!