Memories safer in scrapbooks than digital files

A photo is supposed to be worth a thousand words, but it’s not worth anything if it lingers in storage on a cellphone.

Michi Cass, owner of Scrapbooker’s Emporium in Nash, Texas, is a fan of the oldfashioned printed photograph. And she is afraid family photographs could be endangered if the images remain solely on mobile phones.

“So many people now are using their phones to take pictures, but people not developing their photos is what concerns me,” Cass said. “One girl I knew lost her phone and all of her baby’s pictures were on it.”

Cass is a scrapbooker, but she understands that is not true of everyone.

“Printing out photos does not mean they have to be turned into a work of art,” she said. “They can just be slid into photo sleeves with dates and names on them. The information we put on the photo is important, because we think we will remember it later on but times goes by quickly and things are forgotten.”

Since it can be a chore to print photos from a cellphone, Cass recommends getting an inexpensive digital camera for taking photos.

Cass said there are advantages to digital photos.

“More photos are being taken, and it is easy to share them with family and friends. We know immediately what we have when we print them, and you can be selective about which ones you print.”

Digital photos can also be backed up to a disc for protection, but changing technology could someday make discs obsolete, she said.

“It’s nice to have something tangible to hold. It’s cool to look through old photos,” Cass said. “The photo may fade or discolor, but you can still pick it up and hold it.”

Mark Patterson, owner of Patterson’s Camera Shop in Texarkana, encourages customers to back up photos digitally, make a CD or print photos they want to keep.

“If they are on the computer and it crashes, then that’s it,” he said.

Patterson said the archival life of a photo is about 100 years.

“We don’t print as much as we did when people used film, but we are still printing digital images,” he said.

According to yourdigitalimage.com, which allows customers to upload photos and have them printed, there are a number of benefits to printing images, including

Prints never crash. Unlike images stored on a computer, prints will not be erased without warning.

Prints are never obsolete. Electronic image file formats— such as JPEGs and TIFs—could become unreadable by future electronic devices as technology advances.

Prints are long-lasting. Some home printer-ink-andpaper combinations can create a print that, when properly stored, can last 200 years.