Great aunt Wilbur? No, that is Cousin Ursula, I'm sure of it!
July 1, 2013 9:45 PM Subscribe
My Grandmother recently passed away, leaving us about a thousand old pictures dating from 1900-2013 in a gigantic box. Family lives all over the country and doesn't get together in person. I got them professionally scanned and sent everyone copies. I'm trying to figure out if there is a way that we can easily collaborate on organizing and identifying the pictures.
I've thought about uploading them all to flickr or something and then having people comment but I'd love it if we had a packaged end product (e.g., the end product wasn't me going through 1k flickr photos and individually renaming and ordering the digital photos).
In my imaginary universe, I'd love it if the end product was a file folder of file folders with photos organized by date (ish) and tagged with the identified people involved. Any suggestions?
I've thought about uploading them all to flickr or something and then having people comment but I'd love it if we had a packaged end product (e.g., the end product wasn't me going through 1k flickr photos and individually renaming and ordering the digital photos).
In my imaginary universe, I'd love it if the end product was a file folder of file folders with photos organized by date (ish) and tagged with the identified people involved. Any suggestions?
What about
numbering them (easy to do in Windows Explorer - select all, rename)
uploading them to dropbox
sharing with all the rellies
create a wiki or for the less technologically comfortable, a Google Spreadsheet, with the following column headers:
Photo number
Place
People in photo
Approximate year
Note by (this is where relatives stick their initials).
That way, because it's dynamic, everyone can see which photos have been identified and which haven't, and can create an ongoing conversation about it too.
It's not a package, but it's a system.
posted by b33j at 12:57 AM on July 2, 2013
numbering them (easy to do in Windows Explorer - select all, rename)
uploading them to dropbox
sharing with all the rellies
create a wiki or for the less technologically comfortable, a Google Spreadsheet, with the following column headers:
Photo number
Place
People in photo
Approximate year
Note by (this is where relatives stick their initials).
That way, because it's dynamic, everyone can see which photos have been identified and which haven't, and can create an ongoing conversation about it too.
It's not a package, but it's a system.
posted by b33j at 12:57 AM on July 2, 2013
Facebook group. It's what my family did.
posted by mibo at 4:49 AM on July 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by mibo at 4:49 AM on July 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'm planning to do this using Flickr when I scan some old slides. People can look without creating an account (but it is free to create a Yahoo! account if they want to), you can make notes on particular faces and other parts (maybe identifying a car, house, pet) of the photo, comments, tagging, people can download their own copies and so on.
posted by mikepop at 5:49 AM on July 2, 2013
posted by mikepop at 5:49 AM on July 2, 2013
SmugMug has what they call "smart galleries" (= smart folders). A smart gallery is automatically populated according to rules you set up. A rule can be "all photos tagged with this keyword". So, in the simplest scheme, you could have people add a specific tag for each year, then you create a separate smart gallery for each year. You could extend that to other kinds of tags: locations, people, etc. Have your family add the appropriate keywords, then create a smart folder for that keyword or a combination of keywords.
Since SmugMug stores full-resolution photos, you don't lose anything by uploading your photos, tagging, creating a smart gallery, then using the download feature to download all the photos from a given smart gallery.
Make sure to first enable family/friends' ability to add keywords in your gallery settings.
Other services may also have this ability; I only know about SmugMug because I'm a user myself.
posted by StrawberryPie at 7:19 AM on July 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
Since SmugMug stores full-resolution photos, you don't lose anything by uploading your photos, tagging, creating a smart gallery, then using the download feature to download all the photos from a given smart gallery.
Make sure to first enable family/friends' ability to add keywords in your gallery settings.
Other services may also have this ability; I only know about SmugMug because I'm a user myself.
posted by StrawberryPie at 7:19 AM on July 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
My friend set up a private genealogy wiki for his family, and gave everyone in his family access to edit it. This allows him to add photos himself, but for other people to tag them and/or create the relevant entry that pertains to the person in the photo. He's let me browse it a few times and it's pretty neat.
It's also really nice because it lets people add their own blurbs about Great Uncle Herb and his firefighting trophies and history and stuff-- including funny stories and things people remember about him. It also lets him add multiple photos on one entry, interlink it with other photos and relevant entries (like if there's a photo of Uncle Herb with Aunt Mildred together, the photo shows up on both their entries) and it kinda explains how everyone is related. He even added entries for their pets. Haha. It's a nice legacy for his nephews and thing to browse in future.
But it's a lot of work to add to and edit, and most of the family isn't tech savvy enough to wanna add to it as much as he liked. But it's really lovely, and the end result is kinda better than just an album.
posted by Dimes at 10:14 AM on July 2, 2013
It's also really nice because it lets people add their own blurbs about Great Uncle Herb and his firefighting trophies and history and stuff-- including funny stories and things people remember about him. It also lets him add multiple photos on one entry, interlink it with other photos and relevant entries (like if there's a photo of Uncle Herb with Aunt Mildred together, the photo shows up on both their entries) and it kinda explains how everyone is related. He even added entries for their pets. Haha. It's a nice legacy for his nephews and thing to browse in future.
But it's a lot of work to add to and edit, and most of the family isn't tech savvy enough to wanna add to it as much as he liked. But it's really lovely, and the end result is kinda better than just an album.
posted by Dimes at 10:14 AM on July 2, 2013
Get a Flickr account. Post all photos. Family members can comment and ID photos at their leisure. You can also control who can see and download those files. One note, I believe family members would need to have Flickr accounts (they are free) in order to comment on photos.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 3:35 PM on July 2, 2013
posted by WalkerWestridge at 3:35 PM on July 2, 2013
picassa has facial recognition software, and is pretty good at grouping the same face together so if you get an ID on a person in one picture, in many other pictures they'll be tagged as well.
posted by garlic at 4:38 PM on July 2, 2013
posted by garlic at 4:38 PM on July 2, 2013
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posted by sexyrobot at 10:31 PM on July 1, 2013