Large amounts of images are captured every day and are stored either on digital or analog storage solutions. Each has advantages and disadvantages when used to preserve one memories. This paper proposes to augment the existing solutions with a modernized, inexpensive hardcopy backup, which can serve as a fall-back solution if everything else fails. In particular, the collection of images is printed in form of an inexpensive photo-album, which is augmented with printed human readable metainformation designed to enable an easy reconstruction of the original images in the future and can be enjoyed meanwhile. The methodology is illustrated using a set of original digital sRGB images and printed simulations of faded versions of those images, which are scanned and reconstructed in an automatic and manual way and are compared to the results of a scanner reconstruction software and to the original images.
Eric Hoarau, Ingeborg Tastl, Nathan Moroney, "A Human Readable Hardcopy Backup System for Digital Images" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP25), 2009, pp 337 - 340, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2009.25.1.art00094_1