On 2/6/2016 4:23 PM, philo wrote:
I did not scan every last slide or negative,

20% were not worth going through the effort.
I first sorted by year
but am also creating a data base by subject.

I scanned all of the 35mm slides taken when I was a child -- family
vacations, extended family gatherings, etc.

But, scanning slides is brutally time consuming! Even if you don't bother
trying to "fixup" problems with the emulsions, etc.

So, I just opted to sort them trivially: box number 1, box number 2, etc.

I have a film scanner that can handle up to 4x6 (?) negatives but, again,
its painfully slow. Prints, by comparison, are much easier (I have a
"B size" scanner on which I can lay about a dozen prints at a time so
just have to do *one* scan to get a dozen images).

My system isn't perfect but still, I can usually find what I'm looking for in
less than five minutes.
Prior to this it would have taken hours.

But, you probably sort based on things like "Liz's wedding", "Trip to
Disneyland", "2010 Fall Vacation", etc. Chances are, you wouldn't be
looking for a photo of a particular *shirt* that you had -- unless you
KNEW when you were wearing it!

Interestingly, thanks to digital enhancement I've been able to save some images
that what have been unprintable in a dark room.

I am hoping that to be true. I recently found some prints of our
puppymonsters that were of poor quality (I'm not a photographer and,
with a film camera, can't tell what the photos WILL look like until
they are developed!). The negatives are intact and I'm hoping I
can goose the contrast a bit in photoshop to pull more detail
from them.