Undertaking a Huge Picture Project **ETA

Forever is a great company. All of my digital photos are stored there and I pay a small monthly fee. They will help you create digital scrapbooks (maybe paper ones, too, I'm not sure about that because I switched to digital).

Anyway, you can send them all your photos, and they'll scan them in and organize it. Yes, it will cost a couple hundred dollars, if you have tons of photos. But all you'll have to do in the end is pick a photo, create a digital page, then have it printed. You can edit your photos, crop them, colorize them, enhance them, smooth out mistakes or weird things in the photo, etc.

Here's a link to their scanning service: https://www.forever.com/services

No, I don't sell this, don't have any connection other than being a satisfied customer.

some school photos come with the copy right release. only you and the photo company would know if you have this information, places like walgreens will ask for it when its a copyrighted photo.
for the ex. i would avoid having him in any photos. as that would be my choice if my mom ever decided to share pictures.
for the rest, i would take it a day at a time, do a few pictures a day, set small goals, like one page a week for 3 kids (or one page for all 6 each week.) as you put those in print copy paste it to the file for each child's cd version of the pics. once done load to the disks
good luck, it sounds like its going to be a challenge!

I'd never throw the original photos away.
Keep them in a water proof/fire proof safe.
The same for important family documents.

Digital media is not invulnerable.
Formats change - discs can crash - and if you store things in the 'cloud' - who is to say when the plug eventual gets pulled on your cloud?
It's hard to imagine what will still exist 10 years from now let alone 100 years from now.
So keep the originals as conveniently/safely as you can.
Your descendants will be glad that you did.

You should be able to accomplish this on shutterfly. You can upload from just about any format, camera, phone, hard drive, copy/scan (for the non digital images) etc. It's easy to copy, crop, edit and sort into albums and projects. You can then save these albums on the site, on your hard drive and on a flash drive. I wouldn't even bother with discs, many new computers and laptops don't even have a disc drive anymore (I have a bunch of CDs of home movies that I had converted from 8mm film and no way to play them, guess I'll need to reformat them again, or get them on a flash drive.)
As far as the ex, is he the father to any of your daughter's kids? If he is I would at least include him in a few family photos, if not, leave him out.

I think the first step is to sit down and identify the "specific pieces" of this project. Some examples of pieces:
"convert all paper photos to digital"
"gather any photo with possible copyright issues and find out how to handle"
"research photo album production companies" (I am figuring you meant that you plan to ultimately send a digital file to a company like Snapfish to be printed into a photo book...?)

Then, set a timeline for each piece.

If the ultimate "due date" is 12/25/18, I would guess that you should be sending the six completed photo album files to production by, say, October 25th. (You'll have a better sense of that deadline when you do your "research photo album production companies" piece and, through your research, find out how long the processing takes.)

"Working backwards" from an October 25th "send to production" date, I would imagine that you would want to have every single photo in digital form by, say, June 25th (gives you four months to edit and arrange photos before your October 25th "send to production" date).

Those are just some examples of a timeline that might help you get this done! Good luck!

We (the kids) did something similar for my parents a few years ago. They had thousands of slide photos! We thought about sending them out - you do get the pictures back, but the cost was really quite a lot to have someone else do it. We decided instead to buy a high quality scanner and do the scanning. It had automatic settings for this purpose and made the process simple (autoadjustment of colors, brightness, etc). It was still time-consuming to put them on the scanner one at a time, but simple. In our case, one of my siblings volunteered to do the scanning, and the rest of us chipped in to buy the scanner - not really an option for you, and I don't know if you have time to do all the scanning. But, doing the scanning yourself does get you around the copyright issue with school photos and saves you tons of $ if you think you can find the time.

I have also recently tackled projects that involved sorting through digital pictures. I find that it's easiest if you set small goals, and have the digital pics on the laptop all the time (do you have a laptop?). That way, I could work in small batches in those empty spaces of time in life. Sitting waiting for a kid at an activity? sort a few pictures. DH has a sports game on the TV that I'm only half interested in? sit in front of the TV, listen for exciting plays (as marked by DH cheering or cursing at the TV), and sort some pictures. Car trip and someone else is driving? sort some pictures.

Have a folder on the laptop for each kid and drag each picture file into the kid's folder. If it has 2 kids in the pic, make a copy of the file so that you now have 2 copies of the picture, and drag each file into the proper folder. You will end up with many duplicates this way, but it will be easier to make the DVDs and albums in your next step.

When you upload to a site to make the albums, you can have the site auto-sort the pictures by the date and time it was taken. You'll have to manually put in the scanned photos since they won't have an automatic time and date stamp.

For your divorced child, I would put only pics of her and family from the wedding in her album and leave out any pics that contain her ex. You can keep all those pics in your master picture file. You might leave them in the DVD of digital photos you give her. But I would leave him out of her printed album.

It sounds like a big job, but it will also be a fun walk down memory lane when you look at all those pictures.

ETA: We were not emotionally able to throw away the slides after we scanned them. So they are back in storage in the basement. I'm sure they will never be looked at again. Who even owns a slide projector? But we couldn't bring ourselves to pitch them so in the basement they sit LOL.

ETAA: I also urge you to think carefully about what medium you want to use to save the pictures. Neither my or my husband's current computers have a disk drive at all so I wouldn't be able to open a DVD. We used large (in terms of GB) flashdrives for our picture project. That is really your last step though, so you have lots of time to decide where to save them for the kids.

I think I would include the photos with the ex's IF they are germane to what you're trying to do.

For instance if it's just a generic photo of them laughing or something I don't think that's important. Or you could crop the ex out.

On the other hand IF the photo is of prom or even the wedding then I'd include at least one of the event. Just because it's part of that person's life. Who doesn't love looking at old prom photos and laughing at their hair, makeup, dress styles, the guy's suit and hair, and their shoes.

I have a photo or two of me, my ex, and our daughter. But they were of important events such as a pastor giving our child a blessing. And her first birthday. Those are milestones. SO they shouldn't be left out unless there was horror going on behind the photo. Like if the ex was abusing her and the kids, I would crop him out and put the photo.

Regarding your SWH question - There is a digital photo archive service called Forever that is meant to be permanent backup and even can be passed down to your heirs. It is a pay service though and I haven't tried it.