<p>Started out to reply to this topic and may have gotten carried away. This may not apply to everyone, but here are some principles I am following for my own family photo scanning project. Fortunately I am retired and have the time to do this. </p>
<ol>
<li>My time focus is 10, 20 + years out. My target audience at the moment is, say, my grandchildren; and I have great-grandchildren. Along the way, my kids will have an interest of course. And they probably have their own tons of photos and/or digital images. </li>
<li>Cull, cull, cull. Will this picture/slide, etc. (as a digital image) be of any interest or meaningful at all to someone in 20 years? Is the quality and subject matter of the photo worth fooling with?</li>
<li>99% of my scanned photos have people in them. I have generally not bothered with scenery, beautiful vistas, etc. They can get that from the internet. </li>
<li>I am only scanning print photos and have discarded negatives, slides, etc. Too much work. Tough.</li>
<li>I do not intend to make future paper prints from the digital images I have created. The future is digital. </li>
<li>Thus, I scan at only 300 dpi. And they are all JPG. Tough. </li>
<li>I have retained the print photos that I have scanned; they are now in 3-ring pocket binder pages in their respective albums (generally the albums from which the print photo came from originally). So, if someone down the line wants to do something different with the print photo, they will be around. If my heirs preserve them. And if they want a coffee table book, they can have at it. I did the hard part.</li>
<li>Scanning the photo is only part of the job! Identifying the who, where, and when, and perhaps background info for the photo takes at least as much time. Without context identification, the images will only be a mystery to those 20 years hence. For many of my family of origin photos, I am the only one who can make the identification. So, sending the prints out to a scanning service will still require me to identify and organize the digital images (otherwise they are just a batch of unknown digital photos). </li>
<li>I get better scanning results from a stand-alone scanner (Epson V37) than from my All-in-One printer/scanner. I use Vuescan as my scanning program; it is less confusing than the native Epson software. Whatever cropping, adjusting, etc. I want to do is done within the VueScan dialog. </li>
<li>My filename convention begins each file with the year of the photo. This keeps the files in chronological order. 20 years from now, few will care about month and date. A typical file name is: 1985 John P. Doe @ the Beach. Don’t be too profligate with the file names and nesting of folders; computers have limits on the number of characters allowed in a folder/file path (something around 260 characters grand total).</li>
<li>I use IrfanView as my manipulation program and enter data in (only) a few metadata IPTC fields: Document Title, Author, Caption, Keywords. The Caption field is where I make sure to enter the Where info and other context. My Windows Search Index keeps track of the metadata, so that one can use an ordinary search function to find a particular item in, say, the caption or keywords. </li>
<li>I have to be conscious of the format that a current and/or future digital viewer may wish to employ. There are Mac people, Windows people, iPad, Galaxy Tab, and sundry others. I try to be as universal as possible. </li>
<li>When I have entered the Caption, I copy and paste it into a MS Word template for Avery peel & stick labels. The printed paper label will go on the back of the original print photo, and will be in sync with its digital counterpart.</li>
<li>Backup, backup, backup. I use external hard drives and USB sticks. The USB stick is kept in the same manila folder as my Last Will & Testament. (Year 2025: “anyone know where Dad kept those family photos he talked about?”)</li>
<li>When I am finished, I plan to postal mail a small USB stick with the relevant images to each of my (5) children and (9) grandchildren. In a padded envelope. </li>
</ol>
<p>Sorry to run on so long, hope some of that will be helpful! </p>
