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February 26, 2008

Flickr, Picasa, and Scanner Dilemmas.

By: The Dude on the Right
As I'm trying to pay attention to "American Idol" tonight, with the dudes singing classic songs from the 70's which so far have been bad renditions of songs from Fleetwood Mac, Andy Gibb, Queen, Foreigner, and The Carpenters, I'm also in a quandary because I can't get my film scanning stuff like I want.

First off, I finally scanned all of my concert negatives, got them digitized in a decent resolution, and slowly plan to update the photos on the website with the higher resolution versions I now have.  That was the easy part, with my old HP Photosmart film scanner.

But then I decided I wanted to start digitizing older photos (like this cute girl on the right), and old negatives, and post them on the internet for family, friends, and anyone to see, and I have run into many questions, and many choices.

As far as posting them on the internet, I started by setting up a site at Flickr, but I have to say that as much as I like it, and would pay the yearly fee for unlimited stuff, I am worried about the potential takeover by Microsoft and what that might mean to the photos I post.  I also looked at maybe using Google's Picasa instead, but from some quick things I have read there are some copyright/publicity issues Google might be able to enforce.  And as I was investigating Flickr vs. Google, I came upon a bunch of other sites that seem to do a similar thing, namely set up family photo albums.  I'm so confused.

Then came the problem of a scanner.  My old scanner was an HP Photosmart S20, which has served me well through the years, but it doesn't handle the medium format film that my mom had stored in a box.  So, today, I went to get a new scanner, based on a lot of reviews I read on the internet, and even though I like the scanner (it's an Epson), the software for it sucks, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend more money for scanning software.  So, sadly, tomorrow, I have to hope the store will take it back, and then I suppose I'll go back to an HP scanner (I loved the software that worked with the Photosmart), I just hope the HP folks kept the same format for the software (or at least close) that I am used to, and that the scanner works like I need it to.

Now don't get me wrong, for most people the Epson software will be fine, but for me, and my photos, it blows (and if the Epson folks want to know why they can e-mail me), because all I really want to do, before the rest of my older relatives pass away, is to find out who all of these people are in photos that are tens, and twenties, and maybe even thirty or forty of years taken before I was born, and if it takes me that much longer to get the photos digitized and posted (like the Epson software leaned itself to), those relatives will be dead before I find out.

If you've got any suggestions for digitizing old negatives, medium format (up to 6 x 12), or if you have an internet site you love for posting your family scrapbooks, please let me know.  Right now I have to figure out how to box up my Epson scanner I bought, hope the store takes it back, and then hope again that if I buy the HP version the software will be to my liking.  With my luck the new scanner won't scan worth a darn but the software will be great.

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 9:04 PM | Comments (0)