How to Preserve Your Family Photos in Australia: A Simple Backup and Labelling Guide

Photos are usually the first thing families wish they had looked after. Prints fade, albums get damp, hard drives fail, and phones get lost or replaced. Worst of all, a photo nobody can identify slowly loses its meaning.

Here is a simple plan you can start this weekend.

Step 1: Gather everything in one place

Collect prints, albums, slides, negatives, old USB sticks, SD cards and the photos on phones and in cloud accounts. Do not sort yet. Just know what exists and where it is.

Step 2: Protect the originals

Store prints and negatives somewhere cool, dry and dark, away from direct sun.
Avoid garages, sheds and lofts, where heat and humidity swing widely. In much of Australia, humidity and heat are the main enemies of paper photos.
Handle prints by the edges and keep them in acid-free, archival-quality sleeves or boxes.
Do not use sticky “magnetic” albums for photos you care about.

Step 3: Digitise the ones that matter most

You do not need to scan everything. Start with the oldest, the one-of-a-kind and the most loved.

A flatbed scanner at around 600 dpi is a sound starting point for prints. Scan at higher resolution if you may want to enlarge them.
A local photo lab or a professional scanning service can handle slides, negatives and big batches.
Save scans as high-quality files (TIFF or high-quality JPEG) and keep the originals.

Step 4: Label them while someone still remembers

This is the step most people skip and later regret. A photo with no names, place or year is a stranger in a frame.

Record who is in the photo, where, and roughly when.
Sit with older relatives and look through photos together. Their answers may be the most valuable thing you save.
Use consistent file names, for example 1974-Wollongong-Mum-and-Aunty-Rose.jpg.

Step 5: Back up using the 3-2-1 rule

Keep three copies, on two different types of storage, with one copy somewhere else. For example: your computer, an external drive, and a reputable cloud service. One backup in the same house is not enough if there is a fire, flood or theft.

Check your backups once or twice a year, and move files to new storage before old drives or formats become unreadable.

Step 6: Decide who gets access

Photos have a second problem: if you are the only person who knows where they are, they can be lost with you. Tell at least one trusted person where the photos live and how to get in, and note it with your other important documents. If you want specific people to receive specific albums, say so in writing, and speak to a solicitor about how that sits alongside your will.

Share them, do not just store them

Preserved photos matter most when they are seen. Make a shared album for the family, add captions, and attach a story to your favourites.

Lifebook Memories gives families one secure place to keep photos alongside the stories, wishes and details behind them, shared with the people you choose.

General information only. For legal questions about inheriting or sharing digital assets, speak to a solicitor in your state or territory.

Before publishing

Add FAQ schema: “How do I back up old family photos?” and “What resolution should I scan old photos?”
Add a downloadable “photo labelling sheet” as a lead magnet.
Add original photos (your own) with alt text; avoid stock images.
Link to Posts 1 to 6 and the sign-up page.

Queue (next 3)

Letters to loved ones: what to write and how to store them
Planning a funeral on a budget in Australia
What happens to your photos and cloud storage when you die

Biggest unresolved risk

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