Computer dummy here. Need help.

[tango-tee]

There are many old black and white photos in my parents' albums I'd like to store on the computer. How do I go about doing that?

And once I've actually managed that, how can I post one of these photos?

Thanks...

[ohheckyeah]

1. You need some kind of scanner

to get the photos onto your computer. If you don't have one you may be able to get a photo place to scan them for you but I'm not sure.

Once on the computer I suggest you upload them to Photobucket. (It's free). You then post the direct link in a post here.

[tango-tee]

4. Appreciate the advice!

A scanner is now on the shopping list.

Thanks!

[ohheckyeah]

7. You're welcome.

I've had good luck with my Canon Scanner.

[LeftyFingerPop]

2. Hi...

You would scan them into your computer using a scanner. You can get cheap, rebuilt scanners on ebay.

Once they are in your computer, you upload them from there to a photo hosting site...Photobucket is used by a lot of people.

When the picture is in Photobucket, it assigns it 3 or 4 different links to be used for different purposes.

You want the "direct link". Copy the direct link into your post, and your picture will then appear in your post.

:hi:

[tango-tee]

3. Thanks, lefty!

I'll do that. Ha!!! I may beat that damn machine, yet!

There are days I feel so *old*.... completely out of the loop. Might as well write my letters on a stone slab, using a hammer and chisel.

:blush:

[petronius]

5. You could also take pictures of the pictures with a digital camera,

if you have one. If you buy a scanner I would read reviews carefully - cheap ones may not do a great job with photographs...

[tango-tee]

6. That's an idea...

...I love photography but only have an old Canon AE-1 which someone will have to pry from my dead, cold hands some day. But I could borrow a digital camera from work.

Most of the photos were taken around WWI, some even before, of my grandparents and great-grandparents. I'm trying to put together an album for my son and his young family, adding pictures of my daughter-in-law's side of the family along with little stories and comments, so that some day my granddaughter won't be left with albums and boxes of meaningless pictures.

[BlueJazz]

8. buy scanner from Walmart....take scanner home..scan pictures...take scanner back to Walmart

"This scanner won't work with my old computer" :)

[tango-tee]

10. Bwahahahaaaa!

Wouldn't do that to anyone, but Walmart.... hmmmmmm.....

:evilgrin:

[Zavulon]

9. How many is "many?"

If you have a friend with a scanner or perhaps a kid in the neighborhood who would do the job for some spare cash, you wouldn't have to buy a scanner. After all, it's obvious from your question that you've gotten along fairly well without one so far.

[tango-tee]

11. Several of those old-fashioned thick albums.

Do you know if those combined scanner/fax/printer machines for home use are any good?

[Kali]

12. no

get separate components, scanner lasts a long time (if kept away from dust) but printers die young

my old epson scanner works pretty good, and it will do negatives as well (although I haven't ever gotten around to trying it)

as mentioned I bet there are plenty of options to have someone else do it for you and put the pix on a dvd or thumb drive

whatever you do, MAKE BACK-UP COPIES!

[tango-tee]

15. Lots of good advice here.

What frightens me is "if kept away from dust". With my homemaking skills... (ahem). :silly:

[Kali]

24. no you don't understand

the house is less than 100 yards from the corrals, it rains maybe 16 inches a year here, the doors and windows are open from April into November, I dust maybe twice a year - you could grow things on the surfaces if you added water. I keep and old plastic keyboard dust protector over the scanner and a bigger piece of plastic over my printer. I TRY to vacuum the dust off and out of my tower a little more often than the rest of the house, but my basic philosophy is why stir it up? I have allergies, besides it is a "protective coating" right?

[tango-tee]

25. Okaaay....

I like your reasoning. Under all that dust Egyptian artifacts stayed pretty well preserved for thousands of years, too! Hey, I have to remember that!

I haven't always hated housework, just thought of it more as a nuisance. As I'm getting older, I become more unwilling to do stuff I dislike. I've often thought of how nice it would be to have a cleaning lady come in once a month. And that would most likely motivate me in miraculous ways, because I'd start scrubbing the damn place the day before she shows up, so she won't think I'm a pig. Go figure...

[Zavulon]

14. I have one made by HP and

it's just great. I swear by it. It's a great bang for the buck, although admittedly the price on printer cartridges is too steep.

[tango-tee]

16. I'll really have to shop around

and see what's right for me, price-wise and all. It would just be such a shame if these old albums were possibly lost some day, thrown out during someone's housecleaning frenzy (certainly not mine, but who knows).

Thanks, Zavulon!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

13. A good scanner will normally come with decent software...

I have an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo, which came bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements (which I didn't need, because I have the full-blown Adobe Photoshop). It also had ABBYY Fine Reader, an OCR program you can use for scanning Word documents, etc.

I have a ton of photos on my hard drive(s), both business and personal, and I'd be up the creek without ACDSee...take a look at their site and you'll see the various programs they have for organizing your photos, and some cool things you can do with them after you've scanned them:

http://www.acdsee.com/

As far as posting, I also recommend Photobucket. It's free and it's easy and once you have something you want to post you'll find no shortage of people here willing to help you.

Have fun and good luck.

:toast:

[tango-tee]

17. Thanks for the details and the link!

That makes me feel no quite so hopeless.

Still, there's a good chance I'll be along in a short while yelling "HELP!!!" again. Sigh.

[ohheckyeah]

20. If you had me for a sister,

you could do like my brother does and have me take care of it. :-)

Paying someone you trust with your photos to do it for you really is a pretty good idea unless you particularly want to learn how to do it yourself.

I'm sure everyone here will be glad to help and answer questions. You can PM me anytime if you need to ask a question.

[tango-tee]

21. I think I'll adopt you!

The sister I was blessed with can't boil water without scorching it.

Will certainly be more than happy to PM you once I buy a scanner. There will be loud wailing on the intertubes in the middle of the night, when that blasted thing won't work as advertised (i.e. I didn't read the instructions before fooling with it).

[ohheckyeah]

27. Okay.

Just let me know when you need help. I'm on the board off and on all day and late into the night.

[hunter]

18. I scanned all our family photos over the course of a year or two.

In addition to the scanner you'll want something to make backup copies with. Computer hard drives do fail.

At first I was making CD and DVD backups, but now I'm using USB external hard drives.

I'll also put a CD in photo albums; usually in a paper CD envelope I affix to the back cover with double sided tape.

[tango-tee]

22. Many great suggestions here...

...I appreciate all of them.

I like photography, using black and white film in my old AE-1. Some of the better ones (landscapes in Norway, close to the Arctic Circle) I had developed using sepia toner, enlarged and framed. Those came out really well, and I'd like to store them on the computer as well. It's just a matter of picking and choosing, before I end up with tons of images.

[hibbing]

19. if you don't want to buy a scanner..

Hi,
The public university where I live has libraries with scanners and you do not need to be a student, staff, or faculty to use them, just a thought. You would have to have some media to save them to though, or upload them to a picture saving site.

Good luck, and peace.

[tango-tee]

23. There are so many, not just in albums,

but as I recall in shoe boxes and the like, too. Buying a scanner will be worth the money, I think. But thanks for the hint!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

26. Scanners are easy to use.

My 91-year-old dad has been scanning his many hundreds of old 35-mm slides into his computer. He's been at this project now for about a year. I've been cleaning some of them up with Photoshop because the colors have faded on many of the older ones (they go back to the early '50s), and eventually we'll store them all on archival CDs for the younger family members.

It's a great thing to do with any old photos because you can save them for posterity, fix them up if they need it, and share them easily.