burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You might want to read this white paper. It explains how I do it.

Attached file:
(Download)

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Genealogy is a mixed bag. It appears to me that for the last 500 years or so people kept pretty good records and some of them survived. From 500 to 1000 years ago the records were kept of royalty and people who thought themselves important. From 1000 years ago and back was when people other than royalty were starting to get interested in genealogy so they made up attractive genealogies for themselves. My opinion.

There is a statistical argument to the effect that everyone with a European background is related by no more than 40 generations. It goes like this:

P = a particular person from year Y
G = number of generations from you to year Y
N = male population of Europe in year Y
X = probability that a particular ancestor at generation G is not P
Z = probability that none of your ancestors at generation G is P

The number of ancestors in year Y is 2**G. Half are male, or 2**(G-1).

Given a particular male ancestor from generation G, the probability that he was not P is X=[1-(1/N)]. Therefore, the probability that all of your ancestors from year Y are not P is
Z=X**[2**(G-1)].

Using Charlemagne as an example, we estimate Y=800, G=40, and N=15,000,000. The probability that P is not Charlemagne works out to be a very small number, on the order of 10**-15900. The same argument presumably holds for any other male at that time, such as Roland or Einhard, knights in the service of Charlemagne (maybe even Sulieman?).

At what year does the probability of not being related to someone from that year become reasonable?

Estimating 3.33 generations/century and using the following estimates of the population of Europe (interpolated from data of Josiah C. Russell, listed at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pop-in-eur.html)

Y N G-1 log(Z)
(millions)
800 15 39 -15900
900 18 36 -1660
1000 20 32 -93
1100 25 29 -9.3
1200 30 26 -.97
1300 35 22 -.05


Up to about 1100, the probability is negligible (less then 0.000000005). Around 1200, the probability is about 10% and around 1300 the probability is almost 90%. Of course, at some point, statistical arguments don't apply, so the later years are highly conjectural. The real question is: at what point does the statistical approach break down?

Assuming that the approach is valid until 1100, consider that you are likely to be related to some interesting historical figures:

King Duncan (~1010-1040) (a contemporary of MacBeth, in fact a cousin)

William the [Conqueror/Bastard, depending on who you talk to], ordered the gathering of data for the Domesday Book. (And of course Harold Godwinson (who lost the battle in 1066))

Urraca, Queen of Aragon became ruler of Leon-Castile in 1094 when her husband died. She remarried in 1098 and then spent 13 years at war with her second husband, Alfonso the Battler, to protect the inheritance rights of her son by her first marriage. She led her own armies into battle. (http://www.lothene.demon.co.uk/others/women11.html)

And Aethelred the Unready, whom we have to thank for the institution of a regular monetary and taxation system (in order to pay the Danegeld).
(PS: Unready is a corruption of old english for "having bad counsellors")

Going to earlier times, we can assume that as long as civilizations were in contact there must have been cross marriages, particularly for diplomatic or political reasons, so that we can extend the argument beyond Europe to the known world, and maybe even beyond.

johnsnap1947 Loc: New Fairfield, CT

Don't know how old you are but if your like me (retired) you can probably use a hobby. Advise them of the time it would take to edit them depending on the editing requirement. Also if you are going to print them you may need a 2nd mortgage. With all that editing you will want them to look good. Maybe its its a better idea to edit them and send the edited pics to them via email instead of printing them (just a suggestion).
In Adobe Photoshop there's something called batch processing which might save you tons of time.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Does that make you my cousin?

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Read it, printed it out, and saved a copy on the computer..... Thank you very much

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

I am retarded err... retired. I have a NAS drive from Synology that I am trying to set up to allow family to update and view as they want. My brother in Mi. is scanning pictures. My brother in NY is copying movies. My brother in Wa. is fixing images. My brother in Netherlands is looking for genealogy stuff in Europe.

lreisner Loc: Union,NJ

If you already have a subscription to PS then make Lightroom Classic your best friend. As noted by others, restoring 15000 photos would be an all consuming task and probably thankless. You might want to insist that any contributors only give you digitized pictures (leave them digitize their own photograph then give them to you for processing. Yes they would have to pay someone to do it, but your time is valuable too.). Use the Library module of Lightroom to cull through the pictures and only work on the ones you think are worthy.

In Lightroom you might be able to do a lot of the post processing and the rest in Photoshop. If you need any plugins like Topaz or others, you stay in the same program. You then can use LR to share the finished pictures, via Lightroom online, to family members. They can even do downloads as well, leave you comments and a lot more. You can share the pictures individually or with a group. You can even stop sharing if you want as well. You can always take the best pictures and use the book module to make a book or create a slide show, all through the same program.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

My goodness, why all the discouragement. If the OP wants to embark on a project, he should be encouraged and helped. If it turns out to be onerous or tedious, he will find out soon enough. I am sure he has the common sense to cull or just do minimal work on someone and go all out on the most important.

People want old photographs copied and restored for many reasons, family history, sentimental value, memorializing loved ones ther they have lost, and/or having copies made to share with other relatives. Ofttimes there are no high-quality images and we have created displayable portraits for passport pictures, poorly crafted snapshots, photographs that were water or fire damaged, and significantly damage on critical details of the face, etc. Trying to preserve the likeness can be challanging.

In our own home, obviously, we have many family portraits on display. We also have a little corner with an antique desk and a few family artifacts where we have many restored photographs of folks we knew and some ancestors that we never met. Whenever we or a family member finds an old photograph of lost relatives and ancestors, I copy, restore if required and add it to the collection. There are more current images too and someof the family resemblances are amazing.

My favourite is a great-great-aunt at her piano. It was a badly faded tintype that required hours of work- we even restored the frame.

Good luck to the OP and perhaps he will post a few examples.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Probably

In-lightened Loc: Kansas City

Ok Gene...I was with you on relatively easy...until I saw his fingers. How did you do that? Great work!

bobfitz Loc: Kendall-Miami, Florida

Have you considered finding a new family? Even with all of the automation in Photoshop it would take forever.

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

My wife gave me this one of someone in her family. I see that her family loves outlets and light switches too.

(Download)

therwol Loc: USA

This would be a start. I just wanted you to see what 5 minutes could do. It wiped out a small portion of the door frame, but I'd be more careful if I wanted to really get into this.

(Download)

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

This is what can be done with a basic editor (IrfanView). Crop out extraneous stuff. Place information on the image.

(I know the title of the photo contains the date 06 10 '01 but European convention makes that October 6 rather than June 10). Use of ISO8601 would clarify that (too bad it was built into the camera).

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

I don't know if it was European (military in USA) or what.