How much storage do I need to scan my photos?

At 600 DPI, budget roughly 4-9 MB per photo for high-quality JPEG or about 40 MB for an uncompressed archival TIFF. A 500-photo collection is about 2-5 GB in JPEG or roughly 20 GB in TIFF. File size scales with the square of the DPI, so 1200 DPI is about four times larger than 600 DPI.

Should I scan photos as JPEG or TIFF?

Scan archival masters as uncompressed TIFF when preservation matters — it keeps every bit of detail forever. Keep smaller high-quality JPEGs alongside them for sharing and everyday viewing. TIFF is larger but never degrades with re-saving.

How long does it take to scan a photo collection?

Plan roughly one minute per photo including handling and file naming, so about 60 photos per hour. A 500-photo collection is around 8 hours of hands-on scanning; a flatbed with a multi-photo bed or a photo-feed scanner speeds this up considerably.

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Photo Digitization Storage Calculator

Planning to scan a box of family photos? Estimate the storage space you'll need — and the time it'll take — at any resolution and file format.

Number of photos

Scan resolution

File format

Estimated storage needed

4.4 GB

500 photos × ~9.0 MB each · roughly 8.3 hours to scan by hand

Keep your archival masters in an uncompressed or high-quality format, and store two copies in two places (a local drive plus a cloud backup) so a single failure never loses the collection. Use smaller JPEGs for sharing and viewing.

Digitizing a whole collection? Repair the damaged ones as you go — fix scratches, fading, and blur or colorize black-and-white with our AI photo restoration tool →

Planning a digitization project

Two numbers decide your storage: resolution and format. File size grows with the square of DPI — doubling from 600 to 1200 DPI roughly quadruples every file — and an uncompressed TIFF archival master is many times larger than a JPEG. For most family collections, 600 DPI TIFF masters plus high-quality JPEG working copies is the sweet spot.

However you store it, follow the 3-2-1 rule: at least three copies, on two kinds of media, with one off-site (a cloud backup counts). Irreplaceable family history should never live on a single drive — drives fail, and a scanned collection is often the only surviving copy once fragile originals continue to age.

Repair as you digitize

Scanning a collection is the perfect time to fix the damaged ones — scratches, fading, blur, or black-and-white colorization, with AI in about a minute each.

Try AI Photo Restoration →