The best thing to do with old photos is to save them twice and use them once: make a digital copy so nothing is lost, then print them into something you'll actually look at, like a family photo book or a canvas on the wall. Here are 10 ways to do both.
There's a box somewhere. Under a bed, on a high shelf, in your parents' wardrobe. Inside are faces you can name and faces you can't, a holiday nobody remembers the year of, and a wedding photo with half the guests missing. Most of us know exactly where that box is, and haven't opened it in years.
Jump to: Keep them safe · Turn them into something you'll see · Give them to the people in them · FAQ
The urgency is quiet but real. Prints fade, corners curl, and the people who know who's standing next to Grandpa won't always be around to ask. Deciding what to do with old photos is partly about the pictures, and partly about catching the stories that go with them.
This guide has 10 ideas for what to do with old photos, in three stages: keep them safe, turn them into something you can see, and give them to the people they belong to. Do one, or do them all.
Keep them safe
Old photos don't last on their own. Prints fade, and the people who know the stories get fewer. These three ideas are about keeping both.
1. Scan them and keep two copies. A flatbed scanner or a scanning app is enough. Scan at a high resolution if you plan to print anything large, and keep the files in two places. Once the copies are safe, you can print from them whenever you like without risking the originals.
2. Record the stories while you can. Sit with a parent or grandparent, a stack of prints and your phone's voice recorder. Ask who is in each photo, where it was taken and what was going on. A face with a name and a story is a very different thing from a face in a box.
3. Write the names on the back. Use soft pencil, lightly, since pen can bleed through. Add names, places and years. Even a rough guess ("Penang, around 1985?") helps the next person.
Turn them into something you'll see
4. Build a family history photo book. Tell it in order: the grandparents, the wedding, the first house, the kids. Add short captions with names and years so the stories travel with the pictures. Photobook's lay-flat pages open completely flat, so one photo can run across two pages with no gap in the middle, which suits an old group shot or a wedding photo you don't want split down the centre. Upload your scans and the Smart Editor auto-lays them out, and you can start a whole book in under 5 minutes.
5. Turn the one everyone stops at into a canvas print. Every family has one: Grandma at twenty, Dad in his first uniform, the street before it changed. A canvas print makes that single photo the thing you see every day, instead of the thing in the box.
6. Print a gallery wall of the family. Mix the eras: black-and-white next to colour, the 1970s next to last summer. Print your favourites as photo prints and group them in matching frames, so the old and the new read as one story.
7. Put one photo a month on a photo calendar. Twelve photos, twelve months, one person or place per page. It's the lowest-effort way to see your old photos every day for a year.
Give them to the people in them
8. Print a set for every relative. The same photos of the same people usually live in only one house. Print the wedding portrait and the family holiday as photo prints and send a set to each sibling and cousin.
9. Make a heritage photo book for the grandparents. Their own pictures, their own story, in a book they can hold. Ask them for the captions in their own words, because that's the part they'll read first.
10. Give the photo to the person in it. A parent's wedding photo, a friend's first car, a sister at her graduation. Put it on a personalised photo gift for the person who's actually in the picture.
Frequently asked questions
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How do you preserve old photos?
Keep them cool, dry and out of direct sunlight, store them in photo-safe sleeves or boxes, and make a digital copy so a damaged print doesn't mean a lost memory.
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Should you throw away old photos after scanning them?
Keep the ones with names, handwriting or sentimental value. Duplicates and blurry shots can go once you're sure the scan is safe in two places.
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What's the best way to display old photos?
Choose one or two favourites and print them large, as a canvas or a framed print, then group the rest in a gallery wall or a photo book.
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How do you identify people in old photos?
Ask the oldest relatives first, check the back of each print for handwriting and dates, and use clothing, cars and hairstyles as clues to the decade.
Start with one photo
You don't need to do all ten. Pick one photo, one afternoon and one person to share it with, and start there. When you're ready for the bigger project, upload your scans to the Smart Editor and start your family photo book.
