Your Photo Scanner — A Plain-English Guide
Last verified: August 2026
The shoebox of old family pictures — scanned, sorted, backed up to two places, and shared with the kids and grandkids. Before it's too late.
About Scanning Your Photos
Almost every senior household has a shoebox (or three) of old family photographs nobody has looked at in years. Many also have boxes of 35mm slides and negatives, polaroids, and old albums coming unglued. Scanning them — so the kids and grandkids can see them, and so they don't get lost in a flood or fire — is one of the most meaningful tech projects a senior can take on. This guide covers the whole project: pick the right tool, sort first, scan smart, back up to TWO places, share with family. Worth every minute.
When to skip the DIY and just call: You have more than 5,000 photos and limited time. Consider a hire-it-out service (see the PDF, chapter 17) — often $300-800 well spent.
Common Questions
1 Epson FastFoto vs phone app — which to pick
- Epson FastFoto (~$650): Best choice for 1,000+ photos. Scans up to 1 photo per second, double-sided (catches Mom's handwriting on the back), saves to your computer.
- Google PhotoScan (free app): Best for under 200 photos or testing if you'd even use a scanner. Takes 4 corner shots and stitches them together. Removes glare. Saves straight to Google Photos.
- Adobe Scan (free): Similar to Google PhotoScan but saves PDFs to Adobe cloud. Good if you also need to scan documents.
- Flatbed scanner you already own? Slow but works. Skip it if you have more than 100 photos.
2 Sorting BEFORE you scan saves hours
- Empty the shoebox onto a table. Don't scan first, sort first.
- Make 5 piles: (1) Yes — keep, (2) Maybe, (3) Definitely no, (4) Negatives/slides, (5) Damaged.
- Pile 1 is what you'll scan first. Pile 2 is a second pass next month.
- Within Pile 1, group by decade or by event ("Christmases," "trips," "weddings"). This makes naming the folders later 10x faster.
- Throw out blurry ones, duplicates, and the 47 nearly-identical shots of the same flower. Be ruthless. Pile 3 frees you.
3 Resolution explained — what dpi to use
- 300 dpi: Good enough for viewing on a phone, tablet, or printing back at the original 4x6 size. Default on most apps.
- 600 dpi: Best for prints you might enlarge to 8x10 or 11x14 later. The sweet spot for most family photos.
- 1200 dpi: Only for tiny photos (wallet size) or detailed restorations. Files get huge.
- FastFoto defaults to 300 or 600 depending on the model. Use 600 if hard-drive space isn't a problem.
4 Where to back up — TWO places minimum
- Cloud backup: Google Photos (free for 15GB, ~$2/month for 100GB), iCloud Photos (Apple users), or Amazon Photos (free unlimited for Prime members — underrated).
- Physical backup: A 1TB external hard drive ($60). Plug into the computer monthly, copy the latest scans, unplug, put in a drawer.
- Why two? Cloud accounts get locked. Drives fail. Houses flood. If your photos exist in TWO places (cloud + drive), they're truly safe.
- Bonus: also share key albums with 1-2 family members via Google Photos shared albums. Now your photos exist in THREE places.
5 Sharing with family without sending one photo at a time
- Google Photos shared albums: Create an album, invite family by email or text. They get a link, they see all the photos, you can ALL add more. Free.
- Aura/Skylight/Nixplay digital frames: Buy your daughter a frame for $150. Set up the email-to-frame address. Email photos directly — they appear on her wall.
- Shutterfly / Mixbook photo books: Best gift for the holidays. Bind 30-50 scanned photos with captions into a hardcover book ($30-60). Make one per family.
- Email or text: Fine for 1-2 photos at a time. Painful for batches.
Watch Out For: Mail-in scanning scams and "free family-tree" pitches
⚠️ Heads up.
If you ship photos to be scanned, use ONLY established services: ScanMyPhotos, Legacybox, DigMyPics, iMemories, or Costco Photo Center. Avoid "deals" you found on Facebook or Instagram ads — there have been cases of original photos being lost or held hostage for extra fees.
Also watch for: "free family tree research" calls or door-knockers offering to scan your photos in exchange for genealogy access — those often hide expensive subscription contracts. Real genealogy services (Ancestry, FamilySearch) don't door-knock. When in doubt, call me at (330) 200-8042.
Want a Real Person?
A typical photo-scanning visit covers: picking the right scanner or app, setting it up, scanning the first 100-200 photos with you, naming folders, configuring cloud + drive backup, and creating a first shared album with your family. Flat $99 first visit. For big projects (1,000+ photos), I offer a multi-visit package — call for pricing.
Would you rather I just do this for you?
No shame in it — plenty of folks would rather hand it off, and that's what I'm here for. I'll come to your home, set it up right, and make sure it's working before I leave. Flat $99 per visit — no jargon, no upsell, and every visit is 30-day come-back-free.
Not a hardware job? I can often fix it remotely for $49 — a secure screen-share, up to 2 hours, that you watch the whole time and can end whenever (included free for $39/mo Support Plan members, and it counts toward the $99 if it turns out I need to come out).