2019 #52Ancestors: Week 8 - "Family Photo"

I had trouble choosing just one family photo to write about for Week 8's theme. So as a compromise, I chose to write about a wonderful app that I've been using to preserve family photos - Photomyne.

This video from Photomyne shows how you can scan photos and information to them with your mobile device:

Photo scanned with Photomyne, with
writing on the back added in the
description.

Photomyne allows you to scan multiple photos at once with your device's camera, and will then crop, color correct, and adjust perspective for the photos that you scanned. You also have the option to sort the photos into albums, add information about who is in the photo, when it was taken, and where it was taken. You can even add a voice memo if you wish.

Photo scanned with Photomyne,
with all information sections
included.

One of the most valuable features of Photomyne is its option to save the photos to your phone or cloud storage program with added details. With older photos, I often use this feature to include anything that was written on the back of the photo. In the case of photos where I know specific details, such as the date and location where it was taken, I make sure to add as many of those details as possible.

The app also has an interesting feature that adds color to black-and-white or sepia-colored photos. I have tried it on a few, and it works surprisingly well for an automated feature. Usually colorization is a process that takes many hours of painstaking work on Photoshop.

This app makes it incredibly easy to take albums full of precious memories and not only preserve them for generations to come, but also to share them with the rest of your family and friends. I think about all of the family photos like these that might be packed away in an album in someone's attic, and it makes me want to scan all of the old photos that I have collected over the years and share them with the world using this app. You never know - a photo of some distant relation of your great-grandmother's that means little to you might be a treasured find to someone who has never seen a photo of their own great-grandmother.