Storing Photos

OK. What's best?

Short of scanning and storing on a hard drive, which I MAY do with a few...

Photo albums where the pics are just slipped into a sleeve? Or the 'glue-down' pages?

Thanks. :)

Oh boy!! I am so bad at storing pics!! Right now, minus a few in frames, most are stored in a box! I realy need to do something with them!! I would like to know which way is best as well, before I go and buy tons of Albums!

I have grouped them in envelopes, noting on the front of each envelope what is inside. I have the envelopes stored in clear plastic containers the size of shoe boxes, upright like files in a file cabinet, so I can easily flip through. I found that albums were not good for me to use because they take up a lot of space. I have taken so many pictures over the years that I would need to have an entire room devoted to the storage of albums. :p

In years past hubby used to take mostly slides so most of my photos are slides which, when we wanted to, we could have a slide turned into a print. The slides are all appropriately labeled inside of the slide boxes.

Nowadays with digital photos it is harder for me to find things. Each CD has a notation on it of what it contains but not in nearly enough detail. I really must go through them some day and do a better description. I was trying to find, just yesterday, a particular batch of photos from when my aunt last visited (she died on Wednesday :( ) and I had a horrible time doing that. Of course I got sidetracked looking at old photos which was fun. :)

I have my paper photos stored in a huge card board box, index cards help me not to create a big mess in there! LOL Only the very special ones are in a photo album.

I have my digital ones saved on dvds (which is said to be not safe because the data may get lost after a couple of years), I also have them on my main hard drive, and also on a second one.

Kirsten

I keep my actual photo's in a plastic box simple because that takes up far less room than those big ablums. I have so many that it would also take a room for me too, just to keep the ablums in.

I bought a external hard drive to keep my digital pictures on... I am so afraid of loosing them due to a virus, a crash or whatever and I keep that turned off unless I am adding to it or looking for something on it.

When I was born, my Mom started an album for me. It has a photo of each set of granparents, pics of her and Dad as kids, then their wedding photo. Next, my brith announcement. She kept it up from there. When I was 16 or so, I started taking care of the albums myself. I am currently on album 47!

They are all stored in boxes in the cellar. I DO take them out and look now and then. (Not all at once, of course! That would be a few days of looking.)

I got a digital camera last month, and I am taking more pics than ever! I am way behind in printing them out.

The earlier albums have those sticky corners to hold the pics in. That is "supposed" to be the best way to store photos, have them last, not go yellow. And easy to take them out and read on the back who, what, when where. The later albums are the celophane, and those have already started to yellow. Plus it is a nuisance to get ONE out to check who, when, etc. and I find I just don't bother as often as with the corners.

I have never used albums with sleeves for the pics. I always get 3 x 5 prints, NOT the larger 4 x 6. And I have pages with them in "landscape" and pages with them in "portrait." I could never see how you would handle that with the sleeve type albums.

NEVER EVER use the glue down page :eek: They will destroy your pics. Look for anything acid and lignin free. Plastic or paper. I'm in the process of removing pictures from 70's "magnetic" books and many are ruined beyond repair. I'm trying to scan and photoshop some to save them but boy oh boy what a task!!! :eek: