Organization Project Part 3 - Digitizing Family Slides

Since I am still waiting for my archival boxes and sleeves to start organizing my hundreds of family photos, I decided to go ahead and start on my family slides. Remember when slides were the rage? That was back in the 60s, 70s and even into the 80s, then their popularity died out.

 I don't know about you but I have hundreds of slides and it's time I did something with them. The longer they are left the more they deteriorate. Besides who has a slide viewer anymore? One problem is that my slides are not organized by  event, date or any other criteria. You can see from my photo that some are in slide boxes and others are just loose.

To start my organization I bought a nifty little piece of equipment - the Jumbl Scanner & Digitizer. It scans slides and negatives and digitizes them to a memory card or the Jumbl internal memory. You can use an external power source or you can plug it into your computer via USB and use your computer power. It's on sale right now on Amazon. I am loving mine! It's easy and fast. If you want to grab one just use the link below.


  Jumbl High-Resolution 22MP Scanner/Digitizer
- Converts 35mm Negatives & Slides to 22-Megapixel Digital JPEGs Using Built-In Software Interpolation - No Computer/Software Required to Operate - Features 2.4" Color LCD & TV Out

 To begin my organization and preservation of my slides I decided my first step was to scan them all and organize the digital files later.

The box on the right of this photo are the slides I have scanned in the last 3 days. I only work for an hour at a time as the repetitive motion of inserting and removing the slides is hard on my bad shoulder due to a rotator cuff problem.

Once scanned and saved to a memory disc I insert the disc into my computer and transfer the scans to Picasa. Then I rename them, make any adjustments in contrast that I want, crop any dark edges (this only happens when I don't insert the slide accurately), and rotate them if they are sideways or upside down. Jumbl has editing capabilities but I prefer to use Picasa.

A few of the slides were noticeably backwards (spotted due to backwards writing on signs) so I flip those horizontally using a program called Gimp. You can use almost any graphic program to do this but I work on a Mac and have my favourites that I am used to.

It's a good idea to work out your naming system for the scanned slides before you start renaming them. I like to name mine as Surname_FirstName_Year_Event.

I also add names of other individuals either in the file name if not too lengthy or in the Comments section of the Information part of the photo.

The photo on the right shows my digitized scanned slide of me playing guitar in 1971. I tagged the image with my maiden name and added some detail in the Comment setion.  I didn't put my maiden name in the file name as it changed with marriage, so I prefer to just use my first name in this case. For those who might notice the Description "My beautiful picture", my husband put that!

I'm very pleased with the quality of the scans. I uploaded some to my Facebook page and my family seems very pleased to see photos of themselves or deceased loved ones from the 60s and 70s. 

Don't wait to start saving your treasured family slides.   

Here are links to the previous blog posts about this project:

Organizing Family Photos - Creating a Plan

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

How To Create a Photo Collage in Picasa

Step 1: Open Picasa and scroll to the folder that contains your scanned photos. Here's mine with some Hallowe'en pictures of my kids.

Step 2: Highlight (select) the photos you want in your collage. Don't pick too many or they will be rather small on your page. Click the little green button in your tray (bottom of the Picasa screen) to hold each photo you choose.
I've placed my cursor over that icon so you can see the little bubble "HOLD SELECTED ITEMS" that pops up.

You can also see the 5 photos I've chosen sitting in my tray. Click on COLLAGE (Orange icon at bottom)

Step 3: My collage was created. It is a Picture Pile (see top left under SETTINGS. It's a pile of scattered pictures but I have the ability to enlarge, move and tilt each photo.

I've selected one photo so you can see the little wheel that pops up on it. This wheel lets you drag on the hand to enlarge the photo, or rotate the wheel to tip it

Step 4: Under SETTINGS, I now chose MOSAIC. It automatically fits the chosen photos into the page. There are other choices too, you can have some fun playing with this. Your collage is not "set" until you click the CREATE COLLAGE button.

Step 5: Here I slid the GRID SPACING level along to the right to create nice big wide white spaces between those photos in the MOSAIC setting. This will allow me to add text once I create my collage

Step 5: Once I was happy with Step 4, I clicked on CREATE COLLAGE and this was the result. Now I can add text anywhere I wish on the collage. I can choose fonts, sizes and colours. There is more you can do, once again you can have fun playing. Your text isn't set until you click on APPLY.

Have fun and enjoy creating your Photo Collages!