Family History Photo Preservation: Keeping an Archive Readable in 2056

Start with the people, not the scanner

The instinct when a shoebox comes out of a cupboard is to scan everything first and sort it out later. That order loses information. The captions live in somebodys memory, and they are the part you cannot re-scan later if they go quiet.

• Ask about the picture rather than the person: who stood behind the camera, why that day warranted a photograph, what happened the following week.
• Get spellings down on paper. Family names shift across borders and generations, and the version on a shipping manifest often differs from the one in the family bible.
• Write while the print is in hand. A caption recollected two years later is usually a guess wearing the confidence of a fact.
• Budget one good sitting per relative. People move, hearing fades, and calendars fill.
• Record audio if they will allow it. Voices describing their own childhood are worth more to the next generation than another caption file.

One master, many derivatives

Preservation rarely fails dramatically. It fails when the only high resolution file gets opened, cropped, saved over, and quietly downgraded to whatever the editing app exports by default.

• Scan the print once at 600 DPI and keep that file untouched as the master.
• Work only on copies. Restoration, colorizing, cropping and red-eye fixes all belong to a derivative.
• Export per purpose rather than per whim: a web version around 2000 pixels on the long edge, a print version at 300 DPI, a sharing version sized for the platform.
• Note which file answered which question, since /blog/how-to-date-old-photos and /blog/identify-people-in-old-photos both start from the cleanest scan you have.

File names that survive a new computer

A family archive gets moved, usually during a house move or a dead laptop, and that is when naming conventions earn their keep. Put the useful facts in the file name itself, because folder structures do not always travel with the files.

Avoid spaces if you can help it, keep the total under about 120 characters, and write one short readme file in the same folder explaining the scheme. Somebody will inherit this folder without you standing next to them.

Three copies, two media, one somewhere else

One copy is a countdown. Two copies on the same desk are one copy with better lighting. The pattern that survives ordinary life looks like this:

• Working set on the machine you actually open.
• Full backup on an external drive stored away from the computer, which covers the laptop rather than the building.
• One offsite set: cloud storage, or a drive at another relatives house with instructions written on the label.
• A yearly check. Drives fail quietly, free accounts lapse, and links to shared albums expire.
• Prints of the ten that matter. Paper outlives accounts, formats and companies.

Restoration fits in before the copying step. Once restored copies exist, back those up too, since redoing the work is not something anybody volunteers for twice. Details of what survives a /restore pass are in /blog/preserve-old-photos.

Family history photo preservation FAQ

• Should all of this happen before any restoration work? Captions first, then restoration. Names and dates inform how much care a print deserves, and restored files are easier to caption when the faces are legible.
• What resolution is enough for a family archive? 600 DPI covers prints up to about 8x10 inches and leaves room for detail crops. Slides and negatives need considerably more, so treat those as a separate workflow.
• Is cloud storage alone acceptable? It solves distance but not ownership. Keep a local copy that you control, and treat the cloud as the offsite one rather than the only one.
• How do I hand this over to the next generation? One folder, one naming scheme, one readme, and one person who has been shown where it is. Anything more elaborate tends not to survive the handover.

先从家人问起，别急着搬扫描仪

鞋盒从柜子里拿出来的那一刻，多数人的第一反应是先把所有照片扫完，回头再整理。这个顺序是会漏信息的。文字说明存在某位亲戚的记性里，而这部分一旦没人再提起，就再也扫不回来了。

• 问这张照片，而不是问这个人：相机后面站的是谁，那天为什么值得拍一张，第二周发生了什么。
• 把拼写当场写下来。家族姓氏跨国跨代会变体，船单上的写法和家里那本旧书写的往往不是一套。
• 趁照片还在手上写。隔两年再回忆出来的说明，通常只是口气很像事实的猜测。
• 把每位长辈当作只有一次机会来安排。人会搬家，耳朵会背，日历会满。
• 对方同意就顺手录个音。对下一代来说，亲口讲自己小时候的声音，比再一个说明文件值钱。

一份母版，若干个副本

档案丢失通常没什么戏剧性。它是这样发生的：唯一那份高分辨率文件被打开、裁了一下、点了保存，然后悄悄变成了修图软件默认导出的那个尺寸。

• 每张 600 DPI 扫一次，这个文件作为母版，之后不再动它。
• 改图只在副本上做。修复、上色、裁剪、去红眼，这些都归副本管。
• 按用途导出，别随心情导出：网页版长边 2000 像素左右，打印版 300 DPI，转发版按平台给的尺寸来。
• 记下哪份文件回答了哪个问题，/blog/how-to-date-old-photos 和 /blog/identify-people-in-old-photos 的起点都是你手里最干净的那次扫描。

换了电脑也不乱的命名法

家庭档案总会被搬动，通常发生在搬家或者笔记本报废的时候，命名规范就是在那一刻体现价值的。有用信息要写进文件名本身，因为文件夹结构不一定跟着文件一起走。

能不用空格就别用，总长度控制在 120 字符以内，再往同一个文件夹里放一个简短的说明文件写清楚这套规则。将来接手这个文件夹的人，旁边不会站着你。

三份备份，两种介质，一份不在家里

只有一份，等于在读秒。同一个桌子上放两份，也只是照明更好了的一份。能扛住日常意外的组合是这样的：

• 工作用的一套放在你每天开的那台机器上。
• 整份备份放移动硬盘，别和电脑放在同一个房间，这一份防的是设备，不是房子。
• 还要有一份在别处：云盘，或者寄存在另一位亲戚家的硬盘，标签上写明怎么用。
• 一年查一次。硬盘是悄无声息地坏的，免费账号会停，分享相册的链接会过期。
• 最重要的十张洗出来。纸比账号、比格式、比公司活得久。

修复这一步排在备份之前。修复出来的那版也要一并备份，因为同样的活没人愿意干第二遍。哪些修复内容经得起折腾，/blog/preserve-old-photos 里有细说。

别把整理推给下一代

家史照片最容易在两代人之间断掉，不是因为丢硬件，是因为那份还没有人认过的照片被放进柜子，二十年后被人翻出来时，能看出来的线索只会更少。今天记下的三行字，比下次春节的决心靠谱。

• 先把自己认得出的那批人的名字写上，剩下的标"待认"。
• 整套流程从头到尾走通一遍，再回头补后面的照片，不要一开始就追求完美。
• 整理完之后告诉一个人东西在哪、怎么打开，这个人不是你自己。

家史照片保存常见问题

• 要不要先修复再整理？先写说明，再修复。人名和年代决定了这张照片值不值得花功夫，而面孔清楚之后，补写说明也更省事。
• 家庭档案扫多少够用？8x10 英寸以内的照片，600 DPI 够用，也留得出裁局部的余量。幻灯片和底片要高得多，建议单独立一条流程。
• 只放云盘行不行？它解决的是距离，不是所有权。自己手里要留一份能控制的副本，把云盘当成异地那份，而不是唯一的份。
• 这套东西将来怎么交出去？一个文件夹、一套命名规则、一份说明、一个被当面演示过在哪的人。再复杂的设计，多半活不过交接那天。

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