Above the Trees

Let’s face it; times are tough, and we, like many people, are pinching our pennies. This year, even our family reunion fell victim to the economy. Every two years, we hold a Hughes family reunion, gathering the descendants of my great-grandparents, Willie and Effie Hughes, to swap pictures and stories, collect and correct genealogy information, and generally catch up since the last reunion. However, out-of-control fuel and travel costs forced the family as a whole to forego the reunion and hope for better days on the horizon.

But all was not lost: our reunion instead became a virtual (that is to say, an online) reunion. And it wouldn’t have been the same without Family Photoloom. Family Photoloom enhanced our online reunion by creating a virtual family reunion for our pictures. We have over 350 pictures focusing on Willie and Effie Hughes, spanning six generations. The face tagging and relationship indexing data stored in our Family Photoloom account connects our pictures exactly the same way that a family is connected. You can browse generation to generation or sibling to sibling. You can focus on a single person and see ALL the portraits for that person, or flip over to the relationship tab and see all the pictures of the complete family group. Family Photoloom enhanced our “Virtual Family Reunion” and enabled us to stay connected, even as we pinched pennies and stayed at home on our “stay-cation.”

FAMILY PHOTOLOOM – The Ultimate Family Deal

While we’re talking about saving money, let me take this opportunity to describe the financial benefits of our Photoloom business model for you. In addition to being family-friendly, Family Photoloom ‘pocket-book’ friendly as well. This is because one Premium Family Photoloom Account is all you need to support your entire family organization.

Here is how it works: The account sponsor signs up for the Premium Account, and everyone else signs up for a free trial account. The account sponsor invites all other family members to the family’s Premium Account. That’s all there is to it – a whole family that shares one Premium Account. (It is important to note that the sponsor of the Premium Account has control of not only of who has access to the account, but who has edit (or author) privileges.)

From a business standpoint, it may seem like a wild and crazy idea to allow people free access to a shared Premium Account, so let me explain why it makes good business sense to Photoloom LLC. Two words: Viral Marketing! Every core family is really a combined family: the husband’s family and the wife’s family and at each generation it doubles again. For example, the Willie and Effie reunion site does little for my mom, who is not from this family line; nor does it really meet the needs of my wife, who married into this group of nuts. Both are a potential new Premium Accounts for us. So while you see Free Accounts for all family members, we see Free Viral Marketing.

Times are tough, but we’ll get through them; we always have. We’ll come out stronger as we valiantly do our best to serve one another and help our families stay connected. Don’t let the economy ruin your family reunion – and let Family Photoloom help bring you closer, with a Virtual Family Reunion for your pictures.

Sincerely,
Scott Huskey

Coming next time: Learn about quick and easy Family Photoloom email invitations – it takes just one step to invite and add a new member to your account.

Digital Pictures 101: Scanning Resolution

Do you have old family photographs that you’d like to bring into the 21st Century? Imagine the fun and excitement that would come from being able to share such treasures with your family, using today’s digital computer tools and networks.

To do this, you’ll need a scanner. But fear not; these days, a good quality scanner can be had for as little as $100. (This is fantastic, given that my first scanner, purchased in 1995, cost $1000.00!)

In order to use your scanner, you’ll need to understand “resolution,” and you’re in luck, because that’s what this installment of Digital Pictures 101 is all about.

Images scanned at low resolution (like the one on the left) often appear relatively clear and crisp when viewed as very small images or on a computer screen. Unfortunately, things aren’t always as they seem.

The reality is that printing images that have been scanned at such low resolutions will result in fuzzy faces and much frustration—print out a 5x7 copy of the photo above and all you’ll get is a sea of little gray squares (like the large image above).

So what is the best resolution to use for scanning family photographs?

Here’s a simple rule of thumb — if you are scanning an image to make a same-size printed copy of that image, scan it at 300 dots per inch (dpi). However, beyond same-sized copies, determining optimal scanning resolution gets a lot more complicated. One trick is to have in mind the final device or medium that will display your image. (See Table 1, below)

Table 1 - Suggested Resolution based on Final Destination

This works great when you wish to reproduce the item you are scanning at about the same size as the original being scanned. However, it all falls apart when you scan a tiny picture that you wish to display much larger. However, a better way of choosing the correct resolution is to have a target uncompressed file size in mind.

I like to think of my final destination medium as a storage device. Do I plan to view the image on a still TV, a computer screen, or a high-definition screen? Is the largest image I plan to print 5x7, or will I be printing a 10x14? And yes, a piece of paper is a storage medium—it holds 19 MB of color information at 300 dots per inch. Take a look at the following table:

Table 2 - Suggested Resolution Based on File Size of Popular Media*

It's ironic that just when we're starting to get used to the metric system, where "kilo" means 1,000, and "mega" means 1,000,000, those computer geniuses/ hackers/ nerds go and turn everything upside down!

After looking over the file size requirements listed in Table 2, you may be thinking, “Are you crazy? If I scan my photographs at the high resolutions that are needed to produce quality print images, it’s going to take up a huge amount of memory space on my computer! Where am I going to store all that image data?”

The first part of the answer is compression — which greatly reduces the amount of space needed to store a high resolution picture, albeit at some cost to quality. Compression will be the subject of the next installment of Digital Pictures 101.

The second part of the answer to the question of where to store all that image data is — Family Photoloom™ of course — the best place on the Internet to store and share your photo-history!

Coming Soon: Digital Pictures 101: Compression — A brief comparison of file types (TIFF, BMP, JPEG, and GIF); tips on scanning documents, including using digital cameras.


* Math Wiz Notes for Table 2
• It takes 3 bytes to store a color pixel (one byte for each of red, green, blue).
• There are 1024 bytes in a KB (read Kilobyte)
• There are 1,048,576 (1024x1024) bytes in a MB (read Megabyte)
• And a Gigabyte? 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes! (1024x1024x1024)
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Excerpted from “No More Fuzzy Faces: The Secrets of Digitizing Family History”, originally presented by Scott Huskey at the BYU Family History and Genealogy Conference, Provo, Utah, March 2008.

As our family grows and our children venture into the world beyond our doors, we find our holiday gatherings all the more special. In the coming days, we will be gathering our family together, even flying a couple in from out of state.

So much of our holiday revolves around photos – they draw us together. Through their images, we reminisce about old times – the stories shared, the lives lived, the loved ones lost and found along the way. And throughout each day that we are together, we create for new moments and capture new images – photographs of tomorrow’s memories.

The holidays are a great time to get help from your family with identifying people in your old photographs. This season, as you sip your eggnog or take a break from the traditional family Monopoly game, consider grabbing those old family picture albums, and share with your family the memories and stories that come to mind simply by browsing their pages. Open an album (or a shoebox) and you’re sure to hear someone saying, “I remember when…"

I have found that it is my great-aunts who are able to fill in the blanks when it comes to old photographs. This reminds me of a family reunion we had at Roman Nose State Park, Oklahoma, in the year 2000. I thought I had it made. I brought a scanner and laptop, a cousin provided a projector and a printer, and I had more great-aunts assembled than ever before.

We sat together, the great-aunts and me, looking through photographs one at a time. At one point, I came across an old school photo, an image of twenty or thirty children. My Great-Aunt Hyla shouted, “Stop – I remember when this was taken! That’s me in the third row!” Then she went on to name three or four more people in the photograph.

We thought we were so smart. We printed the picture out and asked her to write down the names of all the people she could remember, with a circle around each face and a line to their name. We did this for several other photographs. I wish I had had Family Photoloom back then. Because although these printouts captured the information I wanted, they were no good after I folded them up, put them in my pocket, and accidentally lost them. (arghhh!)

Family Photoloom was created just for times like these. Give it a try. Upload a few pictures of the family – even better if you are not really sure who is in them. Then take some time during your family gathering to bring up your pictures on Family Photoloom... and wait, just wait for someone to a say,“ I remember when this was taken! That’s me in the third row!”

With Family Photoloom, you are ready with the tools you need to capture this information right in the moment. Plus, you can immediately share it with others. No DVD’s to burn and mail (been there, done that too many times – perhaps another Blog topic). It feels so good to be able to share photos with your entire family; not only can they tell you who’s in the pictures, but also how they are related to each other. Help your pictures come alive by gathering your family around them, and capture some old memories while you make new ones.

Happy Holidays from Photoloom!


Photo-scanning Resources
Be sure to read our post January 5, 2009 - No More Fuzzy Faces.

A great option for scanning photographs is to use the services of a Utah-based company called Securing Memories. (Update 7/27/09: Formally know as Echo Media) They scan negatives, slides, and photos from any format. We recommend them because we have found them to be a good group of people who do their work well, and they have a great respect for the treasure that their clients entrust to them. If you use them to digitize your media, they will upload your images to your Photoloom account at no extra charge!