Blog · Before You Scan

Scanning Best Practices for Family Photos

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A little preparation before you scan goes a long way. The four settings below are the difference between a one-time project and an archive you re-scan in five years because the files weren’t good enough. None of them slow you down. All of them quietly improve every step that comes after, like AI dating, importing into a photo library, restoring a damaged print, or simply enlarging a favorite photo for a frame.

The Four Settings That Actually Matter

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Most consumer scanners default to settings tuned for speed, not for archival quality. Override these four and you’ll never have to redo a batch.

1

Always Scan the Back

The back of a photo holds the most reliable dating information: handwritten dates, names, notes, and timestamps. Always scan both sides — even if the back looks blank, there can be faint timestamps.

Epson FastFoto FF-680W users Check the box “Scan the back of my photos…” and move the slider all the way to the right so “All” is selected with “Save both sides of each photo.” The auto-detect mode misses light timestamp prints and faint pencil writing that our AI can still read.
2

Choose Your Scan Quality

600 DPI Captures every detail visible in the print, including faint timestamps and fine grain. The professional archival standard, and the safer choice for future enlarging, restoration, or AI enhancement. Recommended
300 DPI Enough for viewing the photo at its original size. Smaller files, but fine detail is lost when you zoom in or enlarge. Acceptable
3

Save as JPG, Not TIFF

JPG Small files (about 2 MB each). Easier to move around. Best if you don’t plan to make further edits. Most families
TIFF Lossless, no compression (about 20 MB each). Best if you plan to do additional edits. Editing

Timeline Scan never recompresses your photos — whatever quality you send is exactly what you get back.

4

Name Files by Album or Box Label

Use the label on each album or box as a filename prefix for that batch. A box marked “Jul89 – Sept90” becomes Jul89Sept90, so files come out as Jul89Sept90_0001.jpg, Jul89Sept90_0002.jpg, and so on.

This gives us a known time window per batch, improving accuracy by about 10% for photos with few visual clues.

Why These Four (and Not the Other Forty)

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The four above matter because each one fixes a specific way archives go wrong:

  • Scanning the back rescues information that is otherwise gone forever — handwriting and timestamps that no front-of-photo analysis can ever reconstruct.
  • 600 DPI protects against the future. In 2030 you will want to enlarge, restore, or AI-upscale at least a few of these photos. 300 DPI scans cannot be enhanced after the fact.
  • Album-prefixed filenames preserve the physical organization of the original albums, which is the closest thing to ground truth that exists for old prints.

Other scan settings are best done later, or on copies (don’t bake destructive edits into the scan itself).

Keep Reading

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Before You Scan

Common Mistakes When Scanning Family Photos

The flip side of this checklist — the pitfalls that turn a one-time scanning project into a permanently unfinished one.

Read → Right After Scanning

How to Automatically Date Scanned Family Photos and Put Them in Chronological Order

Five steps that turn a folder of out-of-order scans into a real chronological archive your family can browse.

Read → All Articles

Browse the Blog

Every guide we’ve published on scanning, organizing, and enjoying family photos.

View all →

Already Scanning?

Once you’ve scanned even a small batch with these settings, Timeline Scan can date them automatically; reading the handwriting on the back, analyzing the front, and writing the original date into the metadata so your library finally reads in chronological order.

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