Sticky photo album

[JoeJoe]

I have an old (~30-40 years old) photos album with photos that I wish to digitise/scan.

Unfortunately the album if of the type where each page is made up of a sticky surface and a transparent film covering it. So you carefully peeled the film, stuck the photo to the sticky page, and then cover with the film, with the film held in place by the sticky surface that was not covered by the photos. The pages are quite big, so each page holds several photos.

The film peels easily, but the photos are still very well stuck, and I really cannot see how to remove them to be scanned.

Any idea how to go about this?

I really do not want to damage the photos, but am more than happy to destroy the album in the process if needed (will transfer the photos to a new one).

As a last resort I can scan each page with the photos in place, but with the pages being very large (way bigger than A4 - my scanner size), it will take several turns of the page to scan all the photos on it, and then extra work to extract the photos from the scanned images.

[F Murtz]

Last resort cut the album page to the picture sizes.

[spuorgelgoog]

Scanner mouse?

They tend not to be the highest resolution though.

Or treat as a book and use a high res digital camera to photo each page, then select the images and save each selection as a file.

Owain

[Roger Mills]

Best to leave them on the pages - you will almost certainly damage them trying to get them off after all that time.

You may have to remove the lid of the scanner to get some of the photos over the glass plate if the pages are very big.

Have a good look at your scanner software. There may be an 'advanced' mode - or somesuch - in which the scanner can recognise multiple images and save each one to a separate file.

[Rick Hughes]

Use a scalpel and cut each picture out - clean them - I used a photography blower brush.

Scan at 600 dpi, with no treatment (no scratch or dust filters etc) and save as tiff file. jpeg is lossy, so as your 'digital negative' ... better to use tiff.

Then adjust as required in your editing program (Lightoom is very good for this) .. then save in whatever format you want. (jpeg or whatever)

If you have the negatives - you could simply scan them, I use a Minolta DiMage scanner for negatives.

[Davey]

Agreed. Always keep your first scan file ('digital negative') unmodified, you can always go back to it later for another go at editing. Keep a backup. I use The Gimp for editing images, it is amazingly versatile, but needs a lot of learning to make the most of.

[John Weston]

A camera can work for this, especially when used with a copy stand. See:

As you can see from the Camera vs Scanner page linked from this, a 600dpi scanner can have a better resolution than most cameras, depending on the image size. There is more info on making and using a diy copy stand solution here:

As a simpler alternative, I got a handheld Iriscan book2 for some Family History Society scanning of old handwritten books without damaging them or their bindings by trying to put them on a conventional flat-bed scanner and it meets that need perfectly. We've also used it for old photos in an album, where they can't easily be removed without damage. With this, the individual page scan size can be of any length with a 22cm max width or vice-versa if scanned horizontally. For greater than this width, and it needs the images stitching together.

For a description of its use, see:

Hope this helps

[JTM]

[snip]

If you're lucky, they might line up on each side of the page

John

[JoeJoe]

They don't... :-(

[JoeJoe]

Thanks - Haven't thought of that and could make life much easier.

Checked, and it does!

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

Digital camera. Get the light right so no shadows and no flash and you'll get as good a picture of what is most likely quite a low quality original. Definitely won't be any worse than the original and you get to keep the album in it's original condition protecting the pictures as it has done for the last 40 years. :)

[fred]

Excellent, that will be so much easier.

Another couple of tips:

If you haven't already done so, dismantle the album so you are dealing with single sheets without a spine. If it's anything like historic versions I have seen then this will be easily done and should be reversible (it may just be a couple of pins holding the leafs a bit like a ring binder).

Build up a flat working are around the scanner to the same level as the flat bed, it will make it so much easier when the leafs are half on half off.

If you do remove the lid, weigh down the leaf with a book or similar to make sure the leaf is flat. Don't use something too heavy as the glass on many scanners is just held to the underside of the frame with double sided tape.

Watch out for glue residue passing from the sheets to the glass and clean regularly.

Good luck :-)

[Peter Parry]

If you do this fill one or two plastic ziplock type bags half full with a total of about 1kg of rice and place them on the sheet while scanning to keep the sheet being scanned flat.