* Dates on photos of buildings

[philmcleod]

I have been putting a date in the media properties box date field, for photos of buildings, such as ancestors houses that are still standing. The problem is that when that photo is linked to a person, reports show that date, which may be 2015 if taken recently, as if it were a date of a photo taken of the individual. This shows the house photo in the report with a caption of "John Smith 2015 Age 143 Residence St Johns Road".
There is a similar issue if the date of the photo was a historic one.
Have I done something strange with my linking or is it simply that the system does not kow what sort of photo it is?
Does anyone know if there is there a way of stopping this?

[LornaCraig]

Photos linked directly to an individual are intended to be photos of the person themselves. Other media items relevant to them should be linked in other ways. Typically they will be linked to a Source record (as in the case of birth, marriage or death certifiactes) or directly to a Fact.

A photo of a house could be linked to the Residence fact. However, if many individuals lived in the same house over the years and you link the photo to all their Residence facts you could end up with the photo being repeated many times in a report. To avoid this you could create a Source record for the house and link the photo to that. Then cite the Source against each Residence fact. The Source record note field could contain any other information you have about the history of the house. In this case the picture will appear at the end of the report in the Sources section, but will only appear once.

You may need to experiment with both techniques (linking to the Fact or linking to a Source record) to decide which suits your purposes best.

[AdrianBruce]

You haven't done anything strange with your linking - the date applies to the photo, so if it gets used, that's the date applied everywhere - regardless of how you use it. Yes, if you like, FH doesn't know what sort of photo it is, because there is no concept of a sort-of-photo.

Curiously, I don't remember seeing a calculated age in my reports. This may be because I tend to to use the "Use Note as a Caption" check-box, it being the only way to get a caption that is unique to each usage - and even if you don't want to have one unique to each usage, it's the only way to get a sensible caption for me.

The default caption seems to consist of the date and the title of the media item. My media item titles are like file-names so useless as captions. Having tried several combinations, the only other way to get a caption is to find the usage of the media item where it is linked to the person or event, show the media for that event, edit that media item, and locate the stuff down at the bottom under "Link to ..." Enter the caption in the text box below "Link to ..." and mark the check-box "Use Note as Caption". This is slightly badly worded as I originally thought the Note referred to, was the Picture Note up at the top - and couldn't work out why nothing worked. It's not - it's the note in the text box to the immediate left. But there's not a lot of room at that point for essays like I would have tried to put.

This is a bit of a faff as you have to repeat it for each use, so if the photo is used in 3 places and the same attribution needs to go in all 3 places, then all 3 captions need to be filled in and all 3 tick-boxes checked. As I recollect I put the attribution at the top in the Picture Note. It's not used from there but I can copy it from there 3 times.

[LornaCraig]

Adrian wrote:

The default caption seems to consist of the date and the title of the media item.

The default (Installation setting) caption for pictures linked to an individual does use the individual's name and does have 'Inc Individual's Age at Picture Date' ticked. You can untick the age option but it will still include the individual's name unless you 'use note as caption'.

This is reasonable enough for pictures of an individual, but pictures of a house should not be linked directly to the individual.

[BobWard]

I handle house photos (as well as other building photos) by attaching them as a Source document (media file) to a custom Fact that I create for the specific address (PLACE record) of each house/building, e.g., "123 South Brady Street, Attica, Logan Township, Fountain County, Indiana, USA". I assign a date to each of these custom Facts that corresponds to the date that the person for whom I am doing the profile on actually lived there, worked there, was born there, etc.

I also use the Fact Note box to add any desired text to describe the house/building, such as who lived there and when (you can even add the photo date in the Note text to put everything into chronological context). Sometimes, I even add some text to the Note box for the Source document.

Works very well for my ISR reports.

[AdrianBruce]

... The default (Installation setting) caption for pictures linked to an individual does use the individual's name and does have 'Inc Individual's Age at Picture Date' ticked. ...

Thanks Lorna - I'd not realised that the default caption process was different between pictures linked to an individual and those linked to an event / fact. Or rather - I was beginning to suspect there might be a difference but didn't have a dated photo linked directly to a person and I was already messing stuff about enough investigating stuff linked to events.

Yes, I'd naturally link building images to residence facts without really thinking about it...

[jimlad68]

Not sure this will answer your specific query, but could give food for thought on how you organise PLACes. I have a similar solution to BobWard above. Detail here from topic Place names - counties corporate (13046) by jimlad68 » 28 Nov 2015 11:08:

..... my current thinking ..... is to use the current address (I tend to use Wiki to find government/local authorities etc) and use a Source to give historic info. 2 main reasons for this, although as boundaries change, they would need amendment.

1. A single location can have had many "addresses" over time, so a source could give more detail, including history, geography etc. The downside is that for exporting purposes you need to attach the source to every fact that uses the PLACe. (It would be easier, but less flexible) to use the FH "PLACE note" entry, but it does not export well and currently FH does not report FH "PLACE notes" very well). You don't need a source for every address, sometimes just for a Street, and mostly not at all if the address is still current and you have no extra "Source" info.

2. It makes geo locations etc more effective with, in particular, google maps and when exported.
see Best format of PLACe and ADDRess for Map Geocoding (11937)
post by jimlad68 » 03 Jan 2015 02:27
and extra info Addresses - Suggestion for Best Practice (12965) for more detail........

[jimlad68]

A further thought, put any text detail you have on the image itself. This might be time consuming but I have done it a few times with good results (especially when sharing printed old photos). You can use something like Photoshop or the free Irfanview. It would go something like this:

- Keep your original somewhere safe.
- If not already, copy/ create a lossless format of the picture (I find PNG easiest, but for more complicated image manipulation many use TIFF)
- Add text to the picture.
- If you want to keep the original picture intact (rather than overwriting the image), create a border (top or bottom usually) by making the canvass bigger (you can have it light grey,beige etc). Then add your text there.
- I would then keep as PNG format (as it is compressed and lossless), if you wish to create smaller jpg, fine, but keep your PNG file in case you want to amend further.

Another advantage of this method is that when printed, if you don't want the text, you can just cut it off.

Sounds messy, but once you have learnt the technique often by trial and error for best results, and made step by step notes for next time, it is quite easy.

[natashahouseman]

You can use something like Photoshop or the free Irfanview. It would go something like this:

I've just come across Canva and have been playing with the free version. It's brilliant for adding captions to photos (as well as frames etc and sizing them for different social media).

[jimlad68]

adding to my earlier post in this topic by jimlad68 » 10 Jul 2016 12:59by jimlad68 » 10 Jul 2016 12:59

The free XnView MP and Batch Convert > Add Action(s) also works very well and once set up can perform multiple actions all at once e.g. The attached *.xbs (in zip) preset file (need to unzip) will
- add a 5% border to the bottom, add the filename in that border, and save as a *.png file (you may need to check the output format). Lots of variations.
https://www.xnview.com/en/
or for easy updates via https://www.ugmfree.it/