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Article Updated January 12, 2005 Family Tree Maker Tips, Hints & FAQs: By: Rick Roberts, Biography & Archived Articles
How-to Import Photos & Clippings Into Family Tree Maker
FTM user, Alex Sarson writes:
I can scan them into a file, but can not find a way to copy and paste into the person's notes in the Family Tree Maker (software program) can you advise if this is possible as it would save a great deal of typing as I have about 30 notice's to attach to various person's notes hope you can help" Scanning Directly Into A Scrapbook The simplest way to include the clippings in your FTM family file is to scan them directly into the "Scrapbook" for the person/s that the clipping pertains to. If the clipping is about a marriage (or divource) you may want to scan it into the "Scrapbook" for the marriage instead. The latest version of Family Tree Maker has a new feature which allows you to scan the image directly into the "Scrapbook" which. That's what we will describe here. Earlier versions require different steps which are covered later. First open your Family Tree Maker program and locate the individual into who's Scrapbook that you want to import the picture. Click on his or her individual Scrapbook icon. Click on an empty picture box into which you want the image to be scanned. Place the clipping in your scanner. Click on Picture/Object, located near the top of your FTM screen. A drop down menu will appear. Select "Insert Picture From Scanner/Camera" by clicking on it and then follow the instuctions on screen. The image will import directly into your FTM family file for the person that you wanted it to be imported into. If the image of the clipping is one which you want to include in another person's Scrapbook too, it is very simple to do. Click on the photobox that the newly imported picture of the clipping appears in. Click on "Edit" (near the top of your FTM screen). Select "Copy" from the drop down menu. Navagate to the person's file that you want to add the photo to, open their Scapbook, click on an empty image box. Click on "Edit" (near top of FTM screen), then click on "Paste" from the drop down menu. Importing an Existing Photo File Into A Scrapbook If you have an existing image file, you can import the image into the Scapbook by the following method. First open your Family Tree Maker program and locate the individual into who's Scrapbook that you want to import the picture. Click on his or her individual Scrapbook icon. Click on an empty picture box into which you want the image to be imported. Click on Picture/Object, located near the top of your FTM screen. A drop down menu will appear. Select "Insert Picture From File" by clicking on it. The sub menu which comes nto view is provided so that you can locate the picture than you have on file, either from a location on a hard drive or floppy. Once you have located the picture file click on the picture file and then click on "Open". The image will import directly into your FTM family file for the person that you wanted it to be imported into. If the image of the clipping is one which you want to include in another person's Scrapbook too, it is very simple to do. Click on the photobox that the newly imported picture of the clipping appears in. Click on "Edit" (near the top of your FTM screen). Select "Copy" from the drop down menu. Navagate to the person's file that you want to add the photo to, open their Scapbook, click on an empty image box. Click on "Edit" (near top of FTM screen), then click on "Paste" from the drop down menu. What If You Want Text, Not An Image? If you are interested in having text rather than an image of the clipping, a little trickier task is at hand. Trickier but cetainly not impossible. Most scanners come with OCR software. OCR means Optical Character Recognition. OCR software is designed to translate a scanner image of words on paper to a pure text file which you can copy paste into a document, or note section of a genealogy software. Sounds good so far. The problem is that OCR software is far from perfect. The latest versions are getting better all of the time however you will always have to "doctor" OCR conversions of scanned images performed with current OCR technology. The quality of the original image and the quality of the OCR software will dictate how much editing that you will have to do. If you scan an image of a page that was created by printing a computerized file on a high quality printer, the resulting conversion to text will be quite good. You will likely only have to correct or edit less that 2% of the page. Much faster than copy-typing from scratch. The challenge comes when converting clippings from old newspapers or pages from books which have been printed using old-style physical type. The problems with character recognition are magnified with the age and deterioration of the original document that you plan to scan. A "good" quality newspaper clipping from the late part of the last century will likely convert at about 70% accuracy. You will have to edit the result to bring it up to a high standard of accuracy. The worse the condition of the documents and type quality is, the higher percentage of the document that you must edit. If the original document is in poor condition it may be easier to just retype the text into your Family Tree Maker file rather than scan, convert using OCR and then editing. The other alternative is to scan images of poor quality documents and import then into FTM as an image, and text convert (using OCR software) only better quality documents.
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