The Best Way to Digitize Old Photographs to a CD

Arrange your photographs for scanning. If you have a lot of old photographs, take the time to organize them into categories by subject or event, you can also organize them by the date they were taken.

Click "Settings" in the navigation bar of the scanner software and select "Picture" as the source document. Depending on the scanner you are using, the wording might be slightly different. Select the quality settings for the pictures you are going to scan. Choose the "Best" setting for your pictures. This will give you a digitized version that will be suitable for printing.

Create a folder for your scanned pictures. Documents including photographs will automatically be stored in the "My Scans" folder on your computer in a sub-folder organized by date of the scan. If you want a different location for your folder, in the settings section for the scanner program, create the folder for your scanned photographs.

Prepare your photographs for scanning. Carefully clean any dust or light debris from the front of the photograph. If the photograph is very dirty or stained, you use an emulsion cleaner to clean the pictures. This can be purchased at most photography speciality stores.

Place photographs face down on the flatbed scanner's glass and press or click the "Start" button. Repeat this process, until all your photographs have been scanned to your computer.

Open the CD drive and insert a blank CD. Wait for a moment, for your computer to acknowledge the blank CD.

Right click the folder you created to save your photographs, and select "Send to" from the drop-down menu. Select the icon that represents the blank CD, click the icon and click "OK" located on the bottom right of the window. Your computer will now copy the digitized photographs to the CD.

Remove the CD from the drive when the burning process is done, and place the CD into a protective case for safe storage.