Saving and Archiving Photos

Let's say you're scanning in photos or documentation and need to decide how you're going to save them. What file format do you use? For the non-technically minded, file format means what file type you are using. On Windows computers, the file extension tells Windows how to open the file. For example, Windows knows to use Microsoft Word to open a .doc file and a web browser to open an .html file. Image files can be in the format of .jpg (jpeg), .bmp (bitmap), .tif, .png and many others. The difference is mostly in how the file is compressed, meaning how small the file is made for the same size photo.

Many people say to only save scans and photos in .tif format. The reason for this is that a .tif file is not compressed at all. The file tells the photo viewer/editor that this bit is this color, the next dot is another color and so on for every single dot in the photo. The larger the dimensions of the photo, the larger the file size, no matter what. This way, when a file is edited and resaved, all of the changed bits are changed in the file and the file size remains the same.

DNA Testing Frustrations

One of my third cousins had their Ancestry DNA test results imported into Family Tree DNA. We had hoped that finding common matches between us could help us track down where our Kelly and/or Murphy families were from in Ireland. My father's mother's mother's parents are also her great-great-grandparents.

I see she popped up on my match list so I looked and saw that Family Tree DNA estimates we are 3rd-5th cousins. We're 3rd cousins so that estimate is correct. I see that we share a portion of our DNA on chromosome 9. This is all well and good. Now to see who our common matches are to see whose genealogy we can study to gain insight on where our family came from.