If you are looking for personal and heartfelt gifts for the holidays, create something special with your family’s photos! After you digitize them, here are 5 things you can do with your photos to make them into gifts:

  1. Make a photo book. – With websites like Shutterfly, MyCanvas, Mixbook, Picaboo, and many more, you can easily upload your digital photos and arrange them conveniently into a photobook. These websites have templates to arrange your photos by size or category. Rather than hand sorting photographs to glue into a scrapbook or flipping through a stack of photos, you can digitally sort your photos, arrange them into a book, and easily leaf through the pages to relive your memories.
  2. Put them in a digital picture frame. – Instead of framing dozens of photos to hang on your walls or covering the tops of your furniture with frames, consider picking up a digital picture frame from stores like Best Buy, Walmart, or Amazon and loading up to hundreds of photos onto a single device, depending on the device’s internal and expandable storage options.
  3. Make art with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. – Access the full Adobe Creative Suite on the iMac in the Creative Space at the Library to create vector art with your photos or use the new generative AI tools in Photoshop to touch up or completely reimagine your photos and turn them into creative works of art. Check out this video on our YouTube channel to learn more about turning your photos into vectors. 
  4. Create photo blankets, t-shirts, jewelry, and so much more. – Again, on Shutterfly, Picaboo, and similar websites, you can create items like wall hangings, mugs, blankets, and cards with your photos, but Etsy also has hundreds of options of unique products small business owners can make with your photos, including acrylic plaques, stickers, painted portraits, lockets, wood burned art, photo projection or engraved jewelry, keychains, puzzles, 3D printed lithophane ornaments, and the list goes on!
  5. Share them on social media. – Of course, you can also post your digital photos on the social media platform of your choice to share a special memory with your friends or enjoy the nostalgia of a Throwback Thursday. 

You can digitize your family photos in the Creative Space at the Library any time we are open! If you would like to learn how, book one of the available time slots on Monday, November 13 to meet with an experienced staff member. We will use our scanners and provide a small flash drive to preserve and store your digitized treasures.