Adding Photos and images to your family tree is easy. All you’ll need to get started as a scanner. Many manufacturers such as Canon and Hewlett Packard offer integrated scanner/printers too, so if you don’t already have a scanner and are on the look out for a new printer, make sure you take a close look at these too.

Simply place the image or photo face down on your scanner’s glass scanning pane, select the “Scan” button and wait for the scanner to scan your image or photo. You’ll be asked where you want to save your image or photo. Make sure you give it a relevant and memorable file name. Most images will be saved as jpeg files.

In Windows the default folder is usually “My Pictures”, so it’s worth setting up a basic file structure which matches your tree to some degree for ease of retrieval and uploading to your tree once your photos and images have been scanned.

There are also a number of image editing programs you may want to consider, but this will be governed more by your personal preference in terms of whether you want to make alterations to images prior to attaching them to your tree. We’ll take a quick look at the most commonly used now. For paid for image editing, Adobe Photoshop CS and Paintshop Pro are generally regarded as the market leaders.

Adobe Photoshop also offer a Photoshop Elements version meaning you can get the majority of features you’ll likely to require at a fraction of the full package price. If you’re just starting out and want to explore image and photo editing first, there’s a host of free software and on-line applications you can try too.

Google’s Picasa tool which is free to download is a great way to get started and will help you easily locate and organize image files on your PC.

When you’re uploading your Photo make sure you categorise your photo using one of the dropdown menu options. Also ensure you include a Picture name and brief description of the photo-in particular where team photos are concerned for locating ancestors. You can also add location and date details.

Saving your photo as a primary photo will ensure that you photo appears in prominent positions in both your:

Ancestor’s Personal profile page:

On your own family tree: 

Start loading you first photos now.

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