The Great Photo Organization Project
Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Thursday, March 19, 2026
(Note: I just copied this from Facebook because I realized I hadn't mentioned it here.)
Okay, so I promised a post about the positives of the negatives project. Or something like that. For those who missed out on the post of several weeks ago (or forgot. Happens to me all the time!), I've embarked on a project to scan and catalog all of my negatives.
I shot a lot of film back in the day, and had a darkroom until sometime around 2007 or so when I finally went all digital. I'd bought an Epson scanner back in 2025 that would scan negatives. It finally died last year, so I got my money's worth out of it!
I figure that while my energy level was low due to the chemo it would be a perfect time to scan and catalog all of my negatives. Of course, I've set up a database. (I'll see if I can find the picture to post.) The cunning plan - and I've kept up with it! - was to create digital contact sheets, print them out, and file them in binders with my negatives. A contact sheet is old school developing. You put negatives directly on a sheet of photographic print paper, cover them with glass (because they've likely warped a bit in the development process), expose it, and develop it like a print. This gives you little thumbnails of everything. Then you can look those over and decide your likely candidates for enlarging. It saves a lot of time, and when you put the negatives in binder sleeves you can file that sheet in the same binder so you know what you have.
So, I'm taking a picture of a binder sleeve of negatives with the cell phone, doing some basic adjustments in Affinity Photo, then printing them out to put in the binder. I also scan them at 100 dpi for the database. Unless I'm doing slides or B&W negatives, color correction is a really pain in the tail. They rarely come out right, but they're good enough so I can see what I have, which is the entire point of the process.
One of the things Microsoft has done right with Windows is an app called PhoneLink. I can use it to control my Android phone! This means I can set up my phone in a bracket above the light pad where I place the negatives and leave it. I can take the pictures with a mouse click and not have to worry about the phone shaking. Then I can use Phone Link to transfer the pictures to my computer for processing.
Then I started to obsess over what I'd need to take pictures of negatives. I have a decent DSLR with a remote shutter (again, no camera shake!). I have the light pad, but what can I mount the negatives in? I looked at options from the high end (a couple hundred bucks) to 3-D printed options, and then I realized - doh! - I kept the negative carriers from my scanner. Free is good!
Ah, here's a screencap from the database. The color adjustment isn't very good, but I'm sure I can do a better job with individual negatives. Again, it's just to see what I have.
Filed under: Pictures Life
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