Digital Cameras and Genealogy - A Digital Genealogy Project

My 2003 Digital Genealogy Project
(a photo and data CDROM)

One of two (both sides of the family - Watson-Stanfield and Wickenden-French) CDROMs completed in 2001.

My personal philosophy is that the fruits of genealogical pursuits are meant to be shared, especially with relatives. In 2001, I put together a photo and data CDROM which included my entire family tree database and many old (1860 - 1920) photos. The project went very well, although very time consuming. For the details about how I did that project and what I put on it, see my 2001 Digital Genealogy Project Page. This is well worth a read since the concepts for that CDROM are the same for my current project.

In 2003 I plan to do a new photo and data CDROM. I'll be including more photos than I did in 2001. My struggle in 2001 was in the organizing, editing and labelling of the digital photos. To speed up and simplify the work, I'll use a great product that will do about 90% of the job, making it much faster and easier. The program I've chosen is a wonderful thumbnail photo program called Breezebrowser (www.breezesys.com - make sure you have version 2.7a or later). This single program will allow me to organize my photos, add digital labelling to the photos, add a caption space to the photo and label it using the digital labelling data (in automated batch mode), resize the photos (in batch mode with optional sharpening and other enhancements) and generate sophisticated HTML (web page) photo galleries and/or slide shows.

I'll break this page out into dealing with the separate aspects of the CDROM, starting with the digital photo preparation, followed by digital photo display, then GEDCOM data (family tree data), document data, and finally producing the CDROM itself.

Digital Photos - Preparation I'll assume that you've read the other pages in this Digital Cameras and Genealogy section. What follows are the details of a work flow from taking the photos to getting them ready for the CDROM.

Convert the photos from old albums into digital format (digital camera or scanner). Save them as either TIF or minimal compression (highest quality) JPEG. See details about these formats and how to do it in the other sections of this website. When shooting or scanning a photo album - make a decision about how to do the photos. In most of mine, I do two shoots - one of the album pages in their entirety (so that you can reproduce exactly what the old album looked like) and then a second shoot of closeups of selected (or all if you wish) individual photos. This provides much larger digital originals of these photos. For instance, a single album page may have 6 photos on it (3 across by 2 deep). The digital photo of the entire page may have a pixel resolution of 2100 pixels (if using a 3 megapixel camera). If you digitally crop each photo, they will each have a pixel resolution of only 700 pixels or less (likely less if there is space between the photos). But if you re-shoot the individual photos, filling the entire frame, then each of those photos will be 2100 pixels in resolution. Make sure that these original digital photos have a unique number or alphanumeric sequence. In my case, these come directly from the camera (i.e. 359-5903). If the camera does not do this, or you are using a scanner, come up with some sort of unique, logical labelling system for your original photos (i.e. JKW-01-001 - note the use of leading zeros - 01 rather than just 1 - so that the photos will sort properly). In this case the "JKW" are the initials of the current photo album owner's name and I'm shooting Album 1 (01) and it's the first picture (001).

Create the labelling data for the photos (photo identifications). My method is to create a text document using the unique digital photo numbers. If there is more that one photo in a picture (i.e. a photo of an album page), I reference these by position (i.e. upper left, upper middle, lower right, etc.). If I'm doing the identifications, I just look at the photos on my computer. However, if I want to take the photos to a relative (parent, great-aunt, etc.) for identification, then I print out a contact sheet of the digital photos, including the photo name/number (using Breezebrowser or Thumbs-Plus) and take that, the original photos (if possible) and a printout of the blank labelling document (pages with the numbers and enough space to write in the descriptions). I take these plus the original photo album to the relative. Then I hand write in all the descriptions as I go through them with the relative, and then later type this information into the document. At the end of the day I have a text document (usually in MS Word) containing all the labelling information for the digital photos.

Digitally label the photos. This involves adding IPTC caption data to the photos (for details about this see the labelling photos page). I use Breezebrowser for this (it has a great IPTC editor) and simply copy and paste my labelling data from my text document to the appropriate IPTC caption area. A WORD OF WARNING - once you've added the IPTC data, make sure that in any future manipulation of the photo, you use an IPTC capable image editor (not all editors support IPTC and some will strip this info from your photo). See the labelling photos page for details.

Crop/Edit Photos - if you haven't re-shot individual photos in an album, you may want to crop out certain photos from the digital images of photo album pages to make individual digital photos. Or you may wish to edit photos (remove dust, scratches, improve brightness/contrast, etc.). Note that I do this after I've added the IPTC data, since I can then "add" IPTC caption data to these photos by simply editing the existing caption data which is already part of the photo. The criteria here is to use an IPTC capable editor that supports direct cropping (i.e. will crop down a photo directly rather than having to copy the cropped area and paste it as a new photo. The free program IrfanView www.irfanview.com can do this, as well as commercial programs such as Adobe PhotoShop LE that comes "free" with many digital cameras.

Captioning the Photos Please note that my preferred method of captioning is to write the text directly onto the photo, making it part of the photo. This means that anyone, using any software to view the photo, can read the caption.

Since I've had a number of queries about how to do this using Breezebrowser, I've created a page entirely devoted to that subject. Head over to the Captioning Photos using Breezebrowser page. This method will place the IPTC caption data right onto the photos.

Photos can also be manually captioned using any photo editing software that supports adding text and changing the background size of the photo.

Digital Photos - Display In preparing the photos for distribution, you need to decide how you want them displayed. My personal preference is to display them as HTML documents. This has several advantages - the photos are not resized during display, you don't need to provide a viewer (everyone has an Internet browser on their computer), it can be viewed on many different systems (PC, mac, UNIX, linux, etc.) and it is an archival standard (HTML).

Breezebrowser - HTML Dialog

To create my HTML pages I will be using (you guessed it) - Breezebrowser. It is very simple to do:

View the folder of photos that you want to make into HTML files using Breezebrowser (i.e. your captioned photos).

Select the photos you want for your HTML pages (i.e. Select All).

Under the "Tools" menu, select "HTML"

Give your project a Title

Select the HTML template you wish to use

Choose a custom setting if you wish to simply use your existing resized captions photos. Simply choose a size for the image larger than your captioned photos (so that Breezebrowser doesn't resize them again), and remove sharpening (set them to 0). Set the thumbnail size and quality to what you want.

We don't need to add watermarks since the photos are already captions - so leave these blank.

Now you can generate your first HTML pages. If you don't like the look, try different templates and different settings. Check out the details in the HTML Page Generation section in the Breezebrowser Help file. Note that you can choose to re-use existing photos (if you just want to play with different templates, this is faster). Those able to work in HTML can easily create their own templates by modifying one of the existing Breezebrowser templates. In addition, I've posted two templates that I like to use on my Genealogy Templates for Breezebrowser page

Once we're done we have a series of HTML pages and photos in an HTML directory.

GEDCOM Data As of this writing, I haven't done anything with my GEDCOM data. This will be the last thing to process, since I want to make sure that the data is as up to date as possible. In 2001, I used a little shareware program called GEDHTREE (www.gedhtree.com) which produces web pages with charts as well as family grouping pages. Unless I dig up something better, I'll use this program again.

I also used a program called GENViewer (CDROM version) and it can be used to create self viewing GEDCOM files. It's available from Mudcreek Software (www.mudcreek.ca) - they also sell commercial software, look for their freeware CDROM viewer (the CDROM version will only work from a CD).

I will also include a full blow freeware genealogy program, Personal Ancestor File, distributed by the Latter Day Saints. I will include the installation file on the CDROM and this can be used by the more computer literate to install on their own computer in order to view the GEDCOM file in detail. It is available from www.familysearch.org

Document Data Document will be done as they were in the 2001 project, saved in 3 file types: native processing mode (Word 2000), rich text format (RTF format - viewable by essentially any word processor), and PDF document format (which retains all the original formatting).

Most word processors can produce RTF files. For PDFs, a free solution is CutePDF available from Acro Software. Another free solution is the program PDF995 (www.pdf995.com).

Producing the CDROM The first stage to producing a CDROM is to create the layout for it on your hard drive. I have a folder on my computer called "Make CD" which I use to create CD layouts. A CD layout is simply all the information you want on the CD, organized in the way you want it.

To pull it all together, I use a webpage that I created myself. This is because I'm trying to tie in several folders that contain HTML photo pages. For those not conversant with HTML, the easiest thing is to put all your photos into a single directory and use Breezebrowser to generate the main index page (appropriately named "index.htm").

I try to name my folders in some sort of logical way so that those receiving the CDROMs can easily find information by simply browsing the directory of the CD. So original photos might be in a folder called "originals", documents in "documents", GEDCOM data in "gedcom data", etc.

In addition to the photos and data, I try to add anything else I think might be useful. In the photo folders I'll drop a copy of free photo viewer "Vueslide" (www.hamrick.com). I'll also drop a copy of the free Adobe Reader (v.5 or v.6).

Lastly, I'll make the CDROM an autorun CD through the use of the little program Winopen (www.duckware.com/winopen/). The file that I'll autorun is the my main webpage that links to all the other webpages on the CDROM. This way, when someone inserts the CDROM, it will automatically launch their browser and they can start viewing the photos right away.

I use the commercial program Easy CD Creator to make my CDs, but if you have a CD Writer, use whatever program came with the writer.

The final stage is to design a nice label for the CD - make the required number of copies and then mail it off to the relatives. They probably won't appreciate the many (many, many) hours that you put into the production of the CDROM, but they will love seeing all the old family photos and family tree information.

Comments: send me email: Ken Watson
This page was last updated on: July 21, 2003
URL: www.rideau-info.com/genealogy/digital/project-2003.html
© 2001-2003 Ken Watson