It’s simpler than you think to keep a digital record of everything

In the wake of 2006's summer floods we’ve all become more aware of just how vulnerable personal possessions and data can be.

It’s not only the weather that threatens our stuff of course ­ it’s also vulnerable to theft, accidental damage, loss and all manner of risks, as a quick read through your household contents policy will reveal.

By digitally archiving the important things you own, you can at least ensure that you’ll have a record of them in the event of the worst happening. You can archive just about anything; obvious candidates include your photo, video and music collections.

Anything on paper can be scanned and stored electronically, so you can say goodbye to ugly filing cabinets full of insurance policies, property deeds, educational and professional qualifications and even bills and receipts. Even valuables like jewellery, artworks, and coin and stamp collections can be scanned, or photographed with a digital camera.

Digitally archiving your documents and possessions has other advantages besides security. Old documents, films, audio recordings and photos from previous generations can be captured in their present state, before further age-related damage renders them unreadable. If they are already in a bad way you can restore the digital copy and produce a pristine permanent record.

In this feature we’ll look at how to digitally archive everything you and your forebears might have accumulated during the course of several lifetimes, from Super 8 film to share certificates. We’ll cover what hardware and software you need, show you how to use it to digitise, restore, store and retrieve your documents and possessions and, if you can’t do it yourself, point you in the direction of someone who can.

Photos, prints, slides and negatives
If you already have a flatbed scanner you may be able to press it into service archiving your photo collection, but if you have a lot of images to scan, or a mixture of prints, slides and negatives, you might want to think about buying one specially for the job.

The first thing to consider is the media type. If you need to scan transparent media (for example, slides) as well as reflective (prints) media, a scanner that can do both would seem a good idea. Flatbed scanners are designed first and foremost to scan prints, but many models have a built-in backlight in the scanner lid (or provide it as an option) that illuminates slides and negatives from behind, allowing them to be scanned by the CCD scanning head below.

There are drawbacks to scanning slides on a flatbed scanner though. The optical resolution is often too low to provide a scan at sufficient resolution to print much bigger than postcard size ­ though if you only ever intend to view the scans on screen this may not be an issue.

The other problem is that you need to mount the transparencies in a special holder so that they sit directly under the small backlight. Often these holders only accommodate a few slides, or a strip of negatives, and if you have a lot of images to scan it can be very time consuming.

The answer to both of these problems is to buy a dedicated film scanner. Nikon’s range of film scanners includes the Coolscan V ED (around £425) which has an optical resolution of 4,000ppi and can scan strips of negatives and mounted transparencies. The more expensive Coolscan 5000 ED (around £750) accepts an optional roll film adapter which scans up to 40 frames at once and an optional slide feeder which takes up to 50 mounted slides. The Nikon Film scanners also include Digital ICE dust and scratch removal, which will save you hours of retouching, particularly on older slides.

If your budget won’t stretch to separate scanners for film and prints then consider Canon’s new 8800F (around £125), a flatbed scanner, which is also well equipped for film scanning.

Its optical resolution of 4,800x9,600ppi means you can produce good enlargements from 35mm originals and its film adapter holds 12 frames of 35mm film strips or 4 mounted transparencies and will also take the older 120 roll film ‘two and a quarter square’ format. It also includes Canon’s FARE Level 3 technology for restoring scratched, damaged and faded film.

Scanning multiple prints can also be very time consuming, but if your flatbed scanner is less than a couple of years old the software should enable you to scan several photos simultaneously. At the very least you’ll be able to place several photos on the scanner bed and select them in the software using a rectangular marquee.

Most newer scanners will automatically detect, straighten and crop multiple images and save each one to a separate file for you. An automatic document feeder model is another way to reduce the workload, but there’s always the chance of jams scratching your precious prints, so use with care.

Convert home movies to DVD
While it’s possible to digitise Super 8 movie footage by projecting it onto a screen and recording it using a digital camcorder, getting good results is technically demanding and, even though many people still have their old home movies, few have a working projector. Though more expensive than doing it yourself, professional film transfer services will make a much better job of it; see the box on page 42 for details of companies that transfer 8mm and 16mm movie footage to DVD.

Analogue video in the form of 8mm tape is a much easier prospect (though you can also pay to get this done professionally ­ see the box). Some graphics adapters and TV receiver cards provide analogue-in ports that will allow you to connect an analogue camcorder, so check first before going out and buying hardware you don’t need.

If you own a digital camcorder that has an analogue-in port you can digitise your old analogue video recordings by connecting your analogue camcorder or VCR to the digital one. If your digital camcorder can do this it will have been supplied with a cable which connects its video-in port to the video-out port on your analogue camcorder or VCR.

Just press Play on the analogue machine and hit the Record button on the digital one. When you’re done, connect the digital camcorder to your PC with a Firewire cable and capture the digital video in the usual fashion, prior to burning it to DVD.

Even if you don’t already own the necessary hardware, you can buy a box that will connect an analogue camcorder or VCR to a USB2 port on your PC for less than £50. Two models that we’ve been recommending for some time are Terratec’s Grabster AV150 and Pinnacle’s Dazzle DVC90. Both of these feature composite and S-video analogue inputs. An S-video port will provide a better quality image if you own a hi-band (for example, Sony Hi-8 or Panasonic S-VHS) camcorder.

These capture devices ship with software that enables you to capture, edit and burn the video to DVD, so if you don’t have a digital video editing application they’re an even better buy. Earlier versions of the Grabster AV150 included two applications ­ Ulead Video Studio 7 LE and Ulead DVD Movie Factory 3.
It currently ships with Magix Movies on CD & DVD. The Dazzle DVC90 ships with Pinnacle Studio Quickstart. If you prefer, you can use either product with another video capture application of your choice.

Documents, certificates & deeds
If you have a lot of documents larger than A4 it might be worth buying an A3 flatbed scanner like the Mustek Scanexpress A3 USB 1200 Pro (see the section Complete Archiving Kit details).

But scanning a few large documents needn’t be a problem for an A4 flatbed. Even if the documents are larger than A3 you can scan them in sections and stitch them together in a photo-editing program.

Scan each section using exactly the same settings and leaving a few centimetres overlap, then open them in your editing program. With the first scan active (say the top left one) increase the canvas size so that it’s large enough to accommodate the entire document, then drag, or copy and paste, each section into a new layer of the first document and roughly position it.

You might need to rotate the layers slightly to get them to match up, but it’s easier than you’d expect to get a near seamless join.

You can use this tiling technique for large photographs, paintings and drawings, though for anything framed you’d be better off using a digital camera (see the Archiving Objects section).

For very large documents, or if you can’t be bothered with tiling, most copy shops have scanners that can handle documents up to A0 in size. Again, see the Specialist Services section for details.

Scanning and recognising text
Once your documents have been scanned, you have the same retrieval issues as for pictures. In fact, regardless of the fact they contain words, the scans you have made of your documents are pictures. You can add metadata keywords to your scanned documents to make them easier to locate, but turning the scanned document into searchable text gives you more scope.

The quickest way to do this is to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. OCR software is very good at reading typewritten documents, but fares less well with handwriting, so it’s not an option for your grandparents’ love letters (unless they communicated using a Remington typewriter).

OCR software converts the scanned image into text which you can then save as a Word document, a PDF, or any other text-compatible format. Modern OCR applications can not only convert the text, but also make a good job of retaining column layouts. If there are pictures mixed in with the text ­ logos for example ­ they are scanned as bitmaps and embedded in position in the text document. Despite this, you might want to keep the original scan for legal reasons or because of its visual appearance for example.

One way of doing this would be to save both documents in a single file that supports both text and image file types. For example you could save it as a two page Word document with the scan embedded, or linked on the second page, or as a two-page PDF. Some OCR applications save OCR text together with the scan from which it was produced in a transparently ‘bound’ file format, allowing you to search for document text and display the scanned image.

Fast document scanning
Scanning documents with a flatbed scanner can be a slow process. Flatbeds are really designed for images rather than text and can only do one side of a single sheet of paper at a time. Document scanners can hold a stack of papers in a feeder tray, in a similar fashion to a printer or fax machine. Most of them will scan both sides of a sheet of paper, so you don’t have to turn double-sided sheets over.

Document scanners tend to be low resolution devices and don’t make good photo scanners. They also tend to be more expensive than flatbed scanners. But if the idea of feeding a thousand sheets of A4 to a flatbed scanner leaves you feeling numb, then a document scanner could be the answer.

An all-in-one solution for fast, heavy-duty print scanning work would be the Kodak i1220 ADF model with the optional tethered flatbed scanner, but this will set you back around £1,125.

Archiving objects
Archiving three-dimensional objects like family heirlooms and jewellery is just as important as for documents.

If for no other reason, having a record of your possessions for insurance purposes in the event of loss, theft or damage can make the claims process much more straightforward.

A digital camera is often the best way to capture 3D objects, but you might be surprised at what you can scan using an A4 flatbed scanner. Medals, coins, small items of jewellery, in fact any solid object that’s not deeper than about a centimetre is scannable ­ if you can fit it under the lid, it’s worth a try.

In many cases scanning can actually produce better results than photography. The diffuse, even lighting produced by the scanning lamp is excellent for recording detail and the scanner lid provides a plain background.

For jewellery, coins and other metal objects you’ll find you get better results by placing a sheet of black paper behind the object. Tape it to the back of the scanner cover to keep it in place or, if the object is fragile, remove the lid altogether. Use the same scanner settings as for a full colour photo ­ 24-or 36-bit RGB colour and sufficient resolution to be able to make a 200dpi inkjet print at a reasonable size.

Large objects like framed paintings, ceramics and other 3D art objects will need to be photographed with a digital camera. Place smaller objects on a sheet of plain paper ­ you can use several overlapping sheets if necessary. Check the minimum focussing distance on your camera and get as close as you can, but not too close to the subject ­ fill the frame if possible.

Natural light will give better results than a built in flash at this distance, so shoot outdoors, or close to a big window on a bright cloudy day and avoid direct sunlight.

Taking photographs of paintings is an art in itself; for best results you need to try to get the lighting as even as possible and shoot as straight-on to the canvas as you can. If you can move the picture, put it on an evenly lit wall, or lie it flat on the floor, or on a low table and shoot from above. It sounds obvious, but try to avoid any lighting directly behind the camera, which will cast a shadow.

Inevitably, unless you use a tripod and set things up very accurately, there will be some perspective distortion (the painting will be wider at the top than the bottom, or from one side to the other). This can easily be corrected for in your photo editing application. In Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 for example, select the Perspective Correction tool, align the corners of the box grid with the corners of the painting then click the Apply button.

Metadata ­ storing and retrieving your archived images
Scanning and archiving your life is all very well, but unless you annotate what you’ve scanned or use OCR software to produce a text version of scanned documents, it may take you the rest of your life to rediscover them. While you can organise scans into folders and give them easily identifiable file names, a database will make things much easier to find.

You don’t necessarily need a full-blown database application, either. Most photo editors contain an image database that will suffice perfectly well for an archive of thousands of images. Image databases work by querying image metadata ­ keyword and other information that is stored in the header of JPEG, TIFF and other image file formats. Such databases provide tools for entering and editing keyword tags and other metadata, as well as searching your archive for images that contain them.

A well-organised and tagged archive will not only make it easier to retrieve individual files, but can be used to make connections between items based on date, family relationships, or document type. You might, for example, search for all photos of the Reynolds family taken between 1939-45, all documents relating to Bill Reynolds, or anything connected with 45 Britannia Street.

Most photo-editing programs include a database. In Adobe Photoshop Elements it’s called the Organizer and Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 ships with an additional program called Media One Plus. Specialised databases for handling images, like Extensis Portfolio and Canto Cumulus, can deal with millions of images and multiple concurrent users, but are aimed at organisations rather than individuals and, unless you have a very large family archive, are probably overkill.

Off-site storage
Storing a copy of your digital archive off-site ensures its safety in the event of household disaster, in the same way as for the physical archive.

The simplest option is to make backup copies on DVD and store these off-site along with the physical documents, in a safe deposit box, with other members of your family, or anywhere safe and secure.

The drawback of sending a DVD off-site is that you don’t have immediate access to it. Storing your archive online means you can access it from anywhere in the world ­ which could be useful if, for example, you lose your passport while on holiday. There’s a growing market in online storage and many companies offering lots of space free of charge.

The main issue when you’re storing sensitive family documents is security. Fortunately most online storage services provide password login and file transfer encryption.

AOL account holders can sign up for a free 5GB worth of storage space at www.xdrive.com. Uploading is done via your web browser so it’s easy and doesn’t require any special software. If you don’t have an AOL account they’ll open a free one for you as part of the registration process.

Mediamax.com provides 25GB of free storage space, the only restriction is a 1GB per month download cap and 10MB file size limit.

Keepyousafe.com provides online ‘safe deposit boxes’. The emphasis is on security for vital personal information like insurance, financial and medical records and the stored files are encrypted. It’s free, but the space on offer is meagre with room for ‘about 10 items and files’. For 500MB the cost is $4 (about £2) per month.

Physical storage
Having digitally archived your life, you can store the physical objects somewhere safe and secure. If you have such a space in your house, that will obviously be the least expensive and most convenient option. Here though, they will of course be subject to the usual domestic risks of fire, theft, flood and whatever else might befall your home.

By storing your family archive off-site you can reduce these risks to a degree. Self storage space is now widely available throughout the UK and units as small as one square metre can be hired on a weekly basis. Costs vary from company to company and there are regional variations as well, but you can expect to pay from £25 to £40 per month for a one square metre locker with a five to 10 per cent discount if you prepay for a period of six to 12 months. To find a self storage company in your area look on the Self Storage Association website at www.ssauk.com.

Safe deposit boxes
For very valuable items you might want to consider a safe deposit box. As well as the high street banks, some other companies provide them and prices are relatively inexpensive ­ from £50 to £100 per year for a small box.

So, whether it’s a few important documents, a family history, or a record of your treasured possessions, your PC could be key to keeping your life backed up.

Restoring old photos
Archiving your life provides the opportunity to restore those aspects of the record that have become tarnished with age.

Photographs in particular are highly susceptible to age-related deterioration, largely as a consequence of the light-sensitive chemicals used in their production. Here are some restoration tips.

l You can quickly restore contrast and punch to faded photos using a Levels adjustment. Drag in the sliders at either end of the histogram until they are touching the base of the ‘mountain’.

l Scan black and white photos in RGB colour mode. A colour scan provides more image detail than a black and white one and you can use this for restoration. Selecting a single RGB channel from the colour file can help to minimise stains and marks, making the job of retouching easier.

l Scan old photos at high resolution ­ even if you don’t plan to print them large. A high res scan will enable you to zoom in to a very high magnification view and work close-up on small detail without the image pixellating. You can always downsample the image when you’ve finished, to reduce the file size.

l Avoid using your photo editing program’s dust or scratch removal filters, or if you must use them, apply them sparingly. They soften or blur overall image detail, which you won’t get back by sharpening. Use the clone stamp tool to deal with such damage locally.

l If you are planning on buying a scanner to archive old photos, get one with built-in dust and scratch removal. Digital ICE (Image Correction and Enhancement), developed by Kodak and used in Nikon film scanners and Canon’s proprietary FARE (Film Automatic Retouching and Enhancement) technology both work wonders and will save you hours of retouching.

Specialist services
Movie and video transfer - Some things are best left to other people, and transferring home movie films, shot on Super 8, Standard 8 or 16mm footage, is definitely one of them. Professional transfer services use film readers that employ LED illumination to scan each frame of the film, so there’s no danger of burning your precious memories ­ an ever-present danger with conventional projectors.

Film transfer is usually charged either by reel, duration or length, with a minimum charge of around £25 to £40. Typically, a 15-minute movie (on a 200ft reel) will cost between £35-£60 for a basic transfer service. If you have more than one reel the cost for subsequent reels often works out cheaper.

If you’re comfortable doing your own digital video editing, opt for just the basic copying service. Transfer services also offer editing at reasonable prices ­ either to remove blank and damaged sections of tape, or to remove the ‘boring bits’ and produce a fully-edited DVD complete with music backing and chapter menus. As well as celluloid, these companies also specialise in digitising VHS, Betamax, Umatic, Laserdisc and any other analogue video format you can think of.
www.timeless-moments.co.uk
www.savethosememories.co.uk
www.videostudio.co.uk

Restoration - Professional photo retouching and restoration services like Norfolk-based Photores can scan your old photos, retouch spots, scratches, stains and other age-related damage and print them back looking like new. Their standard restoration charge is £10-20. For prints with a lot of scratches and blemishes they charge upwards of £30 and if your photo is in several pieces they will put it back together seamlessly for upwards of £95.
www.photores.co.uk

Scanning and OCR - The low cost of basic flat bed scanners means it’s not really worthwhile getting it done elsewhere, unless you either have a massive quantity of material, or it’s too big to fit on an A4 flatbed scanner. Most high street copy shops, such as Prontaprint and Kall Kwik, can handle originals up to A0 (1,200 x 840mm) in size ­ they can copy them same size, reduce them and/or save a file for you.

Commercial scanning services specialise in scanning large numbers of business documents and either capturing the data using OCR, or archiving to disk or microfilm. They scan all kinds of business document from drawings to invoices. If you have more than a few hundred pages and don’t have a scanner with a document feeder, this could prove a cost and time-effective way to digitise them.
www.pearl-scan.co.uk
www.scansolutions.co.uk/services.htm

Microsoft’s Mylifebits project
This project (read more at http://research. microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx) attempts to fulfil the idea of an American Engineer called Vannevar Bush. In the 1940s Bush developed the concept of a ‘Memex’ ­ a device for storing all of a person’s books, records and communications so that they could be easily retrieved.

In the Mylifebits experiment Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell digitally archived everything in his life that could be turned into bits ­ his papers, books, photographs, phone calls, emails, the web pages he visited, even the labels of bottles of wine he had enjoyed.

As well as the problems of storing accumulated video, audio and other types of data recorded during a lifetime, the project also explores methods for annotating and retrieving it. Fellow Microsoft researchers Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder developed database software to help make sense of the mass of information, to correlate it and enable it to be retrieved in useful ways.

The Mylifebits project has supported diverse programmes of academic research based on archiving material from personal sensors, like Microsoft’s Sensecam (http://research.microsoft.com/sendev/projects/
sensecam) and other devices. Up until now however, we’ve seen little evidence of commercial products based on this kind of research.

Complete archiving kit

Scanning
Canon 8800F Flatbed and film scanner (£125) http://tinyurl.com/2wtdzb
Nikon Coolscan V ED film scanner (£425) http://tinyurl.com/2w3ty6
Mustek Scanexpress A3 USB 1200 Pro flat bed scanner (£150) http://tinyurl.com/39ju66
Fujitsu fi-5110C document scanner (£370) http://tinyurl.com/3c4o7n

Video Capture
Terratec Grabster AV150 (£49.99) http://tinyurl.com/2u4f2k
Pinnacle Dazzle Video Creator (£59.99) http://tinyurl.com/35sjhy

Photo editing, restoration and cataloguing
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 (£69.32) www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshopelwin
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (£79) http://tinyurl.com/33zfx2

OCR
Readiris Pro 11 (£89.76) www.irislink.com
Abbyy Finereader 9 Professional (£103.21) www.abbyy.com
Omnipage 16 (£79.99) www.nuance.co.uk
Paperport 11 (£49.99) www.nuance.co.uk
Acrobat Capture 3 (£410.08) www.adobe.com/products/acrcapture

Digital Online Storage
X Drive www.xdrive.com
Mediamax www.mediamax.com
Keep You Safe www.Keepyousafe.com

Physical storage
Safestore www.safestore.co.uk
Big Yellow www.bigyellow.co.uk
Metropolitan Safe Deposits www.metrosafe.co.uk
Bank House Lockers www.bankhouse.com

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