KEEP TRACK OF YOUR LIFE USING TECHNOLOGY - ORGANIZING PHOTOS
©2017 by Donald R. Snow
This page was last updated 2017-03-27. Return
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ABSTRACT: Photos are a major part of family
history. This class will discuss digital photos from cameras
or scanning, downloading, and organizing them using the free
programs PICASA and WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY. Both of these
programs are still available and are free, but are not being
updated. They have helpful options and use facial recognition
algorithms to form groups of pictures that contain the same
person. As you confirm or "disconfirm" the photos in a group,
that gives them more facial information so they add more pictures to
the groups for you to approve or not. PHOTO GALLERY also
contains a "stitching" program to form a panorama picture from
several overlapping photos. These programs have many
additional features, including some photo editing, but that won't be
the emphasis of this class. The notes for this class and
related articles, all with active Internet links, are on my website
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes, with active Internet links and other related
articles, are posted on my website http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop for the
URL for these notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon in front
of the address in your browser to your desktop. (2)
To open a link while keeping your place in the original page,
hold down the Control key while clicking the link so it opens in
a new tab.
- This class will discuss working with and organizing digital
photos using the free programs PICASA and WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY.
PHOTOS FROM YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA AND SCANNING
- Preliminaries
- Be sure to set the date and time right on your digital
camera.
- Be sure your digital photos are backed up somewhere other
than just in your own home, so in a disaster you don't lose
them all.
- My procedure for downloading photos from my camera
- Remove the card from the camera and put it in a USB card
reader connected to my computer
- Go through the photos on the card and delete those I
don't want to keep
- Copy the remaining photos to a subfolder "YYYY" of a
folder called "Photos By Date" -- these are the ones to
work on
- Move the photos from the card to a subfolder "YYYY" of
a folder called "Graphics Originals To Keep" -- these
are the originals that I keep so I can always go back to
an original, if I ever need to -- Moving these photos
clears off the card to put back in the camera
- The photos have names like "IMG-####" from the camera.
- NAMEXIF -- http://www.digicamsoft.com/softnamexif.html
-- use it to extract the date and time from the metadata
of each photo and put it in front of the name the camera
gave it; I also add PHT- in front, e.g.
"PHT-YYYY-MM-DD-HHh-MMm-SSs--IMGxxxxxxx".
PHT- in front makes it
so I can find all photos easily and the date
in International Date format makes the photos
automatically sort chronologically
- BULK RENAME UTILITY -- http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php
-- is also helpful to add the "PHT-" or to add common
words to many names, e.g. of the same event
- Descriptive terms can be added in the file names, e.g.
people and location, after the date and time, but before
the camera photo name -- This is the part that takes the
most time, but makes it so you can find what you are
looking for; the free programs EVERYTHING -- http://www.voidtools.com/
-- and FILE EXPLORER (in Windows 10) help in doing this
by using them with their Preview Panels opened (see
other notes for details)
- Example:
PHT-2017-03-17-18h38m47s--CaribbeanCruiseWithFamilyOnRoyalCaribbean'sJewelOfTheSeas--P1060619.JPG
- With this naming procedure it is easy to find photos
by date, person, location, or event by using EVERYTHING
- Scanning hardcopy photos
- I usually scan hardcopy photos as tif's at high
resolution (600 dpi) and save copies and originals to
"Scanned-YYYY-MM-DD" and "ScannedOriginals-YYYY", as above
- Use BULK RENAME UTILITY to put "PHT-" in front; then add
the estimated date in International Date Format, as above
- The scanner information on all copies makes it so I can
find the original, if I need another copy to work on
- Add descriptive terms in the file names, as above
PICASA
- Google used to supply PICASA, but now has changed to their
online program GOOGLE PHOTOS that works across mobile
devices, so it requires the Internet and is not a program on
your computer
- Get PICASA free from other websites now, e.g. http://filehippo.com/download_picasa/
; it is not being updated, but is still very helpful to
organize your digital photos and do some image editing
- Tutorials and helps
- https://support.google.com/picasa/?hl=en
-- Google helps for PICASA
- http://sites.google.com/site/picasaresources/faq#TOC
-- Much information starting with installation -- good
place to start learning about Picasa
- http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/picasa.html
-- Free tutorials
- http://www.learningelectric.com/picasa2/
-- many free tutorials about PICASA, but looks like some
may be for earlier versions of PICASA
- http://picasatutorials.com/2009/02/picasa-tip-picasa-web-albums/
-- Tutorials by Geeks on Tour -- some are free, but most
are $
- PICASA does NOT copy or change your photos, only puts
links to them
- Albums in PICASA are storage places for
information and links to your photos -- So deleting an
album in PICASA only deletes the links and information
and not the photos from your computer
- People albums in PICASA are storage places for
links to that person in all the photos
- Folders are your hard drive storage places for
photos, so DON'T DELETE A FOLDER in PICASA or you will
delete all your photos in it
- To repeat it: DELETE ALBUMS, NOT FOLDERS, in
PICASA
- Before you run PICASA set the preference to tell it which
folder or folders to work on or else it does your entire
hard drive
- Duplicate photos get indexed more than once in PICASA,
so move duplicates out of the folders you set it to work
on
- AWESOME DUPLICATE PHOTO FINDER -- http://www.duplicate-finder.com
-- is a helpful freeware program to help find and delete
duplicate photos
- Tagging faces in your photos --
http://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156272
- When first run, PICASA makes small rectangles
around all faces in all the photos and saves them as
thumbnail view and this may take several hours,
depending on your computer and how many photos you
have
- PICASA uses facial recognition to sort the thumbnails
into groups that it thinks are the same person from all
the photos
- You give names to the thumbnail groups to form "People
Albums"
- Single clicking a thumbnail shows a list on right
side of screen of other people in that photo
- Double clicking a thumbnail shows the full photo, so
you can see the context and other people in it; double
clicking again takes you back to the thumbnail
group
- For people that don't need to be identified, e.g.
strangers on the street, click the Ignore button
- PICASA gives you options to confirm or deny thumbnails
it thinks belong in the group
- As you confirm thumbnails in a group PICASA now has
more facial information, so it suggests more thumbnails
it thinks might be that person and asks you to confirm
or deny them; to see just the new suggestions click on
the box near the top right of the group; the facial
recognition algorithm isn't perfect, but is very helpful
- If a person wasn't "thumbnailed" automatically in a
new photo, you can manually thumbnail them with "Add a
Person Manually" (lower right hand side) -- PICASA has a
bug that this "Add a Person Manually" button doesn't
always come up when it should; try going out and back
into the photo from a different screen to get it to show
up
- Slider arrow at lower right of screen expands or
contracts the thumbnails and photos
- To have the name tags saved in the EXIF metadata of
the photo go to PICASA > Tools > Options > Name
Tags > Store Name Tags in Photo -- Then by clicking
on a person album and selecting thumbnails it will store
that name tag in the metadata data of each of those
photos and will do this as you go to the person album
for each person in the photo; not perfect and if you
have a comma in the name, it puts the name on two lines
in the EXIF data
- When viewing full photos, clicking the "i" Information
button (lower right) shows the EXIF data, including name
tags in that photo
- PICASA has some photo editing capabilities when viewing
the full photo -- editing tools are on upper left, e.g.
cropping, red eye, color correction, and straighten --
but other freeware programs are better for editing photos
- Slideshows can be shown by highlighting the album and
clicking View > Slideshow -- shows full screen views of
the thumbnails or photos
- If your PICASA database gets corrupted, you can rebuild
it, but first read the directions on the Help menu, so you
don't lose all your previous work
- PICASA does much more than discussed here, e.g. it has a
way to backup your photos with the PICASA database to
transfer to another computer
WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY
- Like Google did with PICASA, Microsoft discontinued its
freeware program WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY and went to an online
service which works on mobile devices and requires the
Internet, but the program can still be downloaded from other
websites, e.g. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Digital-Photo-Tools/Windows-Live-Photo-Gallery.shtml
-- This is an offline installer so it will install even
though Microsoft is no longer supporting the program.
Download the file and and tell it only to install PHOTO
GALLERY AND MOVIE MAKER when you see the options; you may
also have to install another old Microsoft SQL file which
the following website will tell you about -- http://windowsreport.com/windows-photo-gallery-windows-10/
- Tutorials and helps
- https://www.digitalunite.com/guides/digital-photography/how-to-use-windows-live-photo-gallery
- My Freeware Corner articles from Apr and May 2014 -- http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-TGxYXkZNk
- http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/windows-live-photo-gallery/
- http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Windows-Photo-Gallery
- WindowsGuidePhoto1.pdf (17-page pdf) -- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/result.aspx?q=WindowsGuidePhoto1.pdf&form=dlc
- When you first run PHOTO GALLERY, click on File >
Include Folder and add the folder(s) and subfolder(s) you
want it to work on -- It organizes all the photos there by
date using the metadata of the photo; you see small versions
of the pictures as it works and it may take several hours to
organize them all
- Slider at bottom right makes the thumbnails larger or
smaller so it shows 3 across or up to 24 across
- Left panel shows the folder structure on your computer
that you told it to work on; can click on any folder to
show the photos in it
- Across the top are icons for various tasks: File
Home Edit Find Create View
- File > Batch People Tag does facial recognition and
allows you to confirm and name the Tags
- Create > Panorama forms panorama pictures of several
overlapping photos
- Create > Photo Fuse allows forming one photo with the
faces from two or more photos taken from the same spot at
the same time, so you can form one photo with good
expressions of everyone.
- PHOTO GALLERY has many more options and editing
features.
SLIDESHOWS AND MISCELLANEOUS
- PICASA and PHOTO GALLERY have slideshows of your photos
as options.
- FILE EXPLORER in Windows 10 will do simple slideshows of
selected photos.
- FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER -- http://www.faststone.org/
-- Freeware image viewer and editor, many features, easy
to learn, does slideshows of images in any folder -- see Overview
of FastStone Image Viewer
- IRFANVIEW -- http://www.irfanview.com/
-- Freeware, popular photo editor and viewer, many
features, easy to use, be sure to download the plug-ins
too -- see Irfanview
Tutorials
- Using smartphones or tablets to scan photos -- free Photomyne
app and Google's free PhotoScan
app; see webpage Google's
website for PhotoScan
CONCLUSIONS
- Photos are a major part of family history and scanning,
organizing, labeling, and finding is an important part of
family history.
- For deceased people upload your good photos to
FamilySearch Family Tree to preserve and share them.
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