PDF to ZIP: Best way to archive scanned family photo prints?

[tinytmp1]

Hi all,

I recently scanned a big batch of old family photo prints and saved each one as a separate PDF so I could keep captions and dates together.

Now I have over 50 individual PDF files and want to compress them into a single ZIP folder for easier backup and sharing with relatives.

As a beginner, I am not sure what the best free method is that keeps image quality high without bloating the file size.

Do any of you scan prints this way, and if so, what tools or workflow do you use to organize and zip everything up afterward?

 

[tinytmp1]

Hi all,

I recently scanned a big batch of old family photo prints and saved each one as a separate PDF so I could keep captions and dates together.

Now I have over 50 individual PDF files and want to compress them into a single ZIP folder for easier backup and sharing with relatives.

As a beginner, I am not sure what the best free method is that keeps image quality high without bloating the file size.

Do any of you scan prints this way, and if so, what tools or workflow do you use for PDF to ZIP conversion to organize and zip everything up afterward?

thanks in advance for any help

 

[AlanKlein72]

What's the total pixels?

 

[wfooshee2]

How big are the files? Zipping them might put them into a single file, but that ZIP file might be unwieldy by itself. Scanning to PDF produces HUGE files compare to PDF documents built from image files, because every page of a scanned PDF is not text and images, it's a picture of the page you scanned. Also, email systems usually have a 10 or 20 MB message size limit, and multi-GB files might require a portable hard disk to transport around. There's also the possibility that a single giant ZIP file could become useless if corrupted somewhere along the way.

Personally, I would keep everything in your original format as much as you can. Name the files with meaningful names, like Christmas at Grandpa's 1997, or Bob and Julie's Wedding Album. My own filing system for images in folders, which could very easily work for individual scanned PDFs like yours, is to name the folder (in your case, the file) with the date and the event, like 2026-07-18 Blue Angels Beach Airshow. YYYY-MM-DD format makes the folders sortable, and I can search for the event name, like finding all airshow folders.

 

[SunriseAvenue]

I agree that keeping everything in the original format as much as possible is what you should do if you can. Also yeah, giving particular names to files is crucial because otherwise you'd have to either look at the originals or the data might be lost completely. Do it as soon as possible while everything is here and the memory is somewhat fresh. Maybe sort them to folders by years as well, or by events if most of them are from the same year.
Here are also some tips on storing the originals if you decide to keep them.