Scanning 1

Any research into a family history inevitably comes across old photographs that complement the written record.  The photographic album is a common storage system for these non-text icons.  But how can we store photographs as an integral part of our computer genealogical database?  That's the question we explore during this module.  Text is easy, but photographs are much more difficult.

The basic process that we must define deals with converting continuous tone photographs into a digital form that can be displayed on a computer monitor.  Continuous tone photographs are simply those images that display a range of tones, or colours, from the dark to the light parts of the photographs — form the shadows to the highlights.

We will cover a few technical terms such as dpi (dots per inch) and ppi (pixels per inch) but these terms are becoming more widely known through the use of computers.  Where possible we will discuss these technical terms in a context of processing photographs.

Let's begin by scanning a photograph and storing it in a Family Tree Maker database. It is possible to scan an image directly into FTM, however it is not possible to do extensive editing with FTM like cropping to an oval or removing dust marks or changing the pixel resolution of the image.  Therefore, I will use Photoshop as an image editing application to demonstrate a few editing processes that gives more control over the outcome — the final photograph for the database.

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