Guide to Digitizing Old Photos
Key Takeaways
- To digitize printed photos, start with one box to avoid overwhelm; don’t try to do everything at once.
- Scan all or only the most meaningful photos based on your time and interest; it often pays to scan everything to save time.
- Consider mailing irreplaceable photos with sturdy packing and tracking to keep them safe during the scanning process.
- Use a scanning service like ScanMyPhotos for large collections, and explore services for slides, negatives, and even VHS tapes.
- Once digitized, back up your photos, then enjoy them by creating digital frames, photo books, or sharing them with loved ones.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
If you’re curious about how to bring old photos into the digital world, you’re not alone. Our photo archivists hear similar questions all the time. Where should I begin? Do I need to scan everything? What about slides, negatives, albums, and those mysterious old CDs tucked away in a drawer? We’ve compiled 25 common questions along with straightforward answers to help you avoid turning your dining room into a makeshift photo lab before you even start opening boxes around the house. We spend our days surrounded by memories — boxes of photos, envelopes filled with pictures from the 1940s to the 1990s, slides that haven’t been looked at in decades, and images people forgot they even had. After working with these treasures for decades at ScanMyPhotos.com, we’ve learned to recognize these familiar questions.
Our photo archivists put together 25 of the ones they get asked most.
Not complicated questions, usually very practical ones. “I have eight boxes. Where do I even start?” “Should I scan all of these?” “What am I supposed to do with the pictures after they’re digital?” So we put together 25 of the questions we hear most.
Start With the Photo Box
1. I have thousands of photos. Where do I start?
Start with one box. Seriously. Don’t empty every closet onto the dining room table and create a project so big you never start. Pick one box and do that first. If you’d rather send that first batch out, our Photo Scanning Box at ScanMyPhotos.com holds about 1,800 standard prints. We scan them and return the originals. Order here.
2. Should I scan every photo?
You don’t have to. If you have 20 almost identical pictures of the same birthday cake, you may not need all 20. But there’s another trap here. Don’t spend three weekends deciding which little print deserves to survive. Sometimes it’s simply easier to scan the whole stack.
3. How do I know how many photos I have?
Here’s an old photo-lab trick: one inch of stacked prints is roughly 100 photos. It isn’t exact, but it’s close enough to figure out whether you have 800 photos or 8,000.
4. How much does it cost to scan 1,000 photos?
It depends on the company, resolution, and what’s included. Look at the full price. Shipping matters. Setup charges matter. Digital delivery matters. Extras matter. A tiny advertised price per photo doesn’t tell you much if half the cost shows up later.
5. What if I have 5,000 or 10,000 photos?
That’s much more common than people think. A shoebox here, another box in a closet, a few envelopes from the old photo lab, and suddenly there are thousands. For really large collections, ScanMyPhotos.com offers a larger bulk-scanning option that handles about 11,000 standard photos at once. It can be much easier than breaking a huge collection into lots of little projects. See the large-volume scanning options here.
6. Is it safe to mail irreplaceable photos?
It’s the question we’d ask too. Use a strong box, pack the photos so they can’t slide around, and use tracking. Please don’t put irreplaceable photographs in a flimsy envelope and hope for the best. Some customers even put an AirTag or similar tracker inside the shipment.
Before Anything Gets Scanned
7. Will I get my original photos back?
Yes. They’re your photographs.
8. Where are my pictures scanned?
ScanMyPhotos scans them at our facility in Irvine, California. We don’t ship your photographs overseas for scanning.
9. How should I pack them?
Pack them securely, but don’t turn it into an engineering project. You really just want to keep the photographs from sliding, bending, and bouncing around while they’re traveling.
10. Do I need to put everything in chronological order?
Only if the order matters to you. We’ve seen people put this off for years because they thought they had to identify every vacation, birthday, and mystery relative before scanning anything. You don’t. Getting started matters more.
11. What about photos still inside albums?
For high-speed scanning, the prints need to come out. Be especially careful with old sticky albums. If a photograph doesn’t want to come off the page, don’t win the argument by tearing it.
12. Can really old photographs still be scanned?
Absolutely. Old doesn’t automatically mean unscannable. Condition matters much more than the year printed on the back.
13. What about Polaroids and odd-sized photos?
Many can still be digitized. Small prints, oversized prints, thick pictures, curled photographs, and unusual formats may need different handling than an ordinary stack of 4×6 prints. When in doubt, ask before sending them.
14. 300 DPI or 600 DPI resolution?
We get this one constantly. For many everyday prints, 300 DPI works very well. Choose 600 DPI when you want more information in the digital file for things like enlarging, cropping, or editing later. Don’t choose 600 just because 600 sounds twice as impressive as 300.
15. How long does scanning take?
It depends on how much you’re sending, the service you choose, and how busy the scanning service is. Have a real deadline? Say so before you order. A memorial, anniversary, or 80th birthday is not the time to discover you started two weeks too late.
What Happens After Scanning?
16. What kind of files do I get?
JPEGs. That’s the photo format most people already use every day. JPEG files work with phones, computers, photo apps, digital frames, and most photo services.
17. Am I going to need a gigantic hard drive?
Probably not. Even thousands of photographs are manageable with today’s storage. The bigger issue is backup. Our archivists say this all the time: one digital copy is not a backup. If the only copy of 10,000 scanned photographs is sitting on one USB drive in your desk, you still have a problem.
18. Can you keep my pictures in the same order?
Yes, when you select the appropriate option. If order matters, decide that before scanning. Trying to recreate 1978 through 1996 afterward isn’t anybody’s idea of a good Saturday.
Don’t Forget the Other Stuff
19. I found slides too. Are they worth scanning?
Please don’t throw them away because you don’t own a projector anymore. Some of the most amazing photographs we see are slides that haven’t been viewed in 30 or 40 years. If your 35mm slides are still sitting in carousel trays, ScanMyPhotos.com can scan qualifying carousels without you having to remove every slide first. Order carousel slide scanning here.
20. What about negatives?
Same answer. Don’t throw them away because they look like strips of brown plastic. A negative that looks like almost nothing in your hand may contain photographs you haven’t seen since the day the film came back from the photo lab. ScanMyPhotos.com digitizes qualifying 35mm negatives too. Order negative scanning here.
21. And all those VHS tapes?
Yes, those too. The tapes are getting older, but there’s another problem people forget about: the machines needed to play them are disappearing. A perfectly good VHS tape isn’t much fun if you no longer own anything that can play it. ScanMyPhotos.com transfers VHS, VHS-C, and Hi8 tapes to digital files. Order video transfer here.
22. I already digitized photos years ago, but they’re trapped on CDs. Now what?
Get them off the discs. This is becoming a surprisingly big problem. People did the right thing 10, 15, or 20 years ago and put their digital photographs on CDs and DVDs. Now they own computers that don’t even have disc drives. If those discs are still readable and contain JPEG photos, move the pictures onto something you actually use today. We created Disc Rescue at ScanMyPhotos.com for exactly this. You can send up to 25 qualifying data CDs or DVDs, and we transfer the readable JPEG photos we can access onto a USB flash drive. Order Disc Rescue here.
Now the Photos Get Interesting
23. Can you fix a faded photograph?
Often, yes, but scanning and restoration are two different things. Scanning makes the digital copy. Restoration is what happens afterward, where fading, scratches, color problems, and other damage may be improved. One nice thing about digital restoration is that it doesn’t alter the original photograph. ScanMyPhotos.com also offers digital photo restoration for individual pictures. See photo restoration here.
24. What am I supposed to do with 10,000 digital pictures afterward?
First, make a backup. Then stop treating them like a computer project and enjoy them. Put favorites on a digital frame. Make a photo book. Text an old picture to someone who hasn’t seen it in 30 years. Look at them on the television. Search through them. You don’t need to spend another six months building the world’s greatest folder system before you’re allowed to enjoy your own photographs.
25. Can AI actually find things in my old photos now?
This is the question that has changed the most. Once printed photographs are digital, modern photo software can do what was hard or impossible just a few years ago. You might search for “beach” and find every beach picture, or “dog,” or “birthday cake,” or a person or place. Suddenly, a photograph you forgot existed can show up in seconds. That changes the whole idea of scanning. For years, people thought digitizing was the end of the project. We don’t look at it that way anymore. Getting the pictures digital is where a lot of the fun starts.
Photo Scanning FAQs
Start with one box instead of trying to organize everything at once. Decide whether to scan them yourself or use a photo scanning service, then back up the digital files in more than one place.
For most standard prints, 300 DPI works well. Choose 600 DPI if you want more detail for later enlarging, cropping, or editing.
Yes, in most cases, if they’re packed carefully. Use a sturdy box, keep the photos from moving around, and use GPS tracking.
Make a backup first. Then actually use them: put favorites on a digital frame, make a photo book, share them, organize them in a photo app, or search them with modern photo software.
[Edited on September 9, 2026].
