You do not have to digitise the whole photo box this weekend

Choose a stopping point before a scanner setting

A box of prints holds more than an afternoon of work. There are albums to identify, handwriting to decipher, faces you recognize and faces you wish you could ask someone about. Trying to finish everything at once can make it harder to begin.

Choose one album and a handful of photographs. Your first useful milestone is a saved batch you can find again, with one name or memory attached. Restoration and sharing can follow at your pace.

Make the first bed a rehearsal

For loose prints in good condition, start with 2–6 photos on a flatbed, with gaps between them and the borders visible. A 600 DPI colour scan is a practical starting point, including for black-and-white and sepia prints. Keep Polaroid edges and any writing that belongs to the record.

Use your scanner’s own software to save a whole-bed PNG or TIFF. Keep an untouched master in your own backup as well. In Nostalgia’s web Scan Station, choose an album, import the file, review the outlines and orientation, then save the separate photos. The web app imports your file; it does not control scanner hardware.

If a print is stuck, brittle or flaking, do not force it out of its album for this workflow. The scanning guide links to preservation guidance and explains when careful specialist handling matters.

Leave yourself a way back in

Use the physical album’s name or a plain description you will recognize later. Add a date or place only when you know it. Album context carries into the next batch for review; it should not silently turn a mixed album into one event.

Wait for Saved online before leaving an unfinished crop review. After the photos are saved, Scan more for this album starts the next bed in the same context. You do not have to restore a batch to count it as preserved progress.

One photo can tell you whether to restore the rest

Try a repair on one representative photo. Compare it with the Source at a useful size. Check faces, hands, text and borders, not just whether the result looks sharper. Keep an unchanged scan when the repair loses something important.

Choose only the photos you want to process next and review the restore allowance or cost before starting. Colourization is a separate interpretation; a repaired black-and-white photograph does not need colour to be finished.

A second scan is a choice, not automatically a better memory

Repeated imports and albums shared by relatives will produce possible duplicates. Review Similar Photos before restoring a print again. Confirm that the candidates show the same photograph; similar portraits or adjacent moments are not necessarily duplicates.

After a merge, Versions lets you choose the main Source scan and the restoration you prefer independently. Keep the sharper scan even if your favourite restoration came from another attempt.

When you are sure, Free up space on web previews unused versions for permanent deletion. Current and chosen versions, required source ancestry and shared uses are protected. Hiding a result alone does not release storage. Permanent deletion cannot be undone and can end Undo merge, so export what you want to retain before confirming.

The name is part of the photograph

Add one confirmed person, a place or an approximate date while it is still easy to remember. Keep uncertainty visible: circa 1975 is more useful than an invented exact timestamp. A scan’s import date is not the date the photograph was taken.

Capture handwriting on the back separately, use matching filenames, and add the wording to notes. This is a manual step, not automatic front-and-back pairing.

Choose a photo to ask the family about when you are ready. A relative’s answer is something for you to review, not an automatic change to the archive. A saved picture with a trustworthy name is a better stopping point than a perfectly edited picture whose story has gone missing.