Creating categories for family photos

[mastodon]

I am using IMatch for family photos (scanned and digital), and like to make a category set. (Till now I have only been using data-driven categories.) Where can I find good examples to learn or better get, so I can use it for a starting point? Is there an easy, automatic method to translate it to another language?

[Arthur]

I do not have an answer for your question, but I have a question instead. 😀

I have also tried to scan photos. The glocy ones reflect to much light of the scanner. The ones made by the photographer are protected by a special layer, which indroduces patterns, when scanned. Did you manage to make good scans from photos?

[ubacher]

I can suggest to start a tree like this:
PEOPLE|Family|MyFamily
                      |HerFamily
                      |OurFamily
                      |Other

Where you, your partner and your children would be under OurFamily.
For patch-work families you might structure it differently.
Other I always include in new trees to handle the unexpected cases one has not prepared for.

[jch2103]

I do not have an answer for your question, but I have a question instead. 😀

I have also tried to scan photos. The glocy ones reflect to much light of the scanner. The ones made by the photographer are protected by a special layer, which indroduces patterns, when scanned. Did you manage to make good scans from photos?

Sounds like you may have a couple of related issues.

Reflections from glossy photos may depend on the specific scanner you're using. I haven't has that specific issue with my Canon and Epson scanners, perhaps because the illumination source in the scanner is designed to prevent/minimize reflections to the scanner. On the other hand, I do have some ~100 year old photos where silver has migrated to the surface of the print, creating 'mirroring' http://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/Silver_mirroring and https://archivesandspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/forms-of-photographic-degradation-silver-mirroring/. If you have this particular problem, it's much more difficult to address in a scan. One way of dealing with such photos is to photograph them using two angled light sources; it may also be necessary to use polarizing filters on both the light sources and the camera to help cut out the reflections. Much more trouble than straight scanning!

Prints that include a pattern on the surface are a difficult scanning problem. Here's a set of suggestions using Photoshop on the scanned images https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/23445/what-is-the-best-way-to-remove-texture-from-a-scanned-textured-photo-paper. One method described is to scan the print twice, one scan rotated 180 degrees and then 'un-rotated' and combined in Photoshop. I haven't tried this, but will put it on my list the next time I'm doing some scanning.

BTW, I use VueScan as my scanning software. Highly recommended, has lots of useful tools and works with virtually any scanner ever made.

[mastodon]

The special protecting layer is OFFtopic, but let say it is. I have some of this ones, they are about 100 years old. And even an experienced photographer, who has scanned my prints could not remove it. One can see the pattern.

[Mario]

I do not have an answer for your question, but I have a question instead. 😀

I have also tried to scan photos. The glocy ones reflect to much light of the scanner. The ones made by the photographer are protected by a special layer, which indroduces patterns, when scanned. Did you manage to make good scans from photos?

Would it not be better to start your own thread, instead of hijacking a totally unrelated thread?

[Mario]

I am using IMatch for family photos (scanned and digital), and like to make a category set. (Till now I have only been using data-driven categories.) Where can I find good examples to learn or better get, so I can use it for a starting point? Is there an easy, automatic method to translate it to another language?

There is no "best" solution for this. May with some later IMatch version, which introduces some new concepts...

For now, setup a category layout that suits your needs. I find that having categories for each person, and then combining these persons into "Families" or "Relations" like "child, father" can qork quite well. Unless you have hundreds of persons, you can start simple and quickly change your category layout later to adapt. That's one of the great things about categories, you can quickly change anything.

Remember category concepts like Alias categories and category formulas. Alias categories allow you to link the same base category into different spots in your category hierarchy. And formula categories allow you combine e.g., multiple Person categories into a "Family" category...worth to check these concepts out if you are not familiar with them yet. See the IMatch help for details and examples.

[mastodon]

I have found a site that posted a fairly good hierarchical keyword list made for Lightroom. The hierarchical keywords are in a text file. Is it possible to import these keywords into IMatch as hierarchical categories?

[jch2103]

Is it possible to import these keywords into IMatch as hierarchical categories?

Of course! See the Help topic The Universal Thesaurus, esp 'Importing Thesaurus Data.'

[Mario]

I have found a site that posted a fairly good hierarchical keyword list made for Lightroom. The hierarchical keywords are in a text file. Is it possible to import these keywords into IMatch as hierarchical categories?

Se also the IMatch knowledge-base article Free Controlled Vocabularies for IMatch for information about free vocabularies and taxonomies and information how to use them in IMatch.

[mastodon]

Thanks, I am getting closer to understand!