Computer Stuff

I'm going to recommend and mention several products in this section. I don't work for any of these people, so I have no financial interest in what tools you use to make your own family history. I am also sure that there are other products that may accomplish some of the same things in much the same way. The problem is that I haven't used them. The things I mention here are products that I have actually used and can recommend. Surprisingly enough, most of them are reasonably priced. All of these packages are available for PCs. Only a few are available for Macs. The items in red are links to the manufacturers of the products.

Hardware

It may surprise you to find out that you can do this entire project without owning a computer. Obviously, it would be much more convenient if you have your own system, but it's not absolutely necessary. Most medium to large size cities have Kinko's stores or some other place that you can rent a computer by the hour. It usually runs about $15-$20 per hour. If you go during nighttime hours, it's much cheaper and you don't have to wait in line. Even better, most of the PC's or Macs that you rent at Kinko's have a scanner attached as well as a ZIP drive (more on that in the following paragaphs. In addition, they are usually loaded with all the software you will need, including word processors, graphics packages (including Phototshop) and other great tools. This is a viable alternative to buying a compuer if you don't already have one. Another option might be to see if your local schools or libraries have computers you can use. At the same time, computers are getting real cheap, and it's hard to have too many toys. If you don't have a computer and decide now is the time to buy one, I can heartily recommend Dell. Their technical support is outstanding.

One piece of hardware that you will need is a ZIP drive. A ZIP drive is a special kind of floppy drive that will store 100 megabytes on a special three and one-half inch floppy diskette. If you already have a computer, you can buy either an internal or eternal ZIP drive and have all the disk space you need. If you are going to rent one, find out whether the computer will be using has a ZIP drive attached. If it doesn't ask if you can bring yours along and use it. The reason is that the images you will be scanning in and using are huge. A standard size snapshot will be almost a meg in size. It doesn't take long to eat up lots of disk space at that rate. There is a more complete explanation of this process in the "Preparing Your Images" section. ZIP drives are made by Iomega and are sold by every computer store and mail order catalog. The drives are generally reliable, which is a good thing, because Iomega's technical support is not very good (to put it charitably). It's necessary piece for the project. If you don't have a computer and are going to rent one, make sure it has a ZIP drive and then buy some cartridges to save your work. The drive itself will run around $150, while the cartridges run any where from $15 to $20 for each 100 megabyte cartridge.

Another piece of hardware you will need access to is a scanner for reading in your family pictures and adding them to your journey. Back to Kinko's for this, unless you know somone that has one. Scanners are relatively expensive, so I wouldn't buy one unless you feel you can't live without it. Don't buy a cheap (under $400) scanner. The results will disappoint you. This is probably a one-time project that you want to do properly. Probably the best scanners are available from the fine people at Hewlett-Packard.

Graphics/Image Processing Software

The first thing you will probably notice is that Adobe's Photoshop is not on this list. I am sure it's great, but it's also real expensive. I haven't used it, other than to start it up and wander around a little bit. It has the same look and feel that Pagemaker does. It's probably a lot like their other tools in that it is extremely powerful, with a price to match and requires a significant investment of time to learn to use.

Kai's Photo Soap

Click to Enlarge

If you have a lot of pictures, especially old ones, there is nothing that works as well, or as conveniently as Soap. I wish I had had it when I did the printed version of A Journey in Time last year. The pictures you saw on the web site look much better than the ones in the printed version, which probably means I will redo the printed version to bring it up to snuff. Soap is available for about $50 from MetaCreations, or from most computer stores or mail order houses. Not only is it extremely powerful, it is also easy to use and just plain fun to use. That's the good news. The bad news it that it is a memory and processor hog. If you don't have a fast Pentium or Power Mac and at least 64 meg of memory, it is slow. It will still run, but it just takes a while. You may hear that Soap is buggy. I have never had a crash with mine, but I downloaded and installed the update right after I installed the package. It's worth it. If you would like an example of what Soap can do, click on the cabin images above.

PhotoImpact 4

A really spiffy package from Ulead. If you are only going to have one package for a project like this, PhotoImpact is the one to have. The reasons are that it has a really nice frame maker and the Smart Saver feature will get web graphics down to a reasonable size with little or no visible decrease in image quality. The frame maker option makes it easy even for people like me to put frames on images with very little effort. You have your choice of many different frame types, from the simple blue/green frame I used here to extremely ornate ones. You are limited only by your judgement. The Smart Saver option is invaluable for web work, and is available separately from PhotoImpact. When working with GIF's or JPG images, you can continually adjust the compression and color level until you get something that has good fidelity and is a reasonable size. I know some of the images here are large, but they would have been larger without Smart Saver. PhotoImpact 4 is about $100, Smart Saver, when purchased separately, is about $40, but is included with PhotoImpact.

Paint Shop Pro

My first graphics package, and still the one I use the most. This is a shareware package available from JASC. It will do some things that PhotoImpact won't do (like quickly editing a color palette). It is also much better at resizing an image and retaining more of the original image's detail and color than PhotoImpact. I have no idea why. It's main strength is stability, flexibility and outstanding support from the people at JASC. These people really stand behind their products. The new version (Version 5) also has layers, much like Photoshop from Adobe.

KPT Convolver

Another plug-in from Metacreations. This is a real cheap package that will allow you to quickly adjust color balance, sharpness, etc on any image. I used it to touch up some of the images after I was done with them in Soap. Not really necessary, but nice to have and it only costs about $30. This is not a standalone application. You need to have some other graphics package to use it. Soap, on the other hand, is standalone. You probably want both.

Image Cataloging Software

When you finally get started scanning in all your pictures, you will probably have too many to remember where they all are. It's real frustrating to spend an hour looking for a picture that "I know it's here somewhere". There are several programs that can help with this. PhotoImpact comes with its own cataloging software, as does Paint Shop Pro 5. If you don't have either of these packages, you can use Graphics Workshop, which is an excellent shareware package that sells for about $40. Another good package is Thumbs Plus. All of these packages will allow you to make a database, or electronic album, of your pictures, including thumbnails and descriptions. Can be a real lifesaver.

Backup Software

As you go through the process of making your journey, you are eventually going to throw something away. Avoid the trauma by getting in the habit of making regular backups.

WinZip

As you go through the rest of the tips, I am going to nag you continuously about making backups. Make sure you do it. If you are using a PC, you can convenitently make compressed (reduced size) backups of all your files with WinZip. This software makes compressed files that anyone can read. Get it and learn how to use it. Make sure you can make a backup and get something out of it before you actually have to.

Page Layout/Word Processing Software
If you are going to do a printed version of your journey, you will need some software. You can probably use the word processing software that came on your computer. You can probably do most of what you need in Microsoft Word or an equivalent. Contemporary word processors have the ability to insert graphics in a document. The important thing is to do something.

Pagemaker

(I can hear you cringe) When I did the printed version, I had access to Pagemaker and used it. There may be other programs that will do what Pagemaker does, Quark Express comes to mind, but I have used Pagemaker and it is extremely powerful. It does require an investment in time to learn. The good news is that You can go to almost any Kinko's and rent a PC or Mac that already has Pagemaker on it. Something to think about. Pagemaker is made by the people at Adobe

Web Authoring Software

If you're not going to do a web site, you can skip this part. I currently use Hot Dog Pro 3, from Sausage Software which you unfortunately can't buy anymore. I tried the new version, but it was just too "busy" for me to get comfortable with. They also make a WYSIWYG html generator, but I haven't used it.
You have a couple of options in this area. You can go with one of the text-based editors that do a lot of the work for you, or you can go with one of the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) page generators like Adobe's PageMill, Claris's Home Page, etc. HTML isn't brain surgery. If you learn it, you site will look much better. On the other hand, if you actually have a life and just want to get the site up, use one of the WYSIWYG editors. The disadvantage with WYSIWYGs is that the HTML code they generate is underwhelming, which makes your pages download and display more slowly. Life is full of difficult choices, isn't it? By the way, there is an excellent freeware HTML editor for PCs called Arachnophilia and an excellent one for Macs called BBEdit. You can find them at most shareware sites.

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