There are three kinds of heritage photos you’ll be scanning—color and black and white photos with no edges, color or black and white photos with white edges, and black and white photos with deckle edges. The last two with white or deckle edges will be our main focus in the following lessons but before I get started on that I want to quickly show you how to separate scans of regular photos without white edges.

These are generally scanned using just the white scanner lid for the background and then separated using the Image → Divide Scanned Photos command, but for convenience—so you have everything in one place and don’t have to remember where to find that command—I’ve added it as one of the Heritage actions. It’s this one right here—“Crop and Straighten-WHITE Background.”

To follow along open the practice photo called “Borders-NONE-background-WHITE.jpg.”

Go to the Actions panel, click on Crop & Straighten-WHITE-background, and then click the Play icon to run the action.

If you need to rotate a photo use one of the two Rotate actions. For this one I’ll choose Rotate Left and click the Play button.

To view the rest of the new separated photos let’s open the Photo Bin and check them out. Here’s one more that one needs to be rotated so I’ll click on that and choose Rotate Right and run that action.

So those are the actions to use for separating photos on a white background and rotating them, if necessary!

There are three kinds of heritage photos you’ll be scanning—color and black and white photos with no edges, color or black and white photos with white edges, and black and white photos with deckle edges.

The last two with white or deckle edges will be our main focus in the following lessons but before I get started on that I want to quickly show you how to separate scans of regular photos without white edges.

These are generally scanned using just the white scanner lid for the background and then separated using the File → Automate → Crop and Straighten Photos command, but for convenience—so you have everything in one place and don’t have to remember where to find that command—I’ve added it as one of the Heritage actions.

To follow along open the practice photo called “Borders-NONE-background-WHITE.jpg.” Go to the Actions panel and click on Crop & Straighten-WHITE-background. Click the Play icon to run the action.

And there are the individual photos. If you need to rotate a photo use one of the two Rotate actions. For that one I will choose Rotate Left and run that. Let’s make it a little bit bigger. Most of these don’t need to be rotated…but this one does and that one needs to be rotated right.

So those are the actions to use for separating photos on a white background and rotating them, if necessary!