How to archive Christmas cards digitally

Christmas cards are a treasured hallmark of the holiday season. Some may be sentimental, like your child's first card, or a letter from an ailing loved one. These memories should live on if you cannot physically store them. Remember even if you can store them physically fire, storms, and theft can take them away, so store them digitally!

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A scanner or a digital camera with a macro / high quality resolution settings.
• Cards

1. Decide if you want to store the holiday greetings on external media or online.

2. If you decided media I would recommend using DVD's or archival tape. If you decided on online read the fine print about copyright of objects you digitize and publish, i.e. do not retransmit sell, or reproduce items you do not own the copyright. However, a handwritten message is usually not copyrighted and as such you can usually do as you like with them.

3. Gather envelopes (optional), inserts, and cards and use your scanner set to 300DPI or higher or use a digital camera as a document camera. Note if you are using a camera make sure you are directly above the item in natural light and parallel to the item you are scanning. Digital cameras should be set to their macro setting if possible and set half the horizontal distance away from the object (A(sq)+b(sq)=c(sq))/2 where C is your horizon and a and b are your rise and run of the object. The distance should basically be about 9 – 18 inches above most 5*7 cards (depending if you have the card spread open.)

4. Consider using a video camcorder to preserve musical cards or cards where you would like to leave a comment.

5. Save images using non-compressed formats to preserve as much quality as possible.

6. 

   Upload to a web server (consider Xdrive from yahoo for plenty of cheap storage) Picasa Web (Photos) or even MySpace (YouTube for videos) if quality is not important. If you choose media saving, save to your media devices. Google’s Desktop Picasa offers a great feature to upload and even print your pictures right from the software.

7. Update your collection as you get more cards.

Tips & Warnings

• You can compress images after they are saved in non-compressed formats. This effectively gives you a small item, without loosing any image quality.

[vallain]

on 7/26/2008 A novel idea. I recycle most of mine after Christmas into gift tags and package decorations. I do save the ones with nice letters in them.