Copyright © 2007-08 PhotoloomLLC




Organize & share your photo-history
Photos    Genealogy    Stories


When you scan (or digitize) a picture, you create a grid of colored dots (or pixels), which is saved in a file on your computer.  Resolution refers to how densely packed that grid of pixels is. 

Resolution quality can be thought of very much like thread count on fine linen.  Thread count is the number of threads per inch: the higher the thread count, the smoother the fabric.  Likewise, with digital image resolution, the higher the resolution—or number of dots (or pixels) per inch—the clearer the picture.









 



“Family Threads” is a monthly column.   If you have a photograph and family story  (200 word max.) that you’d like to share with Photoloom News readers, please contact us today!


All submissions are subject to editing for space and content.
Family Threads
by Renee Huskey

My Pop, Lester Masters, loved his little sister, Hettie. I can still remember the first time he showed me this photograph; how he ran his thumb around its edge, and how his eyes softened and his gravelly voice smoothed when he started to talk. 

“Hettie was my only sister – I was three years older, but our birthdays were only a day apart, and we were awful close,” he told me.  “Every day, I’d saddle up my little old horse, Dolly, and we’d ride off to school together.  Then one year when the weather turned cold, it got to be too much for her and after that I had to go to school alone.”  He paused, and we sat quiet for a moment before he continued, “Hettie died when she was twelve and I was fifteen.  Last thing she told Mom before she died was, ‘Take care of Lester.’”  Another pause, and then, “I’d’a done anything for her.”

I never met Hettie. But I know her. I look at this picture—Pop’s protective arm around her—and I hear her story whispering in my memory. 

So now it’s my turn to pass on Hettie’s story, to weave the thread of her history with my own.  And as I do, the fabric of our family becomes richer, and  its connections more tightly entwined—not only between Hettie and Pop, but between  us all; and not just for now, but for ever. 
Photoloom News
Issue 2 ~ January 2008
Photoloom LLC
Extended Relationship Indexing—
What Is It and Why Do I Need It?

Visit the Photoloom booth at the 11th annual Computerized Genealogy Conference at Brigham Young University, March 14-15, 2008. 
Friday and Saturday
March 14 and 15, 2008
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah

PhotoloomLLC founder Scott Huskey will be presenting a lecture, entitled No More Fuzzy Faces: The Secrets of Digitizing Family History, at the eleventh annual Computerized Genealogy Conference at Brigham Young University. 

Those who attend will learn the basics of image scanning and digital camera use, and leave with a working understanding of resolution, compression, and color depth; as well as creative techniques for capturing documents and photographs digitally.  Tips on storage, sharing, printing, and preserving digital archives will also be discussed.

The Computerized Genealogy Conference is designed to be a how-to guide for everyone—beginning, intermediate, and advanced researchers. The focus of the conference is to help everyone learn how new computer programs and advancements in existing programs can improve family history and genealogy work.

Anyone with an interest in family history or genealogy is invited to attend.  For more information or to register for the conference, please visit this link at BYU Continuing Education.

PhotoloomLLC will be on hand at the conference as a vender, premiering Family Photoloom service to the public for the first time.  We’d love to meet you, so please stop by our booth to visit and learn more about Family Photoloom. (Mention Photoloom News and receive a free gift!) 

Photoloom.com—
the Best Place on
the Internet to share
Family Photo-history

Family History is more than names and dates, more than pictures: it’s about making connections—weaving images and stories and people into a tapestry that defines us as families, one thread at a time.

At Photoloom, we’ve made it our mission to create a safe, easy-to-use place on the Internet for organizing your family photo-history.  A place for families to collaborate and share. A place where intuitive, interactive  tools make it fun and easy to connect all the threads of your family history.
Digital Pictures 101
Part 1: Scanning Resolution

(From “No More Fuzzy Faces:
The Secrets of Digitizing Family History”)

By Scott Huskey


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.


This image and the one on the upper right were scanned at the same low resolution.  Images scanned at low resolution 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.

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

That’s a question with a two-part answer, and you’ll have to wait for both parts.  But here’s a sneak-peek...

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 is the subject of our 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!  (Available online March 2008)  More about that next month, too!

Next month: Compression—A brief comparison of file types (TIFF, BMP, JPEG, and GIF); tips on scanning documents, including using digital cameras. 





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) .
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)
If your goal is to:


Display on a computer screen (e.g., genealogy program, email, web page)

Make good quality copies

Prepare for high quality or large format copies (up to 38 MB)

Create a Digital Archive
Then use this resolution:
(dpi = dots per inch)

50-100 dpi


150-300 dpi

400-600 dpi


900-1200 dpi
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.

A better way of choosing the correct resolution is to have a target uncompressed file size in mind.


Table 1 - Suggested Resolution based on Final Destination
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  
Where your picture will be viewed:


Still TV Image holds:

Computer screen holds:

High-definition TV holds:

5x7 printed picture holds:

8x10 printed picture holds:

High-quality 35mm print holds:
# of rows of Pixels:


480

1024

1920

2100

3000

4000
# of columns of Pixels:

360

768

1080

1575

2250

3000
File size:
Color/uncompressed

500 KB

2.25 MB

6MB

9.5 MB

19 MB

34 MB
Math Wiz Notes for the table above.

  • 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)

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! 
My maternal grandfather, Lester Masters, with two of his six siblings, Laurence and Hester (Hettie), of Nodaway County, Iowa.  (1902)
Marilee & Renee
First day of 1st Grade (1969)



Family Photoloom is about to change all that.  Our Extended Relationship Indexing will allow you to include anyone or anything that enriches your story in your family history – special friends, step and foster children, birth-family members, pets, family heirlooms, favorite vacation spots, secret family recipes…there is a place for every one at Photoloom.

PhotoloomLLC is also working to create a unique line of beautiful heirloom-quality family charts that will allow you to include any relationships that you wish.  So the biological grandfather you never met and the step-grandpa you loved can coexist in the same frame, and you don’t have to choose between the two. 

Extended Relationship Indexing—we all need it, because family history isn’t all about branches—it’s about connections.
Notice:  Contents of Photoloom News, both electronic and printed form, are the exclusive property of PhotoloomLLC, and may not be copied or used for any purpose without written permission from PhotoloomLLC.
TM
Marilee and I have been friends for over 40 years. I hope we are friends for at least 40 more.  She appears in countless pictures and memories from my childhood, and my life might be completely different had I not experienced her friendship and her family. 

But in a hundred years, when my great-great grandchildren look through my family history, will they find Marilee?  Not likely, if I organize my family history with the tools currently available:  there’s no place for Marilee in traditional genealogy and family history programs, because she falls outside the fixed categories (i.e., mother, father, child, etc.) that they recognize.  For them, Marilee doesn’t exist.  Neither does my Grandpa Fred, or my birth-mother and her children (my siblings!), or Sheila, my cat of 16 years.


Available March 2008
Click to learn more