EZPZ: Scanning Photos & HP Resources

This Christmas I proudly put out all of our Santa photos of the kids as I do each year. Now that we have 12 of them it’s getting cumbersome to have all the photos out in 5 x7 frames. Plus, I was using cheap frames and they were falling apart. I decided to scan them and try to do some kind of collage. I didn’t know where or how, but I wanted to simplify the clutter of the pictures. I knew I wanted to do something because we love to compare the kids (and the same Santa) over the years. It’s a tradition!

I’m using the HP 7500A (scan, print, fax and copy!). Love! I scanned 12 photos as jpegs, put them on a file on my desktop named Santa in about 20 minutes (after I downloaded the software from the HP site because, um, I misplaced the CD). It was so easy to scan (and there’s that email function I’ve not tried yet).

I’d normally try to layout and print it myself but I noticed that there’s an online HP ePrintCenter that I decided to try.

It was easy to navigate around and I found a place where I could use templates (free!) and I used a template that allowed me to use 8 of the photos. We picked their favorite pictures and colors for borders and WALLA! Personalized Santa collages. The kids love them.

I figure school pictures would be good to do as well. I need to get those scanned and put onto a memory card (which I can do directly into the printer) and get that card to a safety deposit box. Pronto. I’m a little bit of a fanatic about protecting the pictures. Come to think of it, I have about 1000 pictures pre-digital camera age (remember when?) I could scan too. If only this magical printer could organize them in date order for me to scan… Hey, a girl can dream!