How to digitize old family photos and albums
Step 1: Prepare the photos and the scanner
The Library of Congress says to clean dirt, smudges and particles from the photographs and from the scanner glass, because the scanner captures the item as it is, so anything left on it becomes part of the scan. Remove paper clips, staples and tape without damaging the photo.
Step 2: Pick the right way to capture
| Method | What the Minnesota Historical Society says |
|---|---|
| Flatbed scanner | Photo face down on the glass. Make sure the scanner supports your media. Avoid office all-in-one printer/copiers and sheet-fed document scanners, which can damage photos and give less control of resolution. |
| Camera, copy stand and supplemental lighting | A great option for fragile photos, over-sized photos or documents, or photos that cannot be removed from their frames, such as cased tintypes or ambrotypes. It needs photography know-how. |
| Smartphone camera or app | Not a replacement for flatbed scanning or a digital camera, and inferior in nearly every sense except convenience. Useful when you meet photos held by other family members and may only get one chance to copy them. |
The Minnesota Historical Society names cased tintypes and ambrotypes as examples of photos that cannot be removed from frames. Photos fixed into a bound album page are in a similar position, so a copy stand is a reasonable choice there; that last step is our inference, not the society's statement.
Step 3: Choose resolution and color
Scan prints at 300 ppi for same-size reproduction and at 600 ppi for especially detailed or precious photos, per the Minnesota Historical Society. The Library of Congress says to scan 4x6 and 5x7 prints at 300 dpi and to use 400 or 600 dpi for enlargements. See the DPI guide for the full table. On color, the Minnesota Historical Society recommends digitizing every photo in color, even sepia and black and white ones, because color files record more detail and you can turn a color file to grayscale but not the reverse. The Library of Congress describes grayscale as best for black and white photographs, so this is a point on which the two differ; if you plan to restore or colorize, the color scan keeps the most information.
Step 4: Save the right files
The Minnesota Historical Society notes that many organizations keep a TIFF as the archive copy and a JPEG as the access copy. When editing or cropping, do not overwrite the original file; save edits under a new file name. The file format guide explains TIFF, JPEG and PNG.
Step 5: Name, organize and back up
Use a consistent naming convention. The Library of Congress suggests descriptive file names that start with a yyyymmdd date and a folder-within-folder structure on your computer. The Minnesota Historical Society asks for a consistent naming convention for folders and files and gives the example 19640629-LeBlanc Wedding_001. For backups, the Minnesota Historical Society recommends the 3-2-1 standard: 3 copies, on 2 different kinds of storage media, with 1 stored off site. The Library of Congress adds that every five to seven years you should move your scans to a current storage medium.
Keep the originals
The Minnesota Historical Society says there is no substitute for an original photograph and asks that you not discard photos after digitizing them.
Where restoration fits
Once a photo is scanned you can repair fading, scratches and tears on the digital file without touching the print. Reviva's upload accepts JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC and TIFF files of up to 12 MB each (we checked the live upload step on 2026-10-04: it accepts those types and rejects GIF, BMP and PDF).
Frequently asked questions
How do I digitize old family photos?
Clean the photos and the scanner glass, scan on a flatbed scanner at 300 ppi (600 ppi for precious or small prints), save a TIFF or high-quality JPEG with a dated file name, make three copies on two kinds of storage with one off site, and keep the originals.
Is a phone good enough to scan old photos?
The Minnesota Historical Society calls smartphone scanning inferior to a flatbed scanner in nearly every sense except convenience, but useful for copying photos held by other relatives when you may only have one chance.
How do I scan photos that are still glued into a bound album?
The Minnesota Historical Society recommends a camera, copy stand and supplemental lighting for photos that cannot be removed from their frames, such as cased tintypes. Photos fixed into an album page are a similar case, though the society does not name albums.
Should I throw away the original photos after digitizing them?
No. The Minnesota Historical Society says there is no substitute for an original photograph and asks that you not discard photos after digitizing.
How many backup copies of scanned photos should I keep?
The Minnesota Historical Society recommends the 3-2-1 standard: three copies, on two different kinds of storage, with one stored off site.