Guided intake Bottom dock ALBUM workflow Post-scan studios Life-story interviews Calendar and book templates

Turn boxes of prints, negatives, slides, and portraits into a clean, searchable family archive.

This first build is designed like a field guide, not a static brochure. Start with what you have, get a scanning lane that matches the material and budget, keep a preservation-quality master, then move the collection into restoration, tagging, chronology, and family collaboration.

Find My Scan Path Open ALBUM Workflow Open Publish Lab

Start Here

Pick the lane that matches the artifacts on your table.

Answer one multiple-choice question at a time. The next prompt changes based on what you picked, then the site lands on a result page with the best scan lane, backup lane, and first moves.

Question 1 of 5

Start with the material on the table.

Preserve

Archival means not losing things before you get around to refining them.

The first obligation is safety, not perfection. Keep untouched intake bundles, preserve original order, and make at least one local and one off-site copy before heavy cropping, cleanup, renaming, or metadata changes begin.

No-loss intake workflow

01. Capture raw scans as they come off the scanner
02. Save untouched session folders
03. Zip or snapshot each intake batch before edits
04. Duplicate to working folders
05. Crop, rotate, rename, tag, and restore only the working copies

Archive-first reminder

If a batch is scanned but not yet sorted, that is still a win. A rough, duplicated, date-uncertain archive is safer than a perfect future archive that never gets finished.

Originals, backs, sleeves, mailing envelopes, and album pages are part of the historical record. Treat context as data.

Backup and storage lanes

Use a 3-2-1 mindset: working copy, local backup, off-site copy.

Risk warnings

These are the points where families lose irreplaceable photos while trying to save them.

What to scan first

Triage matters. Some consumer formats and storage situations are much more urgent than others.

Handling and storage cues

Good preservation is mostly about not causing the next damage while you are trying to rescue the archive.

Scan

Capture lanes, media atlas, and current tool examples.

The right scanner depends less on hype and more on material type, batch size, and how much restoration headroom you need later.

Current examples checked April 2, 2026

Official links only. These are examples to anchor the decision, not a claim that one product fits every collection.

Phone, scanner, and conversion software lanes

The research notes make clear that capture hardware and software choices are tightly linked. Pick both together.

Capture setup cues

Small setup choices change whether later auto-crop, deskew, and restoration work stay manageable.

Workflow automation lanes to build into the site

These are high-value tools the site should explain now and implement later.

Time, budget, quality, and help

Different paths make sense for different collections. The site should make those tradeoffs explicit.

DIY, library, and service choices

The real decision is not only which scanner to buy. It is whether to do it yourself, borrow access, or hire out the risky tier.

Material atlas

Use this when you are not even sure what format you are holding.

Archive targets

These are practical master targets for family archives, adapted from common preservation practice and Library of Congress-style high-resolution TIFF workflows.

Material	Ratio / Shape	Master target	Notes

Common trap: use your phone for prints and albums if you need speed, but do not expect phone scans to replace dedicated film capture for negatives or slides.

Restore

Repair after capture, never instead of capture.

Good restoration starts with a clean master and a non-destructive workflow. Invert first, then correct tone and color, then retouch dust and damage on copies.

Recommended edit order

Capture or export a master file.
Rotate and crop only enough to understand the frame.
For negatives, do the inversion before detailed cleanup.
Set white balance, density, contrast, and black/white points.
Remove dust, scratches, and small tears.
Do local fixes and portrait cleanup on a derivative copy.
Export web and print versions after the master is safe.

What to save

Master: TIFF, RAW DNG, or the cleanest scanner-native archival output.

Working: layered PSD/TIFF or Lightroom catalog state.

Share copy: JPEG or smaller TIFF for family review albums.

Context: notes from the back of the print, album page, sleeve, or box.

Digital ICE warning: infrared dust removal can help on color film and chromogenic black-and-white, but it is a poor fit for true silver black-and-white negatives.

Organize

Structure first, metadata second, deep tagging third.

You do not need perfect metadata on day one. You do need a stable folder spine, consistent file naming, and a way to keep uncertainty attached to the image.

Folder spine

FAMILY-PHOTOS/
  01-INBOX/
  02-MASTERS/
  03-WORKING/
  04-EXPORTS/
  05-CONTEXT/
  06-ALBUM-REVIEW/
  07-METADATA/
  08-DUPE-REVIEW/

Batch metadata fields

people location date date_confidence source_box album_page notes scan_method master_file

Use confidence labels like confirmed, likely, guess, and unknown so future cleanup is possible.

Batch naming pattern

Keep names boring and sortable. Example:

YYYY.MM.DD - HH.MN.SC - Title - Who - Location
1978.01.01 - 00.00.00 - Christmas morning - David, Lisa - Big Bear
1984.01.01 - 00.00.00 - Unknown-day placeholder - Grandma Ruth - Riverside

Metadata injection lane

ExifTool is the strongest batch lane for writing and moving metadata, especially when you want to add dates, GPS tags, or copy metadata into exports without touching the masters by hand.

Date estimation and chronological sorting

When exact dates are missing, relative ordering still creates structure and later lets you refine the archive.

Default naming schema and sidecars

Use one default pattern, but allow alternate templates for people who work by event, box, roll, or album.

Integrity and verification

Archival is not only about naming. It is also about proving the masters still exist and can be recovered.

Duplicate detection and safe removal

Detect duplicates aggressively, but delete conservatively. Exact file matches and visually similar images are not the same problem.

Do not auto-delete masters: move duplicate candidates into a review or quarantine lane first, then compare resolution, backs, sidecars, edits, and context before permanent removal.

History

Consumer photo history helps decode what is in the box.

A lot of family-media confusion disappears once you know when a format entered common consumer use and what its physical clues usually look like.

Use the era clues to guess probable decades, then verify with clothing, cars, paper type, lab stamps, envelopes, slide mounts, and handwritten dates.

Quick format ID clues

These are the fast checks that stop people from buying the wrong scanner, holder, or workflow.

ALBUM

Where this fits in the existing suite.

The point is not to build another isolated gallery. The point is to route scan output into the tools that already manage archive structure, image tags, commentary, and chronology.

Current realistic lane

Scan into a master folder, run image tagging and sidecar generation, capture commentary from relatives, then push confirmed dates and identities into a timeline or family branch view.

High-value future lane

Add face clustering, batch EXIF writing, location review, and a family graph so the archive becomes searchable by person, place, and era instead of only by folder.

Sources

Research and reference links for the current cut.

These links anchor the current product examples, preservation guidance, and local deep-research notes surfaced above.