OT: Geneologist’s How do you orgainize your photo’s?

Aug 4, 2003

My brother in law tries to do the same thing about his family; I know he is using a geneology program to organise the text and images. Until now he has worked his way back into the 15th century and the software hasnot let him down. Unfortunately he is on holidays now for about four weeks and his software, supplied by a geneologic association is in Dutch, so I can be of little help.

Probably a Google search will bring up some software to help you out.

Leen

Leen

brent bertram

Aug 4, 2003

No solution from me, either, Joe . <G> My folder structure is the family names of our ancestors, forming a tree at each level. It is really a mess, but I understand the structure even if no one else ever will. Our current photos are organized by year since 1997 , with subfolders for the seasons and special, noteworthy events.

🙂

Brent

Joe Henry1000

Aug 4, 2003

(Kind of like when you had problems with Elements freezing up when you’d left that folder open in your browser window that had 50 million photos in it!)

Thanks for reminding me Beth! ;-)No I’m not using Reunion yet. I think I will for the demographic data but I don’t plan on using it for photo organization. I’ll use my folder system (system is putting it nicely) and iPhoto or a FileMaker Pro database.

In your naming example,001ChlSal20s, what’s the 20 for?

I’ve put Web Gallery’s up on the internet before but hadn’t thought of using them locally for organizing. That might be a good idea.

So here is a fairly common occurrence: I’m scanning Christmas of 1960 photos and of course there are different folks in most every picture. Photo A. has my two brothers, my sister and my mom. That’s fairly straight forward. Under my current org structure, that photo would go in my Mom & Dad’s folder/1960’s. Photo B. has the same people in it and my Grandma from my dad’s side of the family so that would need to go up a level. But then I have very similar photo’s, taken during the same occasion, in two different locations. Ugh! I think I need to work Brent’s "occasions" folder into my structure as well.

Also how would you suggest I name this photo?

My mind has officially been boggled. You don’t think about this kind of stuff when you accept the challenge/duty of being the family archivist. And you don’t foresee the things, like this situation, that’ll pop up along the way.

Thanks Beth and Brent for the advice. Any other ideas are very much welcome!

:-)Joe

Marty Landolt

Aug 5, 2003

My cousin came over to show me some of her work on her geneology …which really skimmed right over my head.
She did say she used a software but altered it to suit her purpose. She also said that she keeps the line ‘stright’…whatever that means.
That was to avoid all the crooked or broken branches due to divorces and remarriages. She’s been at it for some 20 years, trying to add changes as members get married and have children. It will be published in the very near future and will cover many generations. I’d be glad to talk to her and get some of her suggestions for you. Just ask! Marty

Joe Henry1000

Aug 5, 2003

Actually we’d been looking for you on the forum a week or so ago after realizing somebody was complaining about PSE not opening, and the problem was tracked back to all the photos trying to open in his browser whenever PSE was launched! I think we got that guy straightened out by using you and your iPhoto folder as an example. 🙂

I’m glad I could be of help even when Im absent! I still feel like a goof for that one. 😉

Thanks for your ideas and info Beth. Hearing the way someone else does something really does help. If nothing else it sometimes gets me thinking in a different direction. Not that this was any big intellectually taxing exercise, but it does take some thinking and strategizing.

Give them fingers a rest!

🙂

Joe

Joe Henry1000

Aug 5, 2003

Jane,

She’s getting a new computer right? Talk her into getting a Mac then you don’t have to worry about cross platform issues. 🙂

As for Reunion, I’ve only used the demo. I did like it and when I get around to really doing geneolgy that’ll probably be the program I go with. Beth uses it and really likes it. It’s not cross platform per se, but the files it and any other decent geneology program produce, are. Just make sure that your daugther’s program can export the data in the GedCom format.

Will Reunion import my data from another genealogy program? Gedcom is a file format devised by the LDS Church which has become the defacto standard for exchanging genealogy information between different programs and different platforms.

This was taken from the FAQ over at LiesterPro, the makers of Reunion <http://www.leisterpro.com>

I’ve also played a bit with GEDitCom <http://www.geditcom.com>. I like this one as well and it’s cheaper than Reunion. Check it out.

Joe

Jane Carter

Aug 5, 2003

Hi Joe, Thanks for the great info! She has to get a PC, because that is what they use at their college. But when they visit here, you can’t get her away from my bigMac.
If it wasn’t for work and school our whole family would have Macs. I have heard her talk about GedCom, and stuff that I never understood. I had given her the PC version of Reunion for Christmas long long ago. Its a floppy disc, that shows us how old it is.
Most all of her really important stuff is either on her husband’s computers at work, or the Mac compatible, and fun stuff, is on mine here.
She had only stepped out to the grocery store when the kids broke in, right in the daytime. So darn maddening, teaches us how important it is to back up data.
Jane

Joe Henry1000

Aug 5, 2003

Jane,

That truly is maddening. That’s my biggest fear as a matter of fact. If someone were to steal on of my Macs, although I’m pretty good about backing up, I’m sure there would be something I’d loose that would be hard to reproduce. Loosing one of my Macs to a thief would make me angry but not nearly as much as loosing the stuff on my Mac(s).

Anyway, Here is a little more info on GedCom that comes from the GEDitCom genealogy program’s manual <http://www.geditcom.com/downlds/GEDitMan.pdf>.

There are many commercially available genealogy programs alreadyavailable. All serious programs also support the GEDCOM standard by allowingusers to input data from GEDCOM files or export data to GEDCOM files. These programs, however, do not normally use GEDCOM as their internal standard. Thus most of them do not allow you to tap all the features of GEDCOM and most cause translation errors when inputting GEDCOM data. Here, a translation error means input data are lost, force-fit into the data fields of the current program, or shuffled to generic note fields. Such error can ruin your research or at least run the structure of your genealogy data base.

In contrast, a primary goal of GEDitCOM are to be 100% compatible with the GEDCOM standard. To accomplish this goals, GEDitCOM uses GEDCOM as its internal standard. You never need to import or export GEDCOM files. GEDitCOM simply reads GEDCOM files into memory and interprets them. No information is ever lost (or could ever get lost). GEDitCOM is a registered GEDCOM product.

Joe

EDIT: I am in no way affiliated with the makers of GEDitCom. 😉 Just thought this was interesting.

Jane Carter

Aug 5, 2003

Hi Joe, Thanks again, I almost forwarded all this info on to her, but my brain kicked in and I realized that there isn’t a computer for her to use at the moment.

This geneology project is fun, I plan to become more involved this time. Jane

Beth Haney

Aug 5, 2003

Joe is right on a couple of counts. I do use Reunion, and it’s by far the best software out there, but it’s Mac only. She can use almost any of the others on her PC and files can be transferred via Gedcom. Just know that Family Tree Maker is kind of the "big name" for PCs nowadays, but their reputation is deterioriating. They’re extremely interested in gathering family files from FTM users so they can, in turn, develop CDs and sell the information – with the profits going to them and not to the people who did the research. That interest seems to be overriding their interest in truly good software.

There is a PC program much like Reunion. I’ll try to hunt down the name in the Reunion archives, because I know they’ve discussed it.

Joe Henry1000

Aug 5, 2003

They’re extremely interested in gathering family files from FTM users so they can, in turn, develop CDs and sell the information – with the profits going to them and not to the people who did the research.

That’s truly low and biting. What are they thinking?

Joe

Jane Carter

Aug 5, 2003

Beth, this is interesting. I will read this to my daughter tonight over the phone. When did Reunion become Mac only? Or did I give my daughter another program, it was a long time ago and I could have forgotten.
I will steer clear of FTM, however.
Thanks again, Jane

Beth Haney

Aug 5, 2003

What are they thinking? My take is $$$.

Even when I used an old version for Macs, this notice would pop up with a message like "Congratulations! You’ve now entered 100 people! Would you like to upload to Family Tree Maker now?"

Different people respond in different ways to this – obviously, because they keep selling those CDs! I guess I’m just an old-school grump, who has had too much training in research and evaluation. There’s never any documentation along with what’s published, so it’s impossible to judge the validity of what’s on the CD. I liken it to Adobe encouraging some of our very talented people like Jodi and iMacBarb to send in their creations so Adobe could sell them as something akin to "clip art."

I just wanted to mention it, because I think Jane and/or her daughter could probably come up with some better software.

Well I’m frustrated! I just did a search of the Reunion forum and found that a program called "Generations" is the name of the old Reunion for PCs. And one guess who now owns it! No more comments from me. 🙁

Dale Hammer

Aug 8, 2003

Jane,

Which genealogy program to buy is always a personal choice but if your daughter is really serious about genealogy, especially the sourcing documentation part of the activity, you might want to look at the program "The Master Genealogist" (TMG). It is built on a relational database versus a flatfile system such as Family Tree Maker (FTM) and allows much more extensive and flexible data recording and manipulation. I just recently moved from FTM to TMG. TMG is somewhat more difficult to use but there are many excellent training and help tools. The software is made by Wholly Genes and found at the website www.whollygenes.com . A great image management tool for all of your pictures is IMatch. This is found at www.photools.com .

Sorry to hear about your daughter and family’s loss of years of work. Good luck!

Regards,
Dale Hammer

"Jane Carter" wrote in message

Geneology software question,,,,,, for my PSE pals.
My daughter had been using Reunion to do our family(it is a hobby of hers)

and last week her laptop got stolen along with all her work! It was heartbreaking, years and years of research gone. We still have lots of printed info, but this was quite a blow to the family. Especially since the last of the Greatgrandparents are no longer with us.

She will be getting a new computer soon and I would like to purchase the

best software for her as a surprise. Is Reunion still the best? Above all, we need to be able to transfer all the files to my Mac computers when she gets them re-done. Is this software cross platform? And will jpeg pictures (some color)be able to be included. I hope to be learning how to do PSE photorestoration this winter, and to work on some of our ancient family photos.

Thank you, Jane

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