Chaos to Memories

Chaos to Memories Professional Photo Organizer • Photo Scanning • Video/Audio/Film Conversion • Digital Org • And More

Chaos to Memories is Professional Photo Organizers located in the Chicagoland area, serving local and remote clients in ...
09/15/2025

Chaos to Memories is Professional Photo Organizers located in the Chicagoland area, serving local and remote clients in the United States and around the world.

As Professional Photo Organizers, we specialize in:
Photo Organization • Photo Scanning
Metadata and Searchability • Photo Restoration
Digital Organization • Video Conversion • Film Conversion
Audio Conversion • Design and Printing Photo Albums

At Chaos to Memories, our expert staff of professional photo organizers

• scans family photos
• converts home movies
• organizes digital photos

into a Family Photo Archive that’s safe, searchable, and shareable. Your family photos capture the most important moments of your life, so it’s time to enjoy your photos again instead of feeling overwhelmed by them.

Are you tired of worrying about losing your memories to

• technical failure
• human error
• natural disasters

If you can’t find, enjoy, and share your photos today, then how will you pass them on to the next generation?

09/12/2025

SNEAK PEAK of Adam's NEW course: Gathering Physical Photos and Videos

This course has been in development for a while and I am so excited to publish it! Whether you're gathering your own digital memories or working with clients, you're going to learn all the digital gathering best practices we use at Chaos to Memories. This course represents 30 years of technical experience, four years of workflow testing, and hundreds of hours of development.

After we scan a family’s photo archive, many clients ask us what they should do with their original family photos. That ...
09/10/2025

After we scan a family’s photo archive, many clients ask us what they should do with their original family photos. That answer is ultimately up to the family, but below are your options and the most important factors to consider before you decide what to do:

Option 1: Discard Them
Option 2: Donate Them
Option 3: Disperse Them
Option 4: Keep Only Favorites
Option 5: Keep Them

If you do decide to discard some or all of your original photos, we strongly recommend two things:
• Ensure your photos have been scanned at archival resolution, at high quality, in file formats that are safe for the future, and that all important details are saved as permanently embedded metadata in your digital files.
• Confirm that your digital files are safely backed up using the 3-2-1 plan. If you discard your photos and lose your digital files, then all your photo memories and work will be lost forever!

NEW BLOG POST: Common Mistake: Displaying Damaged Photos Old photos can suffer many kinds of damage, even with the prote...
09/08/2025

NEW BLOG POST: Common Mistake: Displaying Damaged Photos

Old photos can suffer many kinds of damage, even with the protection of a picture frame. Some of the most common issues we see include fading, discoloration, tears, mold, and scratches from broken glass. The good news is that all this damage can usually be fixed with professional restoration!

Read more of Adam's blog post here:
https://chaostomemories.com/common-mistake-displaying-damaged-photos/

At Chaos to Memories, we scan a lot of photo slides for our clients, many that come to us in slide carousels. Slides hol...
09/03/2025

At Chaos to Memories, we scan a lot of photo slides for our clients, many that come to us in slide carousels. Slides hold up very well over the decades and usually result in brilliant, detailed scans.

Many people feel a nostalgic connection to the original slides, but they can take up a lot of space in your home. If you rehouse your slides in space-saving archival storage, you can keep them safe for the future and benefit from massive space savings!

Here’s an example of 16 slide carousels consolidated to one archival slide storage box. Now this collection fits on a shelf instead of filling an entire closet, and you can discard the bulky slide carousels.

*Note: The cardboard boxes can be recycled, but unfortunately the plastic carousels cannot be recycled.

At Chaos to Memories we offer archival scanning of photographic slides and can capture digital images at very high resol...
09/01/2025

At Chaos to Memories we offer archival scanning of photographic slides and can capture digital images at very high resolution and stunning quality! Some clients want us to scan all their slides (which we’re happy to do), while others want to preview their slides and only scan their favorite memories. These are our recommendations for previewing slides:

• Window with Daylight
Hold each slide up to a window in your home which should provide enough natural light to view the image.

• Computer Screen
Open a web browser on your computer and visit Blank.org. This will open a web browser window that’s just an empty white screen that makes a great backdrop for previewing slides.

• Slide Viewer
If you have impaired vision and need a little help, then you might enjoy a dedicated slide viewer like:
- The Kodak 35 mm Slide and Film Viewer
- Pana-Vue 6566 Automatic Slide Viewer
The benefit of a slide viewer is that they magnify each slide 3-4x which makes them easier to view and select your favorites.

• Light Panel
If you have less common sizes of slides or want to view many slides at once, then you’ll love an LED light panel like Kaiser’s Slimlite Plano.

I hope this helps!

Do you have a relative who wrote details including names, dates, and places on the backs of photos? Now, 50 or 100 years...
08/29/2025

Do you have a relative who wrote details including names, dates, and places on the backs of photos? Now, 50 or 100 years later, those handwritten notes are priceless because they tell the story and details of a photo that would otherwise be lost.

Metadata is the same thing, but for digital and scanned photos. Instead of writing on the back of a photo, metadata is an industry-standard way to embed these details inside a digital or scanned photo. With metadata you can search, find, and share the photos you care about.

I enjoyed talking with my longtime friend and Adobe co-worker Colin Smith (VideoRevealed on Youtube!) about the work we...
08/28/2025

I enjoyed talking with my longtime friend and Adobe co-worker Colin Smith (VideoRevealed on Youtube!) about the work we do at Chaos to Memories. If you have analog media (tapes, reels, photos, etc.) that you need to use in your video projects we can help!

Check out our conversation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th34LwPXwbw

One of the greatest joys of having a searchable Family Photo Archive is that you can share your favorite memories. Our f...
08/27/2025

One of the greatest joys of having a searchable Family Photo Archive is that you can share your favorite memories. Our favorite way to share our photos online is with SmugMug, a popular photo sharing platform. We use SmugMug with our clients, with our business photos, and with our personal photos.

These are some of the reasons we love SmugMug:

• Unlike other services like DropBox, iCloud, Google Drive, and OneDrive, SmugMug is built specifically for photography.
• SmugMug supports standards for searchable metadata, which is especially important with large archives.
• It offers necessary controls for security and privacy.
• SmugMug can be accessed from any device, any computer, and any web browser with no special software or plug-ins.

If you want secure access to your searchable Family Photo Archive from anywhere, please reach out so we can get started!

Video Conversion Best PracticesConverting home movies is an amazing process that lets our clients travel back in time to...
08/22/2025

Video Conversion Best Practices

Converting home movies is an amazing process that lets our clients travel back in time to relive memories such as birthdays, weddings, and vacations. Unfortunately, there are many things that can go wrong with a video conversion including:
• Moldy/Broken tapes
• Incompatible Formats
• Magnetic Decay

Start today before it's too late!

Almost everybody has home movies trapped in formats that are hard to view, including video tapes, film reels, and DVDs. ...
08/20/2025

Almost everybody has home movies trapped in formats that are hard to view, including video tapes, film reels, and DVDs. Converting your home movies to digital is the best way to view them today and preserve them for the future!

We love converting home movies for our clients and believe it’s a project worth doing once and doing it right.

There are 5 unique stages when working with Family Photo Archives that we always go through:GatherPreserveOrganizeShareM...
08/06/2025

There are 5 unique stages when working with Family Photo Archives that we always go through:

Gather
Preserve
Organize
Share
Maintain

What stage are you in?

Address

122 N Hale Street
Wheaton, IL
60187

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5pm
Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 10am - 5pm
Friday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

(630) 665-1432

Website

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