Another major scanning project

Greetings,

Just like PS Rookie (another forum user) who’s in the process of scanning and archiving many photos, I’m working on a similar project in the range of 4K-5K pictures. I, however, am scanning them basically for disaster recovery. I though that before I get too deep into the project, I’d ask you kind folk for your advice.

First, here are my thoughts on the process. I am using my reliable Plustek OpticPro 9636T scanner, which is a parallel port scanner. I ‘ve used this scanner for over 5,000 scans over the years, including 2,000 photos for relative’s disaster recovery CDs. I‘ve tried a USB scanner with similar settings, and didn’t notice much difference in speed. I’m scanning at 300 DPI, and saving to JPG, with filenames of 001, 002, 003… on each CD. The filenames start at 001 each CD. I figure two copies of each CD with one stored off site would about do it. If my process has caused any of you to cringe or worse, I apologize, but let me explain.

As I said, I’m scanning these photos for disaster recovery. Most are 4X6 color prints I have taken over the years with my Nikon FG camera. Many are of flowers in the yard, family member’s pets, weird stuff like that. I have no intention of printing these out. I’m thinking if the originals were destroyed, I’d view the image files on a PC. I have no desire to catalog the files by person, place, time, event, and all that other stuff. I know Adobe Album does a great job of that, and so does the PSCS browser for that matter, but it’s really not for me.

On the other hand, many of the pictures are priceless (at least to me). These include pictures of my parents and other relatives, my wedding, my daughter’s birth. What to do? It doesn’t take any longer to save the image file as a TIFF than it does as a JPG, does it? If not, I guess I should save in TIFF format. What about resolution? I’ve heard that 200-300 DPI is fine for most home printers. Would the considerable extra time required to scan at 600 DPI be worth it? Should I just save the pictures that are most important to me in a higher resolution and as a TIFF? The files would be larger, but the additional CDs required isn’t an issue.

This should be a one-time project as I’ve gone digital over four years ago. I’m now using my second Olympus camera. A C-3020 3.2 MP. I take all my pictures with the digitally (most recently in TIFF format as opposed to JPG!), and simply save them in a folder named with the date they were taken. You see, I know about when I took the Christmas pictures last year. I also know about when we were on vacation three years ago. Sampling a picture in a folder pretty much let’s me know what all the pictures in that folder are about.

So now that you know what I’m trying to accomplish, and for what reason, do any of you have suggestions or comments that could help? Also, I have been considering selling my Nikon FG and all it’s many lens on E-Bay. Is there a reason I shouldn’t? I’m thinking if I haven’t used it in years and am satisfied with its digital replacement, why keep it?

Thanks so much for all you help and suggestions!