How to efficiently scan pictures to a computer

As someone who's taught computers, web and graphics design, and business, I'll give you a quick and easy way to scan multiple photos or pictures to your computer.

Things You'll Need

• Pictures to scan
• Computer
• Scanner

Instructions

1. ** Prep your photos **

   What we're going to do here is take all your photos and put them onto one 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.

   So take some tape and put it on the BACK of a photo. Then put that photo on the 8 1/2 x 11. You want to do it on the back so it won't ruin your original.

   Then repeat this for the other photos you've got. And make sure you leave some space between the photos. This is so they don't get stuck together or overlap.

   If you have lots and lots of photos that won't fit on one page, then use multiple pages to hold them. In other word, put as many as you can on a page.

2. ** Preparing to scan**

   Now that you've got your photos on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper, it's time to put it onto the scanner. And be careful when holding the paper so your photos don't all fall off.

   Now carefully lay the paper with the photos facing DOWN on the glass of your scanner. And it doesn't matter if you're using a flatbed scanner or one of those combo printer/scanner/fax machines.

   TIP #1: I suggest making sure your glass is clean and free of streaks beforehand. Otherwise, you may see lines or distortions when the photos are scanned.

   TIP #2: Do NOT feed the paper through the sheet feeder if you have one. This may jam the feeder or damange your photos. So make sure you only lay the paper on the glass!

3. ** Ready to scan **

   The only thing left to do now is actually scan your photos. Now depending on your scanner software, you may be able to scan a specific area.

   In other words, many scanning software programs allow you to select the region or area of the paper you want to scan. If so, then I suggest you use this to crop your image around a specific picture. This will make the process easier.

   When you've done this, scan it! Once it's on your computer, you can edit it to make it ligher, sharper, etc. Or save it as is. Then you'd repeat this process for the next picture.

   If your software won't allow you to scan a specific area, then you'll need to scan the entire page. Do it! Once the image is on your computer, then you can use editing software to copy a specific portion to a new file. This is what you'll need to do to get individual photos.

   As an alternative, you could crop the one you just scanned and then save it. Then rescan the whole page again and crop it to the next picture. Both ways work the same, so is your choice which way to go.

Tips & Warnings

• Save your files as JPG or JPEG to save space, keep your file sizes smaller, and maintain decent quality

• If you don't need the best quality, then you could save even more space by saving your files as GIF

• If you're going to post images to the web, make sure you don't violate copyright! Otherwise, you can get yourself into legal trouble