Working document
The shoebox intake and handback checklist
A working document for the four stages where photo organizing projects go wrong: the client's home, intake day, the capture bench, and the return of the originals.
Free resources
Resources for professional photo organizers
Everything here is built for studios that take custody of other families' original prints, slides and film, and have to give them back better organized than they arrived.
Three kinds of resource sit on this page. The comparisons set PaperKeepsake beside the catalog software, family library apps and client management suites that photo organizers actually evaluate, written as fit questions rather than sales arguments. The calculators handle the two numbers that decide whether a project is profitable: what a shoebox job should cost, and how long the boxes will be in your care.
The checklist is the one to take first if you are picking a single thing. It covers the four moments where family archive projects go wrong, from counting boxes at the client's dining table to getting a signature when the originals go home. Alongside these, The Archive Table carries longer pieces on resolution, capture setups, copyright, contracts and what a hot garage does to color prints over thirty years.
Free tools
Calculators for pricing and planning family archive projects
Two working calculators for the numbers photo organizers argue with most: what a shoebox project should cost, and how long a family's originals will sit in your studio.
Comparisons
How PaperKeepsake compares with the tools photo organizers already use
Most memory keeping studios end up running two or three tools, so the useful question is which one holds the family archive project and which one holds everything else.
Main guide
How should I name files and tag people so a family can still search the archive in twenty years?
It settles how you name files, record dates and tag people so a family archive is still searchable long after your software and your studio have changed.
Magazine
The Archive Table
Working knowledge for professional photo organizers and memory keeping studios who handle other families' original prints, slides and film.
About
Who writes all of this
Who writes The Archive Table, and the bench work behind the box counts, circa dating and handback advice on these pages.
The intake checklist and the shoebox calculators stay free
Nothing on this page asks you to buy anything, and the checklist works as well in a paper binder as it does on a screen. If you would rather have the box numbers, circa dates and unidentified faces tracked in one place, a demo of PaperKeepsake takes about half an hour. Bring the messiest project currently in your custody.