If you have both old prints and their negatives, it’s worth knowing that scanning them isn’t the same process — and one usually gives a noticeably better result than the other.
Photo scanning: working from the print
Photo scanning captures whatever is already on the printed photograph — including any fading, color shift or surface damage that happened to the print itself over the years. A print is already one generation removed from the original image, since it was produced by exposing photo paper through the negative in the first place.
Negative scanning: going back to the source
Negative scanning captures the film negative directly, which holds more detail and a wider range of tone and color than any print made from it — the negative is the original; the print is a copy of it. Scanning the negative typically produces a sharper image with truer color, especially on negatives that are decades old and whose prints have faded significantly.
Slides work similarly, since a slide is developed as a positive original rather than printed from a separate negative — so slide scanning is much closer to negative scanning than photo scanning in terms of the result.
So which do you need?
If you have both the prints and their negatives, bring both — we’ll scan from the negative wherever possible and only fall back to the print if the negative is missing, damaged, or was never kept. If all you have are prints, photo scanning is the right (and only) option, and that’s completely fine — it still preserves what’s there far better than leaving it in a photo album to keep fading.