One of the most exciting parts of genealogy is to be able to match faces in old photographs to the names in your family tree. The trick to making this happen is to find and restore the old photos. It is important to handle all of the material carefully so that you won’t damage them further.
The real trick to matching the faces to the names is finding the photographs. You can begin looking in old family albums, attics, hope chests and other places that may have photographs. A great place to start is by asking your relatives if they have them or who they went with. Generally after a death one child will take possession of all of the family photos for safe keeping, and simply finding that person can make your search much easier.
Once you find the photographs you will want to preserve them. You can do this by scanning the photographs and saving the files on your computer. If you are not a Photoshop expert or do not have a scanner you can hire someone to restore your photos for you. If you do it yourself you start by scanning the original image at a high resolution. This will give you a better quality phot to work with. If you are scanning them yourself, but having someone else do the touch ups, then the larger the file the better. They can adjust the file size down, but you most likely will not be able to email the files.
You will need to identify the people in the photos Generally the information is written on the back of the photo. However people often wrote along the edges of photographs, and this portion may have crumbled off due to age. You should sit down with your eldest family member and see how much information he or she can provide in regards with the photograph. Instead of writing on the photo, write the information on an index card, which describes the photo and names the people in the photo. You can store these next to each other in a photo album, and then transfer the information to your digital file, when you restore the prints.
The point of having the photos is to be able to display them. You may create a wall hanging or a family tree that focuses on the family. You may choose to do a photo album instead of a wall display, but once you have found the pictures you should share them.