Teaching Classes at the MyHeritage LIVE Conference in Amsterdam

Why am I in Amsterdam? Earlier this year, I was graciously invited to present at the MyHeritage LIVE Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After some discussion with my wife, we decided to take advantage of being in Europe to do some touring before the Conference. We left Provo on August 16th and spent the next three weeks touring the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, a tiny part of Austria, and Germany. The tour ended in Munich. We then flew back to Amsterdam for the Conference from September 6th through the 8th. I will be teaching two classes. Here is the genealogy track schedule for Sunday showing the local times for my two classes. Of course, you will have the opportunity to hear most of the Conference live online during both days.

https://live2019.myheritage.com/

The instructions for live streaming are on this MyHeritage blog post. See "MyHeritage LIVE Is Almost Here!"

MyHeritage LIVE Is Almost Here!

For those of you in the US, the 6+ hour time shift will put the Conference into the afternoon or evening. If you are in other places around the world, check to see what the time shift will be for your area. Most of the action will be on the MyHeritage Facebook page so keep a watch there.

Live Streaming from the MyHeritage LIVE Conference 2019

https://live2019.myheritage.com

Great News! The MyHeritage LIVE Conference with be both live-streamed and available online after the conference. I will be teaching two classes on Sunday so check the schedule and adjust the times for your particular time zone. Here are some instructions about the live streams:

We are just a couple of days away from an exciting weekend in Amsterdam, and we are thrilled to announce that we will live stream the genealogy and DNA lecture tracks online throughout the conference! 

The live stream will be available on the MyHeritage LIVE website and on the MyHeritage Facebook page, so please tune in from 9:00 a.m. Amsterdam time on September 7th. If you need help calculating the time difference to your local time zone, you can use https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/.  

Make sure to visit the conference website to see the full schedule.

#MyHeritage

The Rijkmuseum and the MyHeritage LIVE Conference in Amsterdam

The Threatened Swan

We are busy getting ready for the MyHeritage LIVE Conference in Amsterdam from September 6th to the 8th but meanwhile, we are taking the opportunity of being in Amsterdam to visit some of the places I have only read about previously. The first place on my list is the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands. Here is a short description from a Google popup:

The Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw. The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague on 19 November 1798 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis.

The image above of The Threatened Swan is historically significant in Dutch history. Here is a description of the painting from the Rijksmuseum website.

A swan fiercely defends its nest against a dog. In later centuries this scuffle was interpreted as a political allegory: the white swan was thought to symbolize the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt (assassinated in 1672) protecting the country from its enemies. This was the meaning attached to the painting when it became the very first acquisition to enter the Nationale Kunstgalerij (the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum) in 1880.

It turns out that swans are very significant in Western European history. Another example is the name of the famous castle in Germany, the Neuschwanstein Castle which translated into English is the "New Swan Castle." Images of swans are very prominent in many contexts.

What does all this have to do with MyHeritage and the Conference? Well, you might start to realize that genealogy and history are really the same things. Over the next few days, I hope to be able to show some direct connections between our cultural and historic heritage and our genealogical inheritance.

 

Bicycles, Canals, and the MyHeritage LIVE Conference in Amsterdam

We have arrived in Amsterdam a few days early for the MyHeritage LIVE Conference on September 6th through the 8th and have taken the time to see some museums and the sights around the city. We have already seen the windmills, the Ann Frank House, the Rijksmuseum, and the Botanical Garden. We also spent a day just walking around the downtown area but we still have some time to see more before the conference. We have enjoyed the beautiful and very busy city of Amsterdam.

The two most obvious things we see everywhere are canals and bicycles. The bicycle traffic is constant. When you cross a street, you need to look both ways in the bicycle lanes on both sides of the street. Bicycles have the right away and they don't stop for pedestrians. There have to be a lot of bicycles in this city. According to Amsterdam Facts:

According to the most recent figures, the 850.000 residents (442.693 households) of Amsterdam together own 847.000 bicycles. That represents 1.91 bicycles per household. 78% of people 12 years and older own at least one bike. Bonus fact: each year between 12,000 and 15,000 bikes are fished up from city’s canals.

We haven't seen too many of the .91 bicycles but we have seen a lot of the rest. The bicycles also travel very fast.

Although we lived many years in Mesa, Arizona and are accustomed to canals, the Arizona canals are not nearly so plentiful or beautiful as the Amsterdam canals. In the older parts of the city, you cross a canal every few blocks. Additionally, Amsterdam is amazingly clean for a large city although we do see and have seen the ever-present graffiti all over Europe including in Amsterdam.

The number of people in the downtown is remarkable. We saw the same crowds in Madrid, Paris, and other cities. When you come from the Phoenix, Arizona area, seeing anyone on the streets is unusual and even after living almost my entire life in Phoenix/Scottsdale/Mesa, the only crowds I have seen in the downtown areas are during parades and other special events.

We are looking forward to the Conference. We hope to see some of you there.

https://live2019.myheritage.com/

In Amsterdam, the Netherlands for MyHeritage LIVE 2019

We are in the lovely and very busy city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the MyHeritage LIVE Conference on September 6th to the 8th 2019. Amsterdam is a major tourist destination as well as a center for banking, commerce, and the diamond trade. Because of advanced city planning almost every street in the city has a dedicated bike lane and the number of bikes is amazing. When crossing the street, you not only have to look out for cars, you also need to watch for bikes. All bikes have the right-of-way over pedestrians. We are here in Amsterdam for the 2019 MyHeritage Live Conference.

MyHeritage LIVE in Amsterdam is this week!!!

https://live2019.myheritage.com

At the time of this post, there are only three days or so until the 2019 MyHeritage LIVE Conference here in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I say here in Amsterdam because I am already here enjoying this beautiful city and getting ready for the Conference. We came early to spend some time in the city before attending and presenting at the Conference. I will be posting two or more times a day about the Conference so stay tuned. For up-to-the-minute information see the MyHeritage LIVE Conference website.

Remember that the Conference is in Amsterdam and that is from 6 or more hours ahead of places in the United States so when we are getting going at 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning it will still be the middle of the night in the United States. However, last year's Conference sessions are still online to view, so I am assuming the sessions to be presented this year will also be available. See https://blog.myheritage.com/2018/11/myheritage-live-2018-lectures-now-online/ for last years presentations.

My wife and I have enjoyed a trip around Europe for a few weeks before the Conference but are now in Amsterdam and ready to attend the Conference. We will also have an exhibit table at the Conference and be passing out information on The Family History Guide. We hope to see some of our old friends at the Conference and make some new ones.

Here is the link to the Conference web page with the schedule.

The Ultimate Digital Preservation Guide, Part Twelve: How to Begin to Take Archive Quality Photos

Making archive quality images is not as simple as using a scanner or randomly clicking a camera to make a digital image. When you start being involved with archive quality you soon learn that there are three ways to look at the "quality" or resolution of the image: DPI, PPI, and LPI. (Some of this is a repetition, but it is appropriate at this point to review some of the things from previous posts).

DPI is the acronym for dots per inch. It is a unit of measure for the number of discrete dots used by a dot matrix printer or other devices such as laser or inkjet printers that make images using dots of ink or toner. The most common measure is 300 dpi, the standard for inexpensive laser printers. At 300 dpi, the dots on a page of text cannot be seen without magnification. Higher resolution is possible from more expensive machines and 600 and 1200 or even higher dpi printers are readily available for a price.

PPI is the acronym for pixels per inch. Camera sensors are usually measured in millions of pixels or Megapixels. A Megapixel is a unit of graphic resolution equivalent to one million or more specifically, 1,048,576 pixels. Each pixel has essentially the same function as the dots created by ink or toner-based printers. There are currently digital cameras that are readily available to consumers with the money to pay for them with sensors that have in excess of 100 Megapixels. For comparison, the current Apple iPhone camera has a 12 Megapixel sensor.

LPI is the acronym for lines per inch. This is a term most frequently used by printers and some engineers to indicate the resolution of printed documents. A line consists of halftones (dots of different shades of gray to black), that are made by physical ink dots by a printing device to create different tones. LPI is a measure of the distance between the lines in a halftone grid. Although still in use, LPI is mostly an out-of-date measurement since outside of some commercial printing, there are almost no halftone printers still in use.

It may seem obvious but for the purpose of digitizing original documents and records, the "resolution" of the original will always determine the upper limit of the resolution of a copy whether digital or photocopy. This is the ultimate reason why copies of copies always decline in resolution.

The main challenge of discussing "resolution" in the context of digitizing records and documents is that none of these measurement systems addresses the issue of readability. For example, if the original document is unreadable due to fading ink, water damage, mold, or some other issue, the highest possible resolution will not help restore the lost information. There are ways to capture information from damaged documents but that will be the subject of another installment of this series.

Another issue is that focusing solely on the number of pixels, dots-per-inch, or lines-per-inch ignores the reality of the way the digital image is going to be displayed and used. Computer monitor and TV resolution is measured in the number of pixels both horizontally and vertically across the screen. Interestingly, screen size is measured diagonally. Unless the screen is a perfect square the horizontal and vertical measurements will always be different.  For example, one of the highest resolution monitors available in 2019 has a resolution of 5120 × 2880. More common numbers such as an FHD (1920 x 1080) monitor has about a 2.07-megapixel resolution image per frame while 4K UHD has about an 8.3-megapixel resolution. No matter how high the resolution of your original digital image, your view of the original is limited by the resolution of your monitor. However, this limitation can be almost completely overcome by software that allows the user to zoom in on an image and view it at the maximum resolution available. The process of creating a zoomable image is quite complex and likely out of the range of things an individual without extensive programming experience is going to be able to use. However, there are some commercially available programs that provide a zoom function which usually requires multiple images at different resolutions.

It also makes little sense to consider higher and higher resolution for digitization when the upper limit of effective resolution is the human eye. The human eye captures images in almost 180 degrees in the entire field of view unless limited by damage to the eye. It is estimated that the total resolution of the human eye is about 576 megapixels. See "How Many Megapixels Is the Human Eye?". However, it is important to understand that of the total number of sensors in the human eye, only a small number are used to look at a document. For example, as I type on my computer, the computer screen only takes up a small percentage of the total scene available unless I am sitting with my nose against the screen. So the eye seldom uses all of its capacity to view objects.

It is better to ask the question about the eye's resolution in a different way. What is the effective resolution of the human eye when compared to dpi? The answer is probably close to the number expressed by this article: "What is the highest resolution humans can distinguish?"

The visual resolution of the human eye is about 1 arc minute. 

At a viewing distance of 20″, that translates to about 170 dpi (or pixels-per-inch / PPI), which equals a dot pitch of around 0.14 mm.  LCD monitors today have a dot pitch of .18mm to .24mm.

If the resolution of the digital image exceeds the visual resolution of the eye, then then the image can be further away and still appear to have the same detail. That is why you can see photos on billboards along the highway. Visual resolution is easy to understand when you are trying to read a street sign or some other printed notice at some distance.  When you are digitizing documents, you need to make sure that you match the digital resolution of your imaging device (camera or scanner) with the original size of the document. For a detailed explanation of this process see, "Printing and Scanning Resolution DPI / PPI Calculator."

If you are imaging a lot of documents or records of different sizes, then it is wise to have some excess of resolution. FamilySearch.org is presently using some digital cameras with 50 Megapixel sensors. The detail in the images created, using software, allows the user of the digital image to zoom in and see small details. For printing, there are several charts online that tell you the number of Megapixels you need to print at 300 dpi. Here is one example: "Megapixel Chart." A camera with a 50 Megapixel sensor could produce a printed image at 300 dpi of approximately 24 x 36 inches or poster size. If the original is 8 1/2 by 11 inches (standard US paper size) you would really only need about a 10 Megapixel sensor.

What does all this really mean? It means that to achieve archive quality images you have to understand and take into account all of the above complex relationships and much more. As I continue this series, I will be discussing other aspects of the digitization process including lighting, depth of field, and many other issues in more detail. After all, I am calling this series the Ultimate Digital Preservation Guide so the series will have to cover a lot of technical details.

Here are the previous posts in this series.

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_10.html
Part Three: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_14.html
Part Four: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide.html
Part Five: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_10.html
Part Six: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_25.html
Part Seven: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_29.html
Part Eight: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide.html
Part Nine: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_13.html
Part Ten: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_16.html
Part Eleven: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-ultimate-digital-preservation-guide_25.html