A picture is worth a thousand words—but only as long as it is able to be viewed and appreciated. This is as true for our cherished heirloom photos as it is for the family photos that were shot during the last holiday season. If you haven’t given much consideration to preserving and sharing those old family photographs, it’s time to take advantage of the possibilities available.

While preservation of your old photos should be a top priority, there are a variety of ways you can make reproductions of your photos to give to family members and those that will come after you. Aside from the opportunity to share the genealogical wealth in your family, a more practical reason for copying your photos is to ensure that your family images are spared in the event of a catastrophe.

Copying and Duplication
Until recently, the standard way to reproduce old photos was to have them photographically copied and then duplicated. There are specialty photo labs that will take your old photograph, place it on a copy stand, and take another picture of it. Provided that the image is in reasonably good shape and that the focus is relatively sharp, the negative that is created from this process can create a duplicate image that is nearly true to the original. More important, however, is that this process creates a negative that can be duplicated at a relatively low cost. If you store the negatives of your old photos separately from the photos in a fireproof safe or safety deposit box, you’ve taken an additional step to ensure that these images will endure.

If you are hesitant to turn your prized photos over to total strangers, do some research before you select a specialty lab. Find out about the size of the lab and who will be handling your photos. Will the photos be shipped off to another lab to do the work? Find out where your photos are stored while they are in the possession of the lab. Find out what precautions the lab takes to ensure that your original photos are returned to you undamaged. How long will they keep your photos before they can be returned? Will the lab give you a negative as part of the process, or do they keep it? Does the lab wash the negatives archivally so they’ll last for many years?

One specialty lab that has gained a notable reputation in the genealogical community is Just Black & White of Portland, Maine. The company’s Web site explains its services and benefits to customers that entrust it with their photos. A tip about specialty labs to keep in mind: these labs make custom prints of your photos, so the process will cost more than getting a roll of film developed and printed at a one-hour photo store. If you have a lot of photos, you might consider getting a few done at a time to budget the expense.

Photocopying
Color photocopiers have come of age in the past few years, and some are capable of making remarkably good copies of photographs. If you’re looking for immediate reproductions of your photos and don’t want to spend a lot of money, consider getting a color photocopy made of the photos. Good quality copies are available at a variety of locations, including office supply stores and photocopying chain stores. You can expect to pay around $1 per page for a color photocopy, but it may be worth the expense. While black and white photocopiers were not designed to reproduce photographs, they may be sufficient to copy the image for someone else to be able to view it. A good color copier, however, will capture a lot of the detail in the shadows as well as any sepia tone in the photo.

Scanning
The prices of flat-bed scanners have dropped so much in the past several years that many family historians can now afford to own one. Not all scanners are made alike, however, and the old adage of “you get what you pay for” should be heeded when purchasing a scanner. Items to pay close attention to when comparison shopping include:

• size of scanning surface (letter vs. legal)
  
• resolution in dots per inch (DPI)
  
• color or black and white
  
• accompanying software [Optical Character Recognition (OCR), photo imaging]

If you are planning to scan your own photos and documents, you’ll need to analyze the requirements for what you need to scan. If you have large photos or legal transactions to scan, consider looking for a scanner with a scanning surface that can accommodate legal-size documents. Look for a scanner with a resolution of at least 300 DPI, preferably higher. This will allow you to save your digital images in the best resolution for the storage space you have available. Look for a scanner that can scan both color and black and white; buying one that only scans in black and white will significantly limit your use of the hardware.

Also, make sure the scanner you’re interested in comes bundled with at least light versions of OCR software and/or photo-imaging software. OCR software allows you to scan text documents as text rather than as graphic images, keeping you from having to retype documents. Photo-imaging software will allow you to manipulate the images you scan to enhance their appearance. Additionally, the scanner should be accompanied by software that allows the scanner to communicate with other software packages.

Once you get your new scanner set up and the software installed, you should take the time to learn how to use the scanner effectively through the photo-imaging software tutorial or accompanying manual. Some software programs are easier to use than others, and it will be worth the time and effort to learn how your software operates, so you can get the best images possible from your photos.

Storage
Your next consideration is storage. Scanned images can take up a lot of space, and even though the hard drives on today’s computers are now in the gigabytes, it’s not a good idea to store your images on your hard drive. Hard drives have a tendency to crash eventually, and if you haven’t made backups of your images, you may have to start from scratch.

With some research you should be able to find a storage solution that will work with your current computer setup and that will enable you to save backup copies safely. Storage options to investigate include removable media, such as Zip® or Jaz® disks by Iomega, tape backups, writable CDs, Web sites that will store backups of your files or your entire hard drive, and commercial photo labs that store your images on the Web for you to access at your convenience. Each option has pros and cons that should be investigated thoroughly before deciding on one or more of the alternatives discussed below.

Removable Media
Many computer systems today come equipped with a Zip or compatible drive. Zip disks can hold 100 or 250 megabytes of data and are used like a floppy disk. Once the necessary software is installed, the Zip drive becomes another drive on the computer system. By inserting a Zip disk in the drive, data can be saved to the drive in the same manner that it is saved to a hard drive or floppy disk. Access to the data is as fast as access to the hard drive, so the process of backing up files is as quick as copying a file from one spot to another on your hard drive. Iomega, the makers of the popular 100 and 250 MB Zip drives, also manufactures one and two gigabyte Jaz drives that work in the same manner as the Zip drives. Each of these drives can either be installed internally in the computer or can be used externally.

Advantages of removable media include the ability to make multiple copies of disks to be shared with others or stored offsite and the ability to edit, add, and delete items from disks. Also, individual 100 MB Zip disks are relatively inexpensive at about $10 a piece (250 MB Zip disks can be found for under $20 each), and 100 MB Zip disks are more easily exchanged, as they have become a standard medium for storage. One disadvantage of Zip disks is that one graphic image scanned at a high resolution and at full size could take up a quarter of the disk, allowing only about four images to be stored per disk, unless the files are compressed. If each of your images is about twenty-five MB, you could use a lot of Zip disks to store your images. In that case, you might be better off investing in a Jaz drive or trying another storage option.

Tape Backups
Tape backups were the first affordable method to store data, but their disadvantages have pushed them into the background. One of the reasons tape backups are not as popular as other backup options is that the data is stored linearly, so that in order to access the data, the tape has to be advanced or rewound to the data’s location. This can take a while, especially if the data you’re looking for is stored near the end of the tape. While this is a viable backup option, if you’re in the market for a storage solution, it might be better to look at other options first.

Writable CDs
CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) drives and CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) drives have been on the market long enough for their prices to have become affordable for those who want flexibility in their storage needs. CD-R drives allow you to create CDs for a variety of purposes, but you can only record once on the CD. With CD-RW drives, you can write to a recordable CD and erase and reuse the same CD. These CD drives can replace the CD drive you currently have, or you can use them in addition to an installed CD drive.

Advantages to using writable CDs are abundant. The cost of the media has dropped significantly in the past year or so, and it is not uncommon to see offers for recordable CDs for less than a dollar when bought in bulk. Rewritable CDs sell for more, naturally, and range between $2.50 and $5 each when bought in bulk. The speed at which the CDs can write also affects their price.

Writing to CDs is fairly straightforward with the software that accompanies the drives. It is generally a matter of selecting all of the files you want to write to a CD, doing a test run to make sure everything is working correctly, and then actually writing the data to the CD. Depending on the amount of data being written and the speed of the CD drive, the process can take seconds or minutes to complete. This is especially handy if you want to put up to 640 MB of photo files on a CD and make multiple copies to send to relatives. Not only are you giving your relatives a gift they can cherish, but they are also likely to be able to read the CD, providing they have a computer with a CD-ROM drive. This is one of the biggest advantages of this method of storage/backup over the removable media drives. Nearly all of today’s computers have at least a 2X CD-ROM drive, whereas the percentage of computers with removable media drives is significantly lower.

There are only a couple of disadvantages to using writable CDs. Since the CDs are made of plastic with reflective coatings for data storage, the discs are not immune to damage. Scratches, dust, and fingerprints on the reflective side of the CD can make some data unreadable and can even make the CD unusable. And because of their plastic framework, CDs will not survive fires. Knowing this, genealogists who store backups of data at home would be wise to keep additional backups offsite in a safety deposit box or at a relative’s home.

An additional consideration with CDs is their longevity. This issue is discussed by two authors in the January/February/March 2000 issue of Genealogical Computing. If you are concerned about making data backups to last for a long period of time, read “The Life Span of Compact Discs,” by Amy Johnson Crow, CG, on page 23, and “Will Your Data Survive You?” by Candace L. Doriott, on page 45.

Web Sites That Store Backups
Entrepreneurs abound on the Internet, and the area of data storage is no exception. Several companies offer backup services with different pricing structures, accessibility, and size of storage available.

X:drive offers users the opportunity to securely store up to 25 MB of data on X:drive’s servers for free. Visit the Web site, download the proprietary software (which currently works only with Windows 95/98/NT), and use X:drive’s servers as your virtual hard drive to store copies of your photo files. You won’t be able to store a lot of photos in 25 MB, so users can add an additional 100 MB for $9.95 per month or one GB for $19.95 per month. You can share the images or files you store there with others, but only by sending an e-mail copy of the file from the site. You can, however, access your files from anywhere at anytime as long as you have an Internet connection and a Web browser (and you remember your login and password).

Gardner Business Solutions offers an online backup service called @Backup. Gardner claims its technology is “the most secure and reliable data protection solution in the world.” Data is encrypted and stored in multiple locations, and again, you’re the only one who can access your files. The difference in this service is that the backups are performed automatically for you by using Gardner’s downloadable software. The first thirty days are free, after which you can store up to 100 MB of data for $99 a year.

It is unclear if X:drive saves copies of your files in multiple locations as Gardner does, which could be a limitation for X:drive’s service, especially if its servers crash. Both offer a backup solution for your photo files for about $8-10 a month for 100 MB, which can be less expensive in the short term when compared to purchasing special equipment to make backups on removable media drives or CD drives. But you do need to have an Internet connection in order to access your files, and if sharing is your goal, this might not be the best solution.

Commercial Photo Labs
Kodak has been a leader in the field of photography for over a century. The service it offers through photo labs and on the Internet continues to put Kodak ahead of the pack. If you take a conventional roll of film to a photo lab that offers the Kodak PhotoNet online service, you will receive your processed negatives and printed photos, and your images will be scanned and placed onto Kodak’s Web site for your viewing and use. You can also upload your own digital images to the Web site, either scanned or from a digital camera, and have prints made on Kodak paper.

The price to have your images placed online by a photo lab is about $6 and includes free storage for thirty days; it’s $2.99 per roll per month after that for the images to be stored there. If you want to upload your own digital images, you can purchase thirty-six “slots” for $5.99 or add a slot to an existing roll for fifty cents. One image takes up one slot, and the images can then either be printed by Kodak or shared by e-mail with family and friends. Reprints and enlargements are very reasonably priced, and the images printed from digital files at sizes less than 8" x 10" can be indistinguishable from those made from conventional film. The images are sent within five days for a flat shipping fee of $1.95 per order.

Photoworks, Inc. (formerly Seattle Filmworks) offers a similar service if you send in a roll of film to be processed. Images are stored on its Web site, and the user can order reprints or view the images for e-mailing to family or for downloading. Images are stored forever, provided that the user processes film through Photoworks, Inc. at least twice a year. The biggest difference between this service and Kodak, however, is that you cannot upload your own digital images for storage or for printing. You can mail images to the company for scanning onto a floppy disk or CD, but only images that are 3" x 5", 4" x 6", 35mm slides, or 35mm color negatives.

If you like to scan your own images, Microsoft has a product called Picture It! 2000 for image editing and creating picture projects. The program is different than high-end image editing programs since it has basic photo-editing tools, but it also includes a variety of templates to create collages, photo albums, post cards, calendars, and other projects. Once you’ve fine-tuned your image, you can upload it to Fujifilm for printing on photographic paper at reasonable prices. The software sells for about $55 with a $20 rebate in the box, according to Microsoft’s Web site.

Photographic processes changed drastically during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leaving a variety of preservation concerns for those fortunate enough to inherit a photograph collection. The topic of preservation is handled well in two popular books, An Ounce of Preservation: A Guide to the Care of Papers and Photographs, by Craig A. Tuttle (Highland City, FL: Rainbow Books, Inc., 1995) and A Preservation Guide, by Barbara Sagraves (Orem, UT: Ancestry, 1995). The topic is also effectively addressed online in “Guidelines for Preserving Your Photographic Heritage,” by Ralph G. McKnight, and in “Care of Photographs,” by the Northeast Document Conservation Center.

Many of us are fortunate to have received hand-me-down photos that were preserved by our ancestors or family members. Our descendants and collateral relatives can be just as fortunate if we take the time to protect the legacy and share the wealth. With the technology available to us today, there are a variety of storage and backup options available for any budget and any level of technical ability. Take time now to save the past for the future.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, has her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in journalism with an emphasis in photojournalism. She is the managing editor of Genealogical Computing and a frequent contributor to Ancestry Magazine.