Take a good look at your existing albums, and look for signs of photo discoloring and fading. The problem may be in the materials that were used to make the albums.Many albums sold in the past were not made of archival materials and have damaged many older pictures. If you see signs of deterioration or have concerns, seriously consider upgrading to archival quality albums or scanning the album contents to make printed photo books.
Your albums likely contain the best of your photos, so the quality of the storage materials surrounding your very best photos should not be taken lightly.
The many older albums sold with black paper pages are often very acidic, and the laminated look "magnetic" albums widely available in the past are notoriously bad for photos. The picture above is an example of a bad magnetic album where air coming in on the edges has apparently fueled a chemical reaction with something used to manufacture the album. If the photos in such non-archival albums have not already been damaged beyond hope, it may be worth the effort to try to scan the pages or simply remove photos in these albums.
For discussion of what to look for in archival materials, see the article on Storing Original Photos at LocalArchiver.com. For replacement album solutions, visit the Photo Albums and Scrapbooks area at Blick Art Materials.
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