PRESERVING HISTORY

How to Digitally Archive and Share Historical Photographs, Documents, and Audio Recordings

Downloads and Links

Collecting Historical Information

Standard History Questions for a Person. This Word document file has a standard set of questions for collecting and archiving information about a person for a family history archive. The questions can be answered in writing or in a recorded interview.     standard_questions.doc

Photoshop Downloads

Photoshop Elements Custom Styles for Convert to Black and White. This file describes how to create custom styles for the Convert to Black and White image adjustment in Photoshop Elements. As noted in Chapter 5, the conversion from a color image to a grayscale image often is optimal when one or a selected combination of the red, green, or blue color channels is used. This can be particularly useful for images with color distortions, such as frequently occur with historical items. Unfortunately, Photoshop Elements does not have an easy way to examine the effects of converting with different color channels. It is relatively easy to create custom styles that can be used to easily examine the effects of conversion with each color channel. This text file has instructions for creating the custom styles. The file can be opened and saved to the local hard drive.    pse_bw_style_doc.txt

Photoshop CS Custom Actions. This file has the custom Actions that I frequently use with Photoshop CS. These make new merged smart object layers for Shadows/Highlights Adjustment, High Pass Filter Sharpening, Smart Sharpening, and Neat Image Noise Reduction. In addition, another Action compares the difference between two images by pasting a copy of one into a layer of the other and setting the blend mode to Difference. As described in Appendix A on color management, this type of comparison is useful for evaluating the effects of different rendering intents as well as for numerous other comparisons. The file is a saved Photoshop Action file and can be loaded into Photoshop on another computer using the Actions menu.    Download Custom Action File (customjk.atn)

Photoshop CS Notes and Shortcuts. This file has my working notes and cheat-sheet for using Photoshop CS. It may be helpful to others who cannot remember all the useful shortcuts with Photoshop. Most, but not all, of the shortcuts also apply with Photoshop Elements. The file can be opened and read or saved from text or pdf versions.    Text     PDF

Color Management Downloads

Test Image for Testing Color Profiles. This file is an image with blue, green, and red strips that are labeled. As described in section A.15 "How to Determine what Software is Actually Doing" in Appendix A on color managment, this image can be used with the special test color profile (BGR-Wcs-RBG-Icc-Test.icc) from Microsoft in the file "WSC_Profile_Utilization_Test_Image_and_Profile.zip” at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/color_blog/archive/2006/09/29/profile-utilization-test-image-and-profile.aspx. The test image and test profile allow definitive tests of whether software is properly applying color profiles. This JPEG test image is in a zip file.     Download file (bgr_test_image.zip)

Test Color Profile for a Computer Monitor. This file has a special test color profile for a computer monitor that makes the screen appear strikingly pink. The profile can be used to test and experiment with the handling of the lookup tables (LUT) and gamma corrections for a computer monitor. The development and use of the test profile are described in section A.15 "How to Determine what Software is Actually Doing" in Appendix A on color managment.    Download Test Profile (monitor_test_red2.icc)

Other Downloads

Adobe Arobat Notes. This file has my working notes and cheat-sheet for using Adobe Acrobat Pro. It includes notes on the different types of pdf files, including creating and verifying PDF/A for long-term archiving. Also, notes on adding and modifying text, adding links, optimizing pdf files, and OCR. The file can be opened and read or saved from text or pdf versions.    Text     PDF

ABBYY FineReader OCR Notes. This file has my working notes and cheat-sheet for using ABBYY FineReader for OCR. The file can be opened and read or saved from text or pdf versions.    Text     PDF
A file with Word macros that have been useful with ABBYY FineReader or other situations when many styles need to be deleted and extensive reformatting done is available as    Text

MS Word Notes and Shortcuts. This file has my working notes and cheat-sheet for using MS Word. It may be helpful to others who often find themselves struggling with Word. In addition to various short-cuts, it includes several topics that are often problems, such as working with and changing templates, styles, style sets, and themes. Also turning off compression of images, setting images to link using relative paths, and making macros with Save As. The file can be opened and read or saved from text or pdf versions.    Text     PDF