Throwback Thursday Photo Tips

Bad Pictures of Photos

We’ve all seen it, bad Throwback Thursday pics. No, I’m not talking about bad hair or outfits.  I’m talking about uncropped, glarey, speckled, or skewed photos of photos taken with a cellphone camera.

Let’s face it, we live in a digital world, but all our best Throwback Thursday material is physical.  Most people don’t have the time or the means to get a good digital image from their old physical media, so they snap a picture with their cellphone and share.  Sure you may get likes and comments but could that photo have looked better? Absolutely!  Don’t tarnish those memories with glares and speckles.

Scan Your Old Photos

First, get yourself a flatbed scanner (if you don’t already have one) and make sure you know how to use it properly.  We recommend scanning your images at least 600 dpi in case you ever want to print a copy larger than the original, but for posting online 300 dpi is adequate.

Then go through your photo collection and pick out photos that are worth digitizing and toss all those photos of your shoe or thumb.  Try to group your photos in piles that are sorted by subject or date as it will help you organize the photos digitally once you scan them all.

Now that you have your photos collected and sorted, start up the scanner and go to work!  Make sure you have some time to dedicate to scanning your photos as it can take a lot longer than you think, but it’s much easier to do them all at once instead of scanning them individually as you need them.  If you don’t have the time to scan all those photos, or you don’t have the patience you can hire a professional that is setup do them all at a much faster pace.

Touch up the Scans

Once you have the photos scanned, it’s best to make sure they are rotated properly, cropped, and all dust specks and red eyes are removed. There are various software packages out there that you can download for free, but be prepared to spend a little time learning your way around if you’ve never used a photo editing package before.  Again, if this is something that intimidates you, we recommend hiring professionals that can make the necessary corrections quickly.

You’ve got all your photos scanned, edited, and you now have a collection of good looking Throwback Thursday material!  Of course you want to pick out photos that will generate a good chuckle or aww and you probably ran across some gems while sorting all your photos.

Share your Scans

Now you’re ready to upload your photo(s) to Facebook and generate a lot of likes and comments without having to worry about others cringing at or sharing the bad looking photo!