TUESDAY’S TIP ~ Another way to edit your images in Microsoft Office Picture Manager

My “go to” program for editing pictures and documents that are JPG format, is Microsoft Office 2010 Picture Manager.  It’s easy, quick and efficient.  I even recently found out I can still use this program on my new HP laptop that has Windows 10.  Sadly, Microsoft discontinued the Picture Manager portion of their Office suite in recent versions.

BUT, if you still love and use this program as I do, here’s my newly discovered edit feature.  And, silly me, I thought I knew this program inside and out.  Just goes to show, we always have things to learn.

Today we are talking about those images that are too dark.  Let’s say you download an image that looks like this.  I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want this image attached to my Legacy file or anywhere else.


Once the image is opened in Microsoft Picture Manager (which is set as my default), you would select the “Edit Pictures” option.



Now choose “color” in the right hand column.



Now select “Enhance Color”



You see the grey wording underneath “enhance color?”  Once you click on the icon, those words turn dark, like this.



Just take your mouse and move over the image.  You’ll see a little round target kind of pointer show up.   It looks similar to this.

Once you see that target pointer, just click on any area that should be white.  BINGO!

Here is the result.  Compare it to the image at the top of my post.



Depending on the image, you’ll get different degrees of resolution.  I personally think this looks much better.

For the past 6 years I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements to make this kind of change.  However, it required an extra step because all my images automatically open in Microsoft Office Picture Manager.  I rotate and crop them in that program.  Now I can just stay there and perform this addition fix.

I wrote a previous post about making adjustments to the images we download.  Easy Document Editing

I hope you found this post helpful.  I just had to share this tip with you, in case, like me, you didn’t know this either.
 
Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

HAVE LIMITED TIME FOR RESEARCH? Here's What I Did Today in Just 60 minutes

As genealogists we all want more time.  Whether we work full time, part time or are retired.  There never seems to be enough time to work on our research or our files.  And, if you have a family with children there are even more distractions.

WHAT CAN WE DO IN A LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME?

HERE ARE SOME THINGS I DID TODAY IN 60 MINUTES

• I went to findagrave.com and searched for memorials for one branch of the family.  I located 3, entered the memorial numbers in the User ID in Legacy.  I downloaded and saved the headstone photos to the digital folder and attached it to the burial photos in my database, for that person. 
• I entered a To-Do task to source the photo.
• From those finds I found out that these family members had died in Cabell County, West Virginia.  I know that the wvculture.org site has loads of vital records. 
• I located all three death certificates and death registers on the wvculture website.  I downloaded and saved them to my computer.
• I entered the information from the death records into my Legacy database for that person and created a To-Do item to source the death certificate.

AND THE LAST THING I DID DURING MY 60 MINUTES

• I went into the digital folder where I had just saved the death records for this family.  This is my Frampton family.
• I noticed that some of the death records (including the three I added today) had not been cropped and straightened, so I took care of that today.

Here’s how they looked prior to being edited.
 


I personally, don’t enter any images into my database without first editing them.  I use the Microsoft Office Picture Manager program to perform these tasks.  It’s easy and quick.

Here’s how they look now.  I began this process at 11:29 and finished at 11:34.  
So it took me only 5 minutes and look at the difference!



Here is a post I wrote about using the Microsoft Office Picture Manager program to edit images. The methods here can be used with most photo editing software.

Easy Document Editing

I hope this post has given you a couple of ideas for making use of those small windows of time we may find for our research.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

Family History Library - After you return home...then what?

Tuesday's Tip - Photo Repair and Restoration

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORD IMAGES FOR 1940 NOW ONLINE! Here’s how I found my family’s certificates

The website https://michiganology.org/vital-records/ has many wonderful records & historical information for Michigan researchers. 
Certainly the one I’ve used the most is their death index and images. The images for records from 1897-1920 have been online for a while now.

The images for 1921-1952 are being released as the 75 year restriction rolls around.  As of today, they have uploaded the images up to and including 1940.

So, today, I’m going to use my Legacy search function and see how many, if any, of my ancestors have deaths in Michigan in 1940.

To accomplish this I will go to the “Search” tab and then “Find.”
I want two criteria in my search:

• Place of death = Michigan
• Date of death = 1940

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)
 

And, here is my list



Let’s go over to seekingmichigan.org (UPDATE Oct 2019 - the seekingmichigan website if closed down - the new site is michiganology.org) and see how many of those four certificates I can locate.

NOTE:  As you know, uploading and indexing are not perfect sciences.  So, just because we hear that records are available, doesn’t mean they ALL will be.

How many of these death certificate images did I find?

FOUR OUT OF FOUR!!!

DEATH CERT FOR WILLIAM W. BUSH	DEATH CERT FOR WILLARD B. GOULD
DEATH CERT FOR MINNIE ERB	DEATH CERT FOR KATHERINE MARTZ FORSYTH

Wonderful!  I’ve downloaded each of them, cropped and corrected them and now I can add them to Legacy and source them.  That’s what I call 15 minutes well spent online.

TIP:  I do not like the look of images as they appear in our downloads.  I don’t like the black surrounding them and I don’t like them to be crooked or too grey.  I fix all of this before I ever save the digital image to my computer.  I takes about one minute to perform the task and makes your images look so much better in any report or if you upload them online.  See my “Other Posts” below for a post I wrote about this process.

Time to go work on those records.  Please let me know how many new records you find in this collection.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

MICHIGAN DEATH RECORDS ONLINE - Where can you find them?

Legacy 8 - THE SEARCH FUNCTION - What Can You Find?

EASY DOCUMENT EDITING - How to Straighten & Correct Images

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

SIGNATURES and HANDWRITING–What they tell us

  

WHO DOESN’T RECOGNIZE THIS SIGNATURE? 

In fact, John Hancock’s signature was so famous that we still use it as an acronym for signing our name.  “Please put your John Hancock here.” 

As genealogists we process, review, copy, scan, download and analyze many documents.  These can date back to several centuries ago, or be as current as last year.  

What can signatures mean to us as researchers?

• It certainly personalizes your connection with that particular ancestor.  You are looking at a document that was probably handled by your ancestor. 
• It can tell you if your ancestor was actually able to sign his or her name, or did they have to leave a mark?
• It can be an indicator whether you ancestor was left handed.  Left handed people often times write back handed.  However, this is not a “set in stone” rule.  There are right handed people who will also write and sign in a back handed slant.
• If you have more than one sample of the signature, depending on how many years apart they are, you might be able to tell if the ancestor has a shaky hand or has perhaps become ill.   Has the signature changed?  If so, how?  Did the ancestor sign his or her name before and now can only leave a mark?  Or just the opposite.  Did they leave a mark in an earlier document and later signed their name?

We certainly aren’t (at least most of us), hand writing experts.  Nor, will we become experts by examining our ancestors signatures. 

It is possible, however, to do a brief study on handwriting and perhaps learn a little more about our ancestor.  The study of handwriting is call Graphology.

I did a search in Google “the study of signatures.”  Here are some sites that came up that may help us learn a little more.  These are certainly not all-inclusive, but can still give us some good information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology
http://atozhandwriting.com/signature-analysis/
http://www.ehow.com/how_2302506_study-signature-using-graphology.html

Maybe you are fortunate enough to have a larger exemplar of your ancestor’s handwriting.  Perhaps letters, land documents or hand-written wills.  These items are certainly treasures.  But, the truth is that for most of us, we are lucky if we have a signature.

WHERE DO WE FIND SIGNATURES?
Here are a few ideas

Marriage records
Land records
Birth records
Baptism & Christening records
Probate records
Draft registration records
Social security application (SS-5) records
Social security cards
Affidavits of various sorts
Driver’s licenses
Cemetery or funeral home records

There are more places to find signatures and I’m sure you can add to this list. 

Now, what do we do when we do find one a signature?

Once the document has been scanned or saved to your computer, you can use your favorite photo editing software to crop and capture the signature.  I use Microsoft Office 2010 Photo Editor, for it’s ease of use.  But any editor will work.  Here is an article I posted not long ago about using Microsoft Office Photo Editor for EASY DOCUMENT EDITING.

Now, go and look at all those documents you have and find those signatures. 
I have posted a few of my family’s signatures in a “signature” tab at the top of this blog.

Thanks for stopping by today.
Happy hunting,

EASY DOCUMENT EDITING

TUESDAY'S TIPS

As genealogists we work with all sorts of documents & images.  Right?  Many times these documents or images are crooked, difficult to read or have extra borders around them.  When you are ready to work with these items (after downloading them from an online site or scanning), how do you go about "fixing" the problems?  Here are the questions:

1.  Do you buy an expensive photo editing software?

2.  Do you just leave them the way they are?

3. Do you use the programs that come with your computer?

Many people cannot afford to buy or don't want to have to learn to use programs like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Corel.  The learning curve on some of these programs can be daunting.

If you are like me, you want the documents that you attach to your ancestors files to look good.  Especially if you plan to use them in reports or share them with family or online.

Your downloaded or scanned document may look something like this.  It's not pretty, that's for sure.

  

Wouldn’t you rather that it looked like this?

Here is what I do with my images.  
I use Microsoft Office 2010.  This is a program can be purchased for $94.99 at the following site http://www.softwareking.com/O2K10HSPKC.html?gclid=CI7n7MCI4LoCFaQ9QgodUEAA

It is part of the Microsoft Office suite.  Many people are not aware that there is a photo editing software included with the office suite. 

(If you are using a Mac, I apologize.  I cannot speak to the programs included with a Mac.) 

You can go to any image in your computer, right click and choose “open with” and then choose Microsoft Office 2010.  Here’s a question – was this program called Microsoft Office 2008 or 2009, prior to this?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I also used this program when I had Windows XP.  I am currently using Windows 7.

Once you have the image opened in the program you should see a screen like this.  Now click on "Edit Pictures"

 A new section will open up and look like this:

 
Now you will click on rotate first, as you want to straighten this item before cropping it. When you click on the ROTATE option it will open up a menu on the left.  Use the arrow in the "by degree" area to rotate the item either left or right.  TIP: You can actually select increments like 1.5 or 1.8 or -1.5 or -1.8 to get the item as straight as possible.  Now it looks like this:

To crop the item click on "Edit Pictures" in the top menu again.  Now select "CROP" from the menu on the right.  You will see corner brackets around the image.  Move them to crop your item and then BE SURE to click the OK button (located under the menu on the right) to finish the crop.  

TIP: If your image is too light click on the "AUTO CORRECT" in the top menu.

Please remember to SAVE your image or you will lose all your changes.  Now your image looks just like the second one I showed you at the beginning of this post.

I do hope this was helpful.  Play around with this program.  You can resize images or o adjust the color.  How about removing red eye from pictures?  This little FREE program has some very nifty features.  If you like it, set it as the default when you open any JPG or PNG image.  I don't work with TIFF or BMP or GIF files, so I will be honest and tell you that I don't know if the program works with them.  

Happy cropping,

Michigan Girl 

Copyright ©  2013   Diane Gould Hall