For those wanting to know what I use for picture scanning and manipulation (and other stuffs), here’s my voodoo mojokit:

Scanner

I use a HP Officejet 6500 All-in-One Printer – E709a, but any will do really, as long as it supports “Twain” scanning.

The scanner you purchase will come with drivers and etc. that control the scanning process. If the scanner comes with “Twain-compliant” drivers, you can override the scanner’s file saving features with more exciting and sexy options. Well yes, software can be exciting and sexy and at the same time doesn’t have to be something to hide from your spouse. But only if you’re realllly nerdy like me.

There’s an interesting history behind the term “Twain” as it pertains to scanners at this site: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213232,00.html.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/18972-18972-238444-12019-3328086-3795309-3795313-3795333.html

Batch photo scan control (freeware!)

This software Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com) is massively cool if you are interested in managing electronic pictures.

I’ll focus on the bits that relate to scanned pictures instead of going off on random tangents. But that’s no real guarantee, though, as a random tangent is, by definition, random. As is this aside you’re reading at the moment…

Once this software has been installed, you tell it what is your Twain-compliant scanner, like so:

Menu options “File”, “Select TWAIN Source”

My scanner came with not one but TWO Twain drivers. Why? I dunno. I picked one and it worked, so I’m not asking any more questions…

Having set this up, you’ll want to set up a location for the scanned photos, as seen below. I’ll explain the naming convention in a second but you can see a sample here:

After gazing upon all this beauty, one might ask, “How did he name all these files? Did he have to type in the names by hand or copy/paste and modify the names?”

The answer is, “No I’m far too lazy for that, I set up my handy dandy freeware app to do this for me, like this…”

Menu options “File, “Acquire/Batch Scanning”

Every scanner’s driver software is unique to the scanner, so I can’t advise on how your scanner works to capture the image. I’ve shown an example from my HP scanner. The end result though will be sent to Irfanview, which will automatically save and name the file as per your settings set above.

Backup storage device

Yay! It’s so easy and eventually becomes fun. Hours and hours and hours and hours of fun.

Boo! I am afraid I’ll lose my hours of work.

Can I copy these to CD/DVD? Yes! But don’t. CD/DVD for photos are as reliable as potato chips and not nearly as much fun when they go crunch.

Do yourself a favour and get a good, inexpensive mega-gigabyte USB or network drive. These will tell you when they start to fail, unlike CD/DVDs which will simply smile and laugh at your vain attempts to get any usable data off them in the future when they get scratched or simply get tired and stop working.

CD/DVDs use a gooey substance holds ‘bumps’ in place as the laser ‘writing’ takes place. Eventually the goo gets ‘tired’ and loses its shape, meaning the laser in the CD/DVD writer can’t read the morse-code-like bumps. So even a perfectly happy, unscratched CD/DVD will fail over time. Especially if the data on it is extremely precious 🙂 More info than I care to read about can be found here: http://www.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm

If you’re really really really interested in archiving family photos to CD/DVD, you’ll want to read up on the topic at this site: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html or at this site: http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm

I use a Western Digital networked hard drive for my backups. Any good quality drive will do – I’d go for a USB mega-gigabyte drive if you’re not interested in getting a dedicated network drive.

More info about the drive can be found here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=270

Automated (freeware!) backup

So do you have to manually copy-and-paste each file onto the backup file drive?

Not if you are lazy like me! Yay for laziness!

I use Yadis! freeware file backup software (http://www.codessentials.com/products/yadisbackup.html) which runs in the background once I set it up. I select the directory to monitor and the software automagically syncs and/or copies new/changed files without my intervention.

And yes, ! is actually in the Yadis! name. I’m not that excited about exclamation points!!!