My mom is sitting on hundreds of old family pictures and documents. Naturally I want to include them in my PGV installation and the OT part of the question, she'd like to share them with other family branches on say a CD. Here's the thing, she's the one with most of the knowledge about the material. She's retired and scan them all day long but it would be real nice to include with the picture a description of who is in the picture, background of a document and so on. Is there a method or program available that after scanning she could easily include the description? i.e. "pictured L-R John Doe, Mary Doe, kids Joe, Bob & Gail + dog Peggy" and then equally important have the person viewing the pictures on a CD have that same info readily available - hopefully without having to buy a program to view the pictures & descriptions?
Gettin' colder in the Midwest, Lou
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Try Picasa (Google's). It is intuitive, allows both captions and tags, and puts them in the IPTC section of the jpeg file. Once it is done, the file has the caption / tags embedded and any program (including another Picasa, IrfanView that I use, or almost anything) can read it.
-Marek
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You are very fortunate to have had a member of your family value and keep old family records and photos. My recommendation for your Mom if she uses Windows, is to use a piece of freeware called FastStone. It is available for download here:
She can do everything that she is likely to need, including scanning, rotating, cropping and basic image editing. The program provides the ability to easily enter a description for the image in the JPG Comment field and these comments can be set to display in the slideshow facility also provided. She would only need to include a copy of the FastStone EXE file on the CD when she sends it to whomever she wants to. The program will need to be installed on the recipients PC, but that is quick and easy. The slideshow is also capabale of playing music at the same time. FastStone does not provide the ability to enter EXIF data but does display this if it is already included in the file. It also does not provide the ability to enter IPTC data. But I think for what she wants, the JPG Comment field is all that she would need.
There are a number of other programs about but FastStone give you plenty of bang for your $0.00.
Stuart
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Lou, I have also a Picasa membership (free), and you should be aware that I have incorprated this into PGV.
Just add the album you have in picasa as a url when you add a new media item.
e.g.
use this as the input in the field "File Name on Server" when you add the media item.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Now that last Picassa idea is nice from the standpoint of just one person is taking care of most of the work and would save the step of burning CDs to send out. Fire off an email with the url and viola it's done; save me from setting up guest account(s) in PGV and someone having to search families/indi's to see the pics. Yeah, I think we're onto something here.
Can anyone turn up the temp in the Midwest?
Lou
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
My mom is sitting on hundreds of old family pictures and documents. Naturally I want to include them in my PGV installation and the OT part of the question, she'd like to share them with other family branches on say a CD. Here's the thing, she's the one with most of the knowledge about the material. She's retired and scan them all day long but it would be real nice to include with the picture a description of who is in the picture, background of a document and so on. Is there a method or program available that after scanning she could easily include the description? i.e. "pictured L-R John Doe, Mary Doe, kids Joe, Bob & Gail + dog Peggy" and then equally important have the person viewing the pictures on a CD have that same info readily available - hopefully without having to buy a program to view the pictures & descriptions?
Gettin' colder in the Midwest, Lou
I use a free util called Fototagger.
Very versatile and u can extend the mask to hold the caption and also embed the caption in the image.
Lchurst,
Try Picasa (Google's). It is intuitive, allows both captions and tags, and puts them in the IPTC section of the jpeg file. Once it is done, the file has the caption / tags embedded and any program (including another Picasa, IrfanView that I use, or almost anything) can read it.
-Marek
Lou,
You are very fortunate to have had a member of your family value and keep old family records and photos. My recommendation for your Mom if she uses Windows, is to use a piece of freeware called FastStone. It is available for download here:
http://www.faststone.org/index.htm
She can do everything that she is likely to need, including scanning, rotating, cropping and basic image editing. The program provides the ability to easily enter a description for the image in the JPG Comment field and these comments can be set to display in the slideshow facility also provided. She would only need to include a copy of the FastStone EXE file on the CD when she sends it to whomever she wants to. The program will need to be installed on the recipients PC, but that is quick and easy. The slideshow is also capabale of playing music at the same time. FastStone does not provide the ability to enter EXIF data but does display this if it is already included in the file. It also does not provide the ability to enter IPTC data. But I think for what she wants, the JPG Comment field is all that she would need.
There are a number of other programs about but FastStone give you plenty of bang for your $0.00.
Thanks Marek,
Lou, I have also a Picasa membership (free), and you should be aware that I have incorprated this into PGV.
Just add the album you have in picasa as a url when you add a new media item.
e.g.
use this as the input in the field "File Name on Server" when you add the media item.
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/USER_ID/ALBUM_ID#slideshow
The icon is automatically generated, and the whole thing works with or without Lightbox installed.
Brian
(Lightbox, Album tab, Manage Media links, Shared Notes … developer)
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Now that last Picassa idea is nice from the standpoint of just one person is taking care of most of the work and would save the step of burning CDs to send out. Fire off an email with the url and viola it's done; save me from setting up guest account(s) in PGV and someone having to search families/indi's to see the pics. Yeah, I think we're onto something here.
Can anyone turn up the temp in the Midwest?
Lou