15 Photo Preservation Tips

Here are 15 tips every scrapper should know:

1. A shoe box is safer than many photo albums.
2. Albums that are not acid free, cause yellowing and crumbling. 
3. The safest albums will say acid free or archivally safe, and are more expensive.
4. Bindings on albums should allow pages to lie flat, to keep photos from bending or cracking.
5. Start with most recent photographs and keep them up to date.  Then take older photos and sort them by decades, then approximate years. 
6. Make one "family album" and one for each child.
7. Document your photos with names, dates, events, feelings, humorous captions, appropriate quotes and family stories.
8. Trim pictures that include too much sky or background, a thumb or camera strap.  Use phot trimmers or templates to trim photos into shapes--a heart, circle or oval for example.
9. Do not cut Polaroid prints!!!
10. Be selective--mount only well-focused, varied shots.
11. Include special mementos with your photos:  lock of hair, post cards.
12. Take at least one roll of black and white film per year--they outlast color prints (or black and white digital prints). 
13. Store albums in an upright position, and at temperatures you could tolerate.
14. Either photo copy newspaper articles on acid-free paper or deacidify by spraying them with a product called Wei T'o (at craft stores).
15. Keep negatives in acid-free office envelopes (office supply stores), and label with the approximate months and years, and make a note about the pictures, such as Grandpa's birthday.