How to Archive Family Photos: A Step-by-Step Guide to Organize and Share Your Photos Digitally

Review: How to Archive Family Photos 0 Comments One frequently heard comment about a great book is, “I couldn’t put it down.” With Denise Levenick’s How to Archive Family Photos, I was constantly putting it down – and that’s a good thing! This book is so full of practical ways to manage your photo collection that you will want to stop and put them to work right away. Denise sent me a PDF “review” copy which is a digitized version of the print edition of the book. The photos, graphics and tables in the print edition add visual support to the words, making it much easier to understand how specific programs work or better visualize a workflow. That being said, as soon as the Kindle version was released, I grabbed a copy. Why have both? The Kindle edition makes it easy to highlight text and add my own notes which are visible when reading the books, and those notes are also synched to my online Kindle library. It already has dozens of bookmarks, highlights and notes so that I can quickly find a specific item when I need it. The book is divided into three major sections: Organize, Digitize and Create. Denise is an experienced organizer and uses the first section to share the lessons she has learned to help us develop a workable system of our own. From collecting to organizing and then managing our photo archives, she offers both ideas and tools to get us going. Protecting our collections from disaster – physical and technical – is an integral part of her strategy and her organizational workflows are designed to include backup steps. Once our organizational system is in place and operational, we can then focus on digitizing older photos, family documents and heirlooms. The Digitize section is more than a primer for scanning. Even before getting into the actual scanning process, she discusses how to prepare our older photos and heirloom photos and how to handle them after they have been scanned. There is a discussion of storage devices and platforms as well as ways to estimate how much storage we will need. Another section looks at the growing number of scanners available. She provides tips on how to name the scanned files, appropriate file formats and discussions on scanning equipment. Throughout the book, Denise provides a number of downloadable worksheets and checklists to help us insure consistency. These are wonderful resources for people like me who don’t do these tasks frequently enough that they are second nature. At the moment I’m stuck in the Create section. I say “stuck” because this is where I keep stopping to try out the many creative ideas. I thought I knew all there was to know about photo calendars – until reading this book. I’ve got new ideas for cards too and am just getting started in the fabric section. I think I’ll be in this section quite some time. How to Archive Family Photos is an essential reference for every family historian – and photo fanatic.

This book is current, well-written and illustrated, and carefully organized. The first third deals with organizing photos, the next third with digitizing (prep, equipment, strategies, and storage), and the final third focuses on projects. In all sections, the presentation is clear and includes relevant visuals and step-by-step procedures, and checklists. Software, online services, websites, and mobile apps are explained and referenced solidly. I especially appreciated Levenick's awareness of the typical situation of photos coming from so many people and devices and her attention to developing practical methods of dealing with this real-world problem. Very highly recommended.

It is a very useful book, written in an understandable way, and illustrated well. A good choice for people who are starting their own archival collection.

Informative, but should have been in larger format. The print is much too small, as are the illustrative photos. I am disappointed that this book has such poor illustrations. They are much too small to make the author's point. I expected more from Family Tree.

Happy days are here again after reading this wonderful book. I'm emerging from the chaos of my print and digital photos as I follow the authors directions for organizing and am really excited about following her directions for the many creative photo projects. The printable forms, list of resources and blog are a bonus. This book is already turning into a bible. Thank you!

This book provides many tips on organizing photos, archiving them and maintaining the files and ensuring the photos are available for future generations. I found many helpful hints and ideas as to organizing my genealogical photos as well as my family photos from the past 30 years. I am glad I added this book to my genealogy library.

It absolutely has so many ideas and helpful tips to preserve our precious photographs.. A real winner of a book for our home and gave one to the genealogy society here.

If anything is missing from this book, I don't know about it. Have not yet had a chance to follow the directions, but they seem clear enough for a beginner to handle. Bought this after finding it first at my public library.

Excellent book. Taught me a lot.

Excellent and received in good time.

Il problema sembra semplice ma lo èm solo se si seguono linee guida specifiche questo libro spiega le possibilità in modo molto completo anche per i casi più complessi sta poi ai lettori adattare le soluzioni ai loro casi anche di solito meno complessi resta una guida che apre molto bene gli occhi sull'argomento

I didn't find this particularly useful. Most of what was suggested I already do

Perfect. Thanks