While genealogy doesn’t require a lot of supplies, having the right ones at the right time adds so much more fun and enjoyment to researching your family tree. For instance, using a genealogy scanner, made specifically to scan all sizes, shapes and even items that may not be able to be scanned with traditional scanners is an excellent tool for efficiency that will also remove potential levels of complexity.

A large part of this process is collecting old photographs,picture and variety of documents. In the past these items have been kept in folders, filing cabinets, envelopes and other physical containers. These time and space consuming organizational methods have big limitations and are being replaced by the availability and technology of digital storage and presentation. When you need to keep track of what everything from a scrap of paper to an old family photograph, digital conversion of memories, family documents and public records can not only save time and space, but also open many new ways to share and present this information. There may be occasions when you need to make copies of documents, although a photocopy is great, scanning the document onto your computer is often the best method. With that in mind a genealogy scanner can be very useful. Scanning genealogy records and pictures allows you the ability to reproduce multiple copies at a later date without any loss of quality. Also printed documents are a viable alternative to a scrapbook, as the original document doesn’t get damaged.

All of the supplies you need for the early stages of your research are easy to come by. Once you have exhausted your family members memories. You need to start looking for other sources of information. One of the most common methods currently used is the Internet. In the abstract a web site may not appear to be a supply, however with Genealogy it is. Most of the easy to use web sites, charge a small fee. From experience paying that small fee is money well spent. You might also consider buying some specialist genealogy software to help organize and structure your work. Genealogy software allows you to store all the photographs and documents you scanned into your computer.

The post Genealogy: Scanning photographs, documents and other memories. appeared first on flip-pal.com.

“I’m surprised how easy it is to use and how much it makes my scanning life more enjoyable. I have scanned literally 1000′s & 1000′s of photos on DeadFred.com and when it comes to scanning Flip Mobile is a revolution. I scanned a yearbook while sitting on my couch watching a Razorback Football game ( GO HOGS!). Never thought I would be doing that. Only question I have is to  your scanner, where have you been all my life?I will be letting everyone know that scans (and those I don’t know) how much I like Flip (can I call him Flip?) In other words I will highly recommend it,” wrote DeadFred.com

DeadFred.com is scanning a 1927 yearbook

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“First off, let me say that I never intended this to happen. What I intended was a thoughtful, clear review of the Flip-Pal mobile scanner, complete with what I liked and didn’t like about the device. The last thing I wanted it to be was an all-out love fest! But right off there was a bit of a problem. See, I couldn’t find anything I really didn’t like but quite a few things I really loved! So I ask you all to indulge my gushing and try to read on to the end without developing a cavity,” wrote Janine Smith.

“When I say I was impressed from the first, I mean from the moment I opened the box! In this day of “batteries not included” and everything being extra, the folks at Couragent, the makers of Flip-Pal, have included a 2GB SD memory card, a USB to SD adapter, in case you don’t have an SD card reader handy, photo-stitching and color correction software, a window protector sheet so your Flip-Pal window doesn’t get scratched, and, yes, batteries! But, really, the first thing I thought when I saw the Flip-Pal? “Oh, My Gosh! Is this thing cute, or what?!?,” wrote Janine Smith.

Learn more about Janine Smith

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1) Organize all your stuff on the computer
2) When shopping; finding exactly the fabric / print you’re looking for
3) Getting a good-quality image to print images on fabric

Now, let me explain each of those points in more detail…

Organization

If you’re like me, you have a folder on your home computer along with a shoe-box or two of magazine clippings, drawings, tips, patterns, photos… The challenge is getting this all organized together in one place, easy to search, so you’re not spending time when trying to find a particular item … The Flip-Pal is perfect for getting the job done. Not only does it give great images, but it’s so easy to use, you can do your scanning while watching Laura Burns “Quilt In A Day” on TV! (TBV)

Just a few of the ways that the Flip-Pal can help you get organized:

• Scan the clippings and photos from your shoeboxes
• Scan patterns from your own quilts
• Scan patterns from quilts that inspire you; from friends, from a show, from magazines

Shopping for just the right fabric

You’ve finished or picked the design for your next quilt, and comes the fun of figuring out what prints
colors would go together best. You go to the store, and see several that might work. But, what if
you buy all that fabric and find out that they don’t quite go together the way you want? Well, if you
take the Flip-Pal to the store with you (it’s small enough to fit in your purse!), you can scan the various
fabrics you think might work. And then what?

Take the Flip-Pal (and all the scans) back home, and you have a couple of options:

1) If you have EQ …. Electric Quilt, http://www.electricquilt.com/ or equivalent you can load the scanned samples into your electronic design and see exactly how they’d look.

2) Even without such a software, you can cut and paste the images into a drawing of your design.

Once you’re sure of which fabrics you really like, you can buy just those. If you’re an on-line shopper,
you can use the scans to find the same or better fabrics at your favorite on-line stores. Perhaps, you’ll
find cheaper, the right quantity, or perhaps a color that works even better than the one you found
locally.

In fact, you might find just the perfect color or print somewhere else – a painting, an autumn leaf, a child’s water color, even a stained wood surface or granite counter-top. Just scan the item, and use it as above. Or, print it out, and take it to your local stores to see what they have in that style.

Making your own Printed Fabric

Scanning will give you a better result than with a regular photo,because of a more detailed picture. When making a family heirloom using pictures from family members you can use your Flip-Pal to scan them all to later print them on fabric. If you are lucky and find at the County Records, the birth certificate or better yet the marriage certificate of Grandpa and Grandma, you can take your Flip-Pal with you and scan those documents right over there and get a much better accuracy than a photocopy.
To help you with the process of turning scanned images into a quilt go visit this website : http://quiltbug.com/articles/photos.htm

Flip-Pal has made my quilting projects even more fun and has helped me getting even more creative. It’s a great tool to have!

The post How a quilter can put a Flip-Pal to use – in so many different ways! by Annie Mccarthy appeared first on flip-pal.com.

“Isn’t it amazing how technology keeps making lives more fun and interesting!? I would love to have a portable scanner like that! It would make crafting and creating so much easier. I could scan old family documents that years ago were placed in sealed frames and therefore impossible to remove from the frame without damaging the item. Or, when doing research at the library in books that can’t be checked out, so creating family tree albums would come together much easier!”

“I would love to win the Flip Pal! I watched the demo you did on Cool to Craft and loved it. I am an artist and every time I do a drawing or a painting that is bigger than my scanner, I wish I could somehow fit it into the scanner. I make handmade cards from my art that is sold at the local Visually Impaired Persons Support Center to help raise money for blind and partially sighted persons. They can’t see the art but the funds help them to learn assistive technology to access the web and use a computer with talking software. I can see how this scanner could help the partially sighted also. They would be able to scan a document and then input it into a computer so the computer could hear it read to them or blow it up to a font that is big enough for them to read. I would love to be able to experiment with all the possibilities. Thanks for having the contest. Hope I win.”

“I would love a chance to win such a prize. I would scan pictures that relatives don’t want to lend for fear of not getting them back. Nature items like flowers and leaves would be fun. Would try pictures on phone. I am sure there are many items I have not thought of that I could scan. Loved the Flip Pal Tiffany showed and the glue embossing Heidi demonstrated. The jewelry, parade and barn show were great too. On to PJ Party Wed.”

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The Flip-Pal mobile scanner has been built to high quality standards and will withstand normal wear and tear to be expected from a portable device. Here are some precautions you can take to ensure your Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner is always working at peak performance:

• Keep the glass scanning surface free of lint, smudges and other debris
• Avoid physical shock
• Avoid electrostatic shock
• When not in use for long periods of time, do not store with batteries installed
• Avoid exposing to temperature extremes

More detail on some of these items can be found on the Technical Specifications page.

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“The next project was to see just how this works on oversize images. After all, isn’t that the reason that a lot of we genealogists are interested in this product?

I went straight for my grandfather’s childhood scrapbook of magazine photos of horses, cows and pigs. It’s about 12″ x 14″ – maybe even larger. But it’s too big to get a full page on my flatbed scanner. It took me a couple tries to get the auto-stitching software to work, but that was my own fault since I seldom read an instruction manual unless absolutely necessary. Since the software was not recognizing any stitchable regions, I realized that my scans had to overlap with one another. I made 11 scans of the page and here are four of them, just to demonstrate what the individual scanned images look like. Image size is reduced for the blog post.”

Read more….. of Susan’s blog entry on her Long Lost Relatives website! You can also find Susan on Twitter @sooznebr

p.s. there is a part two to her blog entry …. click here to read more

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A little background first.  As the founder of PhotoTree.com, I have digitized over 3,000 19^th century photographs, using a variety of techniques and products, and have developed some expectations of scanning and copying technologies.

PhotoTree.com publishes an online database of 19^th century photographs and has developed processes to date them, both online and using printed publications.  Additionally, we perform photo restoration on heirloom photographs, requiring high resolution digital copies of the original image.

We digitize photographs either with high-end flatbed scanners or by copying the image with a high resolution digital camera using a copy stand and custom lights.  A 12 mega pixel Nikon D300 camera with a 60mm macro lens is use.  All of this is more than a $2,500 setup – and very bulky.  And of course the flatbed scanner requires an attached PC, cable, power, etc.  Not real nimble.

When traveling, I usually don’t have the luxury of bringing my scanner or all the photography equipment along, but still need to frequently create high-quality scans of newly discovered photographs.  So I have been seeking a high resolution, portable scanning solution.

Back to Flip-Pal test.  The second day of the expo during a lull I introduced myself to Ben Kimbell in the Flip-Pal booth, and explained my activities and scanning needs.  Despite my skepticism, the size, easy of use, and price seemed very intriguing – if too good to be true.  And you know what they say about things being too good to be true.  So, I gave Ben a challenge and had him scan a really nice 120 year-old cabinet card that was very crisp and had great tonal range.

Ben scanned the picture at 600 DPI, and I took it back to my PC to open with PhotoShop.  Voila!  To most people, you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the Flip-Pal scan and the master copy I made with my Nikon camera which was approximately 600 DPI also.  When we zoomed in as much as 300%, both images exhibited nearly identical sharpness, with differences being mostly matter of opinion at that point.  The scanned image did have some detectable noise and some JPG compression loss. But to be honest, you really had to look for them, and both of those were in acceptable ranges, especially when you compare the JPG file size of 1.8MB for the Flip-Scan versus 24MB for the original Photoshop file.  The Flip-Pal can scan at 300 DPI also, which we did.  The results were very good and ideal for most user applications.

This is my original image (Gary from Photo Tree)

Flip-Pal scan from Sandy – 600DPI

The Flip-Pal is certainly up to all the scanning tasks that a genealogist has – and even more.  I will use it as an archival tool when I don’t have access to my studio or can’t bring all my equipment with me.  The small size is a great benefit to the traveler, it’s half the size of my iPad.  And the image quality is superb.

Gary Clark, Founder, PhotoTree.com Contact: gary[@]phototree.com

About PhotoTree.com

PhotoTree.com provides numerous services and tools to genealogists of all levels, collectors, and historians that guide them through the process of dating 19th century photographs, and helps them preserve their valuable photographs through restoration, reproduction, and archiving techniques.

Tools include an online gallery of more than 1,000 dated images in over 50 categories to compare with undated family photos.  Viewing documented examples similar to family photos can help establish the probable date of a photograph. This web site, including an extensive history and description of 19^th century photographs is freely available to the public.

A series of easy-to-use, unique publications for the genealogist and other 19^th century photograph enthusiasts are forthcoming from PhotoTree.com.  Available in e-book and print, these highly illustrated, sample-based guides provide the most in-depth explanation of photograph dating techniques ever published.

In addition, PhotoTree.com offers expert photograph restoration and enhancement services; ensuring that damaged photos will not be lost forever, but can be restored and recreated as beautiful artwork.  For a comprehensive source of 19^th century photographic information visit www.phototree.com

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First Make Multiple Scans

Remove the lid and flip the scanner over. Make multiple scans, with at least one inch overlap between adjacent scans. The overlaps need not be aligned or spaced precisely; the stitching software compensates for that. It is OK to scan past the edge of the photo.

IMPORTANT: Keep the scanner oriented the same direction for all of the scans of one photo rather than rotating it around.

Next, Stitch them Together

You will find the stitching software included with the Flip-Pal. It’s really easy to use!

1. Click Stitch Scans from the Flip-Pal Toolbox
2. Click File>Open, then select the images to be stitched. (Press Shift or Ctrl while clicking on each image that you want to select)
3. Click Open at bottom of the Open screen. The program automatically stitches the images together into a single image, displays the stitched image using your default photo editing or viewing program, and automatically saves the stitched image as pano.jpg in the same folder as the original images.
4. If your default photo viewing program is also a photo editor, you can use it to crop, rotate or make other edits to the image. Next, save the photo and give it a unique name by clicking File, then Save As or Copy As.
5. If your default photo viewing program does not allow you to save and name the image, it is recommended that you close the photo viewer, find the pano.jpg file and rename it with a unique name.

The Stitching software automatically names the stitched image pano.jpg unless you choose a different name. This would over-write any previous stitched image with the name pano.jpg.

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For the past week, I got the pleasure to play with Flip-pal and take it for a long test drive.  Let me list some of the many advantages and applications for Flip-Pal.

Mobility
It is relatively light and small and you can take it with you anywhere.
If you need to do research at the library or copy class notes, take along
your Flip-Pal and you can quickly scan any document.  The mobility also
allows you to scan photos and small poster boards anywhere. No connection
needed and no umbilical cord.

Flip side
Flip-Pal gives you the option of taking off the lid and putting the
scanner on top of the document and scan it. This gives you added mobility
and scanning options.

Photos
Like many others, I also have several shoe boxes filled with old photos
that I would like to convert to digital.  Flip-Pal gives you the
convenience to scan those pictures quickly and file them digitally on your
computer or CD ROM.

Color Restoration
Do you have any photographs that have been hanging on the well for a
number of years and the sunshine has faded the color?  I have several of
those pictures.  With Flip-Pal, I can scan in the picture and restore the
color to it’s original shade.

Enjoy your Flip-Pal mobile scanner!

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