Hello fellow scrappers, Aly Dosdall here again with some more tips on scrapping your childhood photos. Yesterday a few of our awesome readers asked a very good question. In fact, the answer to that question is exactly what I was planning on posting about today, so I’ll go ahead and do that.
The question is: Do you scan in your older photos and print a copy of them, or do you use the original photo?
The answer is: I never use an original if I’m working with a photo that I do not have a digital copy of. That includes heritage, childhood, and pre-digital photos that I took. I always make sure I have a digital copy of every photo I ever scrap. That way if I ever need another copy, I can easily make one. Plus, if it’s an older photo that’s damaged, faded, or discolored, I can fix it up in Photoshop if I have a digital version of it.
Let me share with you a few tips I have learned as I have scrapped some older photos:
- Always scan in your original photo. I usually scan in my older photos at 600 dpi so that I have more pixels to work with. That makes the file size pretty large, but I always end up cropping them anyway. The image quality is much better that way.
- Use names, dates, and events when renaming your scanned photo. For example, if I just scanned in a photo of me on my 8th birthday, I might rename the file “me_8th birthday_1982”. That way when you go to scrap it, you won’t look at the photo and wonder when/what/whom it’s about.
- Look before you crop. On several of my childhood photos that I scanned I started to crop close in to get a better focus on the subjects. Then I noticed little details of my childhood home and possessions. I felt like they were too precious to crop, so instead of focusing on “well-composed” photos I focused on pointing out fun details in my photos that may have been forgotten. Be sure to take a good look at your photos before you crop them to see if there are any details that you would like to preserve.
- Include any memorabilia that goes with your photos. Be sure to scan this in as well, so you have a copy of the original. I had my birth announcement, the label from my hospital crib, and even my hospital bracelet. I included the scanned images of these on one of my scrapbook pages. You can scan newspaper articles, announcements, invitations, etc. and include a printed version of these on your page. They’ll preserve much better if printed on acid-free paper.
The photo in the above page was a polaroid. I scanned it in at high resolution, did some enhancing and editing, and then printed a new copy. I also left some background details uncropped (the Thanksgiving table setting) and journaled about my Mom's china, and the event this photo is from.
The photo in the above page is another one I left uncropped so I could journal about the details in the background, including my older sister's half cropped body drinking a bottle. I also included some scanned in birth memorabilia on this page so I could pair it with this photo since it's the earliest one of me.
The photo on the above page was scanned in at high res, edited, and reprinted. I could have cropped closer to focus on my older sister and me, but I wanted to leave in the bed we were sitting on. My parents kept that bedspread for years--I can still remember it and I'm glad there's a photo of it somewhere.
I hope some of what I've share today has inspired you to get started scrapping some older photos of you. Like I said yesterday, if we don't scrap ourselves, no one else will. Consider it a gift from you to the people who love you the most. Thanks for stopping in, and be sure to come back tomorrow for some tips on scrapping heritage photos. Happy scrapping!
