Store against the damage software cannot undo
Most advice on this is a shopping list: acid free boxes, archival sleeves, a cool dark cupboard. The list is broadly right, and it is sold to you in a flat order of importance, as though every item were protecting against the same thing.
It is not. Some of what happens to a shoebox of prints is reversible on a scan years later, and some of it removes the photograph permanently. Storage is worth doing for the second kind, and that is the sorting the shopping lists never do. Sort your own pile that way and the job gets smaller, cheaper and considerably more urgent in the places where it matters.
Sort the damage by whether it is reversible
The damage guide on this site sorts old prints by what went wrong with them. Read that list backwards and it separates cleanly into two piles.
Reversible later: fading, a colour cast drifting towards red or magenta, general softness, dust and surface marks. These are changes to how the image reads rather than losses of the image itself, so a scan still holds enough to work from, and software recovers them to a degree that surprises people.
Not reversible, by anything: emulsion lifted off the paper, a print torn through a face, two prints stuck together and pulled apart, mould that has eaten into the surface, heavy silvering across the part of the photograph you care about. There is no file anywhere that contains what used to be there, so nothing can be read back. A plausible reconstruction is a drawing, not a photograph of your grandmother.
That is the whole case for storage, stated honestly. You are not protecting against fading, which keeps most of its options open. You are protecting against the list that ends the conversation.
Where the box sits matters more than what the box is
The irreversible pile is almost entirely caused by water, damp and heat, and all three are decided by location rather than by the enclosure you buy.
An attic bakes in summer and a basement or a garage holds damp and floods, and damp is what grows mould and what glues a stack of prints into one object. An interior cupboard in the part of the house you heat and cool is better than any box in the places people usually store photographs, and it is free.
Inside that room, keep the box off the floor and away from an exterior wall, which is where condensation appears first, and away from anything that carries water. A burst pipe is the single most common way an entire family archive is lost in one afternoon, and it is a question of which wall the box is against.
Stability beats a perfect reading. Somewhere moderately cool that stays the same is kinder to a print than somewhere cold that swings up and down with the seasons, because it is the swing that moves moisture in and out of the paper.
What touches the print
Enclosures are the part people spend money on, and the money is well spent on a short list of specifics rather than on the word archival, which is not a regulated claim.
- Choose paper and board described as acid free and lignin free, and sleeves in polyester, polypropylene or polyethylene. Avoid anything made with PVC, which breaks down and attacks what it is holding.
- Take out the metal and the adhesive. Paper clips rust into the paper, rubber bands perish and weld themselves to it, and sticky tape yellows and then tears the surface when anybody tries to remove it later.
- Get prints out of a magnetic or self adhesive album if they are in one. Those albums bond to the emulsion over time, and a print being pulled off one is the common route into the irreversible pile.
- Keep faces apart. Prints stored face to face can stick to each other in a humid year, so interleave with acid free paper or sleeve them individually.
- Label the back only, in soft pencil, with names, places and the year if you know it. Ink bleeds and ballpoint embosses the image from behind. Unlabelled is also a loss, just a slower one: a photograph nobody can identify stops being looked at.
Handling, and the one time to stop
Handle prints by the edges with clean dry hands. Cotton gloves are standard advice and they cut both ways, since they make it easier to drop a glossy print, so dry hands and care are an honest substitute for most people.
The rule worth remembering is the one about wet prints. If a stack has been in water and is damp or stuck together, pulling it apart is how the emulsion comes away, and that is the version nothing reverses. Keep it cool and get it to somebody who conserves photographs, or at the very least leave it alone until it is fully dry and then separate only what separates willingly.
A print that is already stuck fast when dry is finished as an object you can flatten out. What it still is, usually, is a photograph you can copy, which is the next section.
Display is where fading actually happens
Light is cumulative and it does not go backwards. A print on a sunny wall is being bleached slowly for as long as it hangs there, and a colour print will shift as its dye layers break down at different rates.
Display a copy and store the original. This is the single most useful habit in the subject, and it is the one piece of advice people ignore because the original feels like the real thing to put in the frame. Once there is a good scan, the copy is the real thing for display purposes and the original is the negative you are keeping safe.
If an original must hang, keep it out of direct sun and off a wall that gets afternoon light, and use glazing that filters ultraviolet. Fading is in the reversible pile, so this is about the quality of the eventual scan rather than about rescue.
Digitising is the only insurance that survives the box
Every measure above protects one physical object in one building. A scan is the only step that makes the photograph independent of that object, and it is the step that turns the reversible pile into something you can actually act on, because fading and colour shift are corrected on the file rather than on the print.
Scan at the quality you would want in twenty years rather than the quality you need for a message thread, and keep more than one copy in more than one place. The scanning guide here covers the method, and slides and negatives have their own guide because they are a different job.
Then leave the originals alone. The best thing that happens to a print after it has been digitised is nothing at all: a stable room, a decent box, and no more handling than the day it went in.
Clara is the part that comes after the scan. It enlarges and rebuilds detail in a digitised photograph and corrects the softness and the shifted colour that made you worry about the print in the first place. It cannot replace an emulsion, which is why the storage comes first.
More guides
Questions
What is the best way to store old photographs at home?
In an acid free box, in an interior cupboard in the part of the house you heat and cool, off the floor and away from an exterior wall or any plumbing. Location does more work than the box does: attics, basements and garages cause most of the damage that nothing can reverse later.
Which kinds of photo damage can software fix and which cannot?
Fading, a colour cast, softness, dust and surface marks are recoverable from a scan, because the image is still recorded under them. Emulsion loss, a tear through a face, prints pulled apart after being stuck together and mould eaten into the surface are not, because nothing holds a record of what was there.
Are archival sleeves worth buying?
The specifics are, the word is not. Look for acid free and lignin free paper and board, and sleeves in polyester, polypropylene or polyethylene. Avoid PVC, which degrades and attacks the print. The bigger win is usually removing paper clips, rubber bands and sticky tape from what you already have.
Should I take photos out of an old magnetic album?
Yes, carefully, because those albums bond to the print over time and the bond gets stronger. If a photograph does not lift with gentle persuasion, stop and scan it in place rather than forcing it, since a torn emulsion is permanent and a slightly awkward scan is not.
What do I do with photographs that got wet?
Do not pull a damp stack apart, which is how the emulsion comes off and is the damage nothing reverses. Keep them cool, get them to somebody who conserves photographs if they matter, and otherwise let them dry fully and separate only what separates willingly.
Does scanning count as preserving them?
It is the only step that survives the loss of the print, so yes, and it is not a reason to throw the print away. Keep several copies of the scan in different places, store the original properly afterwards, and display the copy rather than the original so the thing on the wall is not the only version you have.