Archiving family photos can be a monumental task. Scanning tons of photographs, editing them, and keeping track of what information might be on the backs of those photographs is generally an incredibly tedious process. Especially when there are hundreds or thousands of photographs to scan!
Using the GIMP scripts and plug-ins described in our earlier posts, you can easily improve your throughput when dealing with these images. This post will discuss a few things to keep in mind to help make the process even faster.
Sometimes photographs have important information written on their backs such as who the image is of, and when and where it was taken. Keeping track of which backs-of-an-image front match can be maddening if you have hundreds or thousands of archival images. Using the method described in a previous post, you can scan multiple backs at once and have them automatically separated and then use the method described in this post to combine the fronts and backs automatically in the same image side-by-side, saving you a lot of time and hassle!
I found a GIMP script online that combined and scaled multiple images. In archiving, scaling is a “four-lettered word.” I modified the script to keep the original scale and to have the options to automatically save the resulting files.
First you need to install the script. Open Gimp, and go to “Edit–> Preferences–> Folders–> Scripts.” This will show you the directory to download the following scripts to : Adams Combine.scm.
Load two images (the front and the back of a particular photograph) in GIMP. Then, select “Filters–>Archiving–>Adams Combine Images” from the top menu bar. A new window will pop up. Select which image you want on which side. You can select to automatically save the images with the settings below and to automatically close the resulting image, or you can keep the image opened for editing.
Simply go to “Filters–>Archiving–>Adams Combine.” A new window will pop up allowing you to select which image you want on the left, and on the right. You can either save the resulting combined image automatically, or you can leave it opened for editing and manual saving later. The default file type is TIFF, but you can change this if you want to reduce quality and file size. Feel free to change the default file name to match your archiving scheme. If you are saving more than one image, make sure to change the file name. The script will overwrite files with the same name without asking you about it so always enter a unique file name.
Once you click “OK” the script will work its magic. The resulting image will consist of the front and back of the two images you opened. Once this new file is saved, you can delete the originals If you want to save space.
Recap:
Open both the back and the front of a particular picture in GIMP, and run ‘Adams Combine’ script to combine the two images to a single image.
Feel free to delete the ‘extra’ images if you want.
