My photo scanning journey: High-speed scanner

Many of you mentioned you have been putting off scanning your old photos for years because you know that scanning photos takes hours, days, weeks, and maybe even months.

That was true a few years ago. Now you can scan boxes of photos in just minutes.

At least fourteen major FamilySearch Libraries have these special scanners available for use.

It is so much faster here that I actually paid for an extra checked bag on my last flight back from my parents' home so that I could fill it with family photos for scanning in the Salt Lake City Family History Library. I have completed scanning all our known extant photos that we had as prints. It took me less than 5-10 days with just 2-6 hours each day, and I went through over 4,600 scans, mostly scanning at the slower rate of 600 dpi for recommended high quality (while 300 dpi is unbelievably fast).

Not all of you will live close enough to Salt Lake, but might live close enough to one of the other major libraries that has these. Ask your local major FamilySearch Library if they have one.

Read about the technology and deal with FamilySearch: http://graphics.kodak.com/DocImaging/MY/en/Industry_Solutions/Photo_Scanning/Photo_Scanning/FamilySearch/index.htm

Here are examples of scans that came out of the high speed scanner from my own family photos:

The author lifting weights

My parents and older brother

These are the same special scanners (among others) that are brought to RootsTech each year for 2-3 years now. If you do not live near a major library, you may want to gather your photos for scanning when you fly in for RootsTech next year (at least you might consider it, RootsTech is a wonderful conference).

If you have a huge project, you might even find it worth renting one of these scanners for a few days. It might be a few hundred dollars, but you will be able to finish your several boxes of photos in just a few days, when you have been possibly waiting years to have time to do it the old fashioned flatbed way.

Note: Oversize and extremely delicate photos will still need to go on the flatbed, but even the paired flatbed (attached to this special scanner) is faster than most other flatbeds. The high speed feeder is delicate enough to handle most photos (including many types of old photos) and even standard newspaper (which is a good example of delicate paper). You may want to test it on some types of paper and photos to get a feel for what it can handle before putting your most delicate items through.

Warning: Other high-speed scanners that were made for scanning documents in an office setting will tear up all photos. Don't assume those will work the same.

This project is about recent prints from the 1970s through about 2004, but the same ideas can be applied to old prints in some circumstances.

Using Snagit to add source citations to document images

Productivity tools. We all need them, especially when we do tasks repetitively. Some tools make mundane genealogy tasks a little easier, and more fun.

My focus recently has been on tools that can be used by professional genealogists to make repetitive tasks more efficient.

As I prepare for my upcoming test with ICAPGen (click to learn more), I have to practice meeting their reporting standards, which includes source citations on the front of every document image. There is good reason to have a source citation on the front, as I have learned over the years by experience.

I am creating a lot more reports than usual as I prepare for accreditation. Now I need a way to make it quicker and more fun to add citations to the front of images.

You can add text to images with Microsoft Paint or any number of other free image editors. They are often not suited well to this task though. I like to have a way to go back and correct the text if I made a mistake.

I have found two programs which make that easier. Adobe Acrobat (if you want to save your images as pdf files) and Snagit (for everything else).

Check out this screencast that shows how I use Snagit for adding source citations:
Snagit for Genealogists - Intro (click the link) on TechSmith hosting site (requires Flash)
Using Snagit for Citations on Images (same video as above) on YouTube

Adobe Acrobat 
Pros

• Edit citations easily any time you open the PDF (because they open in Acrobat if you have that software)

Cons

• Slow and bulky compared to Snagit
• More expensive

Snagit
Pros

• Snagit is a faster and more streamlined software
• It is easier to save the images you want because you can clip them from anything you can see on your screen.
• Snagit doubles as a good tool to make snippets of portions of documents to insert directly into genealogical reports

Cons

• In Snagit you will have to export the image again after any citation edit you make because the text editing will have to be done in Snagit.  A different copy of the image is saved in Snagit and that is the copy you will edit, and re-export.

Buy Snagit at TechSmith.com They also sell a screen recording software called Camtasia which I have found useful as an online educator.

Disclaimer: A small percentage of each purchase made after using my links to enter the website may be paid to me in an affiliate arrangement. This arrangement does not affect my honest opinion given on the software.

What do you think? Do you have any favorite programs to add source citations to the front of an image? What about other productivity tools that you use as a professional genealogist?