Family Photos Processing

Introduction

This page describes my process for tagging and processing these photos. Once extracted from the scanned album pages, each photo was individually tagged, processed, and, for select photos, restored. This involves making many decisions about the location, the year of the photo, an appropriate description, and how best to restore the photo. I outline my logic behind these decisions below.

Restoration

Restoring a photo includes removing dust and scratches, color restoration, and overall adjustment to improve the photo digitally. Obviously, there is more art than science here, so this is where I feel the most responsibility.

Color Processing

Color processing is necessary for the relatively few color photos that have faded over time. I did not make an attempt to correct the black and white photos—I believe the sepia tones add to an image positively.

Fading occurs because of chemical reactions that take place. UV light is an accelerant for this process, but heat and humidity also contribute. Photoshop does a fairly good job fixing colors due to fading, but it’s not a miracle worker. Sometimes, colors are beyond saving unless one is able to spend a lot of time on each photo—a process that is more art than data-based. Fading tends toward the reds and yellows, so blues suffer the most. In this process, I’ve drawn the line at color correction via hue adjustment and color saturation and I’ve resisted “painting” colors onto the photos. Individual photos could benefit from more specialized color processing.

Removing spots and scratches

Photoshop does an excellent job removing dust and scratches from the photos. However, this entails adding data to, or painting on, the image. I believe this to be a worthy compromise given the quality of the outcome.

Image Adjustments

Once a photo is restored, I may adjust it further by balancing the light, saturation, and sharpness. I do this to improve the image quality while being mindful of the original intent and aged qualities of these photos.

Adding Metadata

Adding metadata to these photos is a process of applied research. My goal is to add descriptions of the people in the photo, the year of the photo, and its location.

Location Data

One of the more rewarding, if not challenging, parts of this process is attaching geographical data to these photos (I am a bit of a map junkie). When possible, I added latitude and longitude to these images. I also added city, state, and country information, too, when known (I have software that automatically adds this info to the images once I locate it on a map). If you have photo software that displays photos on a map (like macOS Photos or Lightroom, for example), then you’ll be able to see where these photos were taken.

In most cases, the exact location of the photo is used and is extremely accurate. In some cases, the general location is known, but not an exact location. For example, there were many photos from the farm at the Schuyler Flatts. I tagged these with locations around the property, but I did not have their exact location on the property. In other cases, a location was not possible to determine. When possible, I included a city, state, or country when known. But, there remain some photos with no information, and, to my knowledge, there is no longer anyone around to shed light on them.

Capture Year

The most challenging part of this process is assigning dates to the photos. My goal was to add a year to every photo. The first source was the descriptions in the albums themselves. However, in studying the photos across several albums, I noted many inconsistencies.

In rare cases, I was able to assign a month and day to the photo based on information from the albums or known dates for life events. But, I did not attempt to fill in this information if I did not have it. The year is as refined as I am willing to get on assigning dates. Therefore, when a photo has a month and day of January 1, that signifies that only the year is relevant. If you see a date like 1/1/1952, then the only information on the photo is the year.

I also made no attempt to guess a time of day on these photos. In fact, I used the seconds field as an indicator of the accuracy of the year. A photo with :01 seconds signifies a high degree of accuracy. The date either came from the album or was tied to some event or corroborated by another album or person. A seconds value of :04 is the least accurate. The years on these photos were guestimates based on how the people looked, where they were, or who they were with. I’d say these are mostly accurate to within six years.

Descriptions

For each photo, I wrote a description. In some cases, I included the caption from the album, but I wanted to make the descriptions generation-neutral. So, people are not described as mother, grandma, uncle, or cousin. My goal is to have someone who knows little about the family be able to piece it all together. To that end, I typically include people’s full name and, if applicable, their relation to the family (so-and-so’s husband, cousin, etc.). This may seem tedious, but future generations, who don’t know these people like we knew them, will have a tougher time understanding it all. Thorough captions will make the decoding process easier.