One of the most enjoyable thing to do as a family is to share
family photos. and FamilySearch makes it so easy that one of my
nephews has had a blast uploading family photos to
FamilySearch. So today, I'm going to walk you through the
easy steps to upload your family photos to FamilySearch
plus give you some warnings about what you can and cannot
upload. as well as giving you so advice along the way. Sharing
family photos can be a really fun activity to do as a family.
and if you have a FamilySearch account, no matter your age. Yes,
get the young folks involved. You can share family photos on
FamilySearch. First, we need to talk about what kinds of
pictures you can upload to FamilySearch. Obviously, you
can share photos of people. Now, it can be a photo of a
group of people and it can be a photo of an individual person.
You can and should upload pictures of artifacts. If you
have rings and quilts and military uniforms, you name it.
If you have artifacts that help us understand the character of
your ancestor, our relatives, go ahead and share those as
well. Another thing you can do is show pictures of places
particularly if they have significant meaning to your
family. So, this is when I would actually show pictures of
the Zumstein family barn. The one picture from the past and
the most modern ones that we can know what our homeland look
like. You should share documents but don't share
documents that FamilySearch already has on its website. You
want to be sharing documents are in your home sources but
not if they are under copyright on a different platform. Be very
careful. That's what the sources are for. If you, when in doubt
use a source link. And we've talked about that in other
videos, if you're not sure be sure to check the link in the
description. But if you have funeral programs, marriage
programs, birth announcements, all of these home sources, you
can go ahead and upload those as well. And finally,
gravestones are awesome. So, if you have the permission to that
gravestone image, go ahead and share that to FamilySearch. If
it's over on Find Your Grave, and you didn't take the picture,
and the person who took the picture hasn't given you
permission to put it on Family Search, then just use the
linking system that Family Search has. Now, to upload the
your images to FamilySearch, there's a of ways you can do
it. First, let's make sure we know what kinds of images we
can upload. If it is a any of these file formats, you can
upload them to FamilySearch. There are some size limitations
and I'm going to put that in the show notes or at least a
link to the size limitations in case they ever change. You can
use one of two apps. The first app you can use is the one that
I have on my phone. And that is the FamilySearch Family Tree
app. And when you navigate into one of your relatives and you
click on Memories. If you'll notice down there in the right
hand side you can add a document, a story, record audio,
or add a picture. So you can go ahead and use the FamilySearch
Tree app in order to add photos and memories to individuals, in
this case my mother. The other app that FamilySearch has is
the FamilySearch Memories app that's completely dedicated to
capturing and preserving memories. It does the same
thing as the FamilySearch Tree app but just one focused on
memories. And you can go ahead and come to this view and
there's this big group plus button at the top. And you can
add pictures right there. And you can pull them in from your
phone. The other way is to navigate into one of your
ancestors profile and then click on the Memories. That just
kind of cut up right over there because it is zooming in and then
click on upload. The other way you can do it online, and this
one is fairly useful if you have your pictures in some other
platforms other than your computer. So I'm going to
invite you to come this way. If they're just on your
computer, use this way. If they could be on other site, then
come click on Memories. And you're going to go to Galleries.
And then you're going to click this button. When you click
that button then you'll be brought to this page. And then
you can drag and drop your images from your computer or
notice. You can also pull them in from Instagram, Facebook, or
Google Photos. Just make sure you have the right to use them.
But I have to emphasize not every picture is suitable for
FamilySearch. It is a family-friendly location that
has positive emotions that they're trying to present. Now,
one of the ones that people get from most frustrated with is
kissing pictures. So, if people are kissing, a couple is
kissing in the pictures or a parent and a child is kissing,
then, FamilySearch doesn't like kissing pictures. And if
they look like they're about to kiss that also falls into a
kissing category. And so they will be taken off. Be sure to
check out our show notes for the link to the FamilySearch
guidelines that tell you what pictures fall into
these categories. They want it to be appropriate, relevant,
heartwarming, copyright free, and non-commercial. So, I can't
go put stuff about Family History Fanatics until my
business is closed. And then people can see some of the
artifacts related to being in Family History Fanatics. And
then you're going to see this processing banner go across
your picture for about 30 seconds to about 5 minutes.
And what's happening is somebody is actually looking at
that picture to make sure it meets the guidelines that
FamilySearch has established. So that's why it can take 30
seconds to 5 minutes to review. While it's under review,
if you're really certain that it's going to pass muster, then
you can go ahead and come to the next view. Just double
click on that picture and you'll be brought to this form.
So, what can you do? Well, I highly recommend you add a
title. So, this could be man holding baby but that's not
really helpful. Instead, I want to add a title that's a
little more descriptive. So, Harry Long Holding Louise Long,
his adopted daughter. Really good. The next thing I can do
is I can double click on the faces in the images. That's why
I said click the image to tag. Oh! It's Louise. Notice they've
already figured out who she is. So click on her picture to tag.
And then you can move the little circle to her face. And
then once you've got her established, you can draw a
circle over the next face, and the next face, and next face. And
then you can use the side bar to help identify who those
people are. Now I've covered that in a previous video I'll
be sure to it and put a link to it in the show notes. The next
thing I want you to do is add some topic tags. So, this could
be a topic of a portrait. If you have a Civil War ancestor,
you can typing in Civil War. And there will be some other
prompts that FamilySearch has already pulled that other users
have used. If it is from a certain location, maybe Baden,
Germany, you can put that in. So, go ahead and explore
those tags and tag yours accordingly. Because this can
really help social history research in the future.
Something I'm going to talk about in a future video about
searching the image gallery on FamilySearch. So be sure to
look for that upcoming video. If you know about when that
picture was taken, go ahead and add that. Add the place as
specific as you can. In this location, you're going to have
the city or parish, county, state, and then country. And
then if you have other details about this picture, then go
ahead and add that put in the why of the picture. If you know
it is in a particular church, that's where you need to put
the church name. If it's in the specific cemetery, that's where
you put the information- in the description. Don't try to force
it into the place. So make sure you add lots and lots of
details. One, because your family photos can be if you have a
group photo of a military unit but you don't know everybody in
that unit. Every bit of detail you can add can help some other
researcher find the photos they are seeking of their
ancestors. They may know the unit but not have ever seen
a picture exist. And they won't find it based on the name of
their ancestor because you didn't know it. But if you have
all this details about their military unit, then they'll be
able to find it. You can do this for high school photos, for
organizations, reunions. If you have lots of these photos and
and you know what they're a part of, go ahead and upload
those to the memory section. Just make sure most of, I mean
everybody, is deceased. Living people pictures just gets to be
kind of difficult. Now FamilySearch is constantly inviting
living people to share their memories and create a location
for their highlights of the things that they're doing in
their life. So what do you do with the living photo and what
do you need to know about it? Well, first, you can add photos
of living people to your account. Now, this is from my
account and notice the big warning up at the top. So, it
says, living and confidential people are managed in a private
space. Only you will be able to see and modify this person.
However, anyone can potentially see the photos, documents, and
stories. So, what does that mean? That means FamilySearch
will privatize birth, marriage, and death information, and
residence information, and all of your notes that you add to a
profile for a living person. But with photos, if a deceased
person is in that photo and is tagged, well, then, your
pictures of yourself, who is living, can be made available
online for people to see. There are a couple settings that
should turn that off and I'll show you how to do that. To lock
down a particular photo what you need to do is first click
on the image. And then come to this view. But if you notice in
the right hand spot, you're going to see this picture is
available to the public. So this is available for the
public to find. How it's found, it's a little fuzzy. But let's
say it was a picture of me and my parents and I had uploaded it.
I tagged my parents in it as well as myself. Well now everybody's
going to be able to see me. And if I didn't want that to happen?
So what I need to do is turn that from public and click on
private. And then it'll say this is about to come private. It
will only be visible to myself. And then I also have the option
to and say, "yeah, I, I got it. Don't show me that message
again," there down at the bottom. But I can go ahead and make
that private. And notice it now has a lock on it. So even if I
tag deceased persons my photo, that photo is private and only
viewable to me. Don't put every single picture you have about
your ancestors on FamilySearch. It's not a dumping ground!
Instead, I'm going to invite you to create digital
photo books of your ancestors pictures. That way, everybody
can have a copy of the family photo album and share it that
way. Aand then, what you can do is over in the Notes Section.
You can tell people, "hey, more photos are available." And when
you click in, you can tell people, "I have more photos
available. If you want to see them, contact me." Now, all they
have to do is actually click on your name right there. See?
Click on my name right there. It will pop up my account
information and people can send me a message through the FamilySearch
platform. Or if I've made my Email available for people
to contact me off platform, you'll find an Email address
for the person who says that as well. So, don't make it a
dumping ground. Choose some of the best pictures and then, if
you have more, you can tell people where they can find
them. Now, another thing you can do and I highly recommend
is that you go and you share what you've added to family
search on social media. Let's face it, almost all of our
relatives are on social media these days, particularly the
younger generation. So, notice the number of places you
currently can share based on this recording. So, Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, and you can always use Email.
Now, there are some album features going on in FamilySearch
that are new to me and I'm exploring and I'm excited
to share with you. So, you can create albums for your
photos. So, let's say you have all the pictures that are your
Long relatives. The last famous Longs! So you can create an
album and then put all of the pictures in Longs over there.
You can put pictures in multiple albums, which is really
nice. But it's really great to go through and see your
pictures more organized. Because there's a couple other things
that you can do with that. First of all you can click share. And
just like you can share an individual photo to all of
those social media platforms, you can share an entire album
with your family and friends. And they can be brought to
view your photo album there. Now a couple other things that you
can do here. Let's say you want to reorder the pictures. Maybe
you want to have the newlyweds here. And you want to have all
of these different pictures in a different order. If you can
reorder the album. that is nice to be able to see, to view the
pictures in order. But it's also handy when you come in and
create a slideshow. Because when you play the slideshow, and I go
ahead and click fast forward. Then that order controls the
view of the slideshow. Now, let's say you have a picture in
the wrong album. I mean, it happens. So, I can click on
this image. It actually goes to the Geiszlers. I can drag and
drop it over there. So, it's going to show up right there in
the Geiszler album. However, let's go back to the gallery.
If I click on the Long album, it's still there. So, I'm going
to click on this upper right box. I'm going to click on
actions. And I'm going to remove from album. Here we go. And now
that has gone away. So some other things you can do while
you're in here. You can rotate it if you need to rotate the
image. If you want to download the image because, you know, it's
not on your computer anymore for whatever reason. You can
download it. Change it to a document. This is particularly
useful if say, over here, this is actually a document. So we could
change it to a document if here it's actually a photo. But if it
was marked as a document we could switch it back and forth.
So lots of different things that you can do here in the
photo album. So make sure that you take advantage of that.
That's just touching the tip of the iceberg of the fun things
that you can do when you start sharing your family photos and
your ancestor photos on FamilySearch. I have to tell you.
My father in law, he was so funny when he was passing through
from Missouri to Colorado recently. He had stopped by and he
said, "Devon, Devon, I'm on FamilySearch. I'm on FamilySearch."
I was like, "Okay, that's great!" And so he was looking at the
documents that were there on FamilySearch. And he loved
finding all of the the black sheep on the family tree, all of
the criminals. all of the less than upstanding individuals and
telling me all about it. But his favorite thing was looking at
the pictures. And his other favorite thing was seeing who
upload it and knew that it was one of his grandchildren. So be
sure that you're getting into FamilySearch and making those
memories. Something always fun to do around holidays so get
after it and have a lot of fun. If you want to learn how to use
FamilySearch better, be sure to check the playlist up above. And
if you're ready for something else, check out this video
selected just for you. Yeah, I know I'm filming a FamilySearch
video drinking water from an Ancestry bottle.