After talking to Marie, I realized that many of her tricks of the trade really boil down to a few common sense guidelines. By “common sense” I mean they seem totally obvious after someone with many years of professional training and experience has pointed them out to you.

But the point is that you don’t need to be a pro to make an amazing book in AncestryPress because, first, Marie and her colleagues are busy creating lovely backgrounds for you. Second, our product team has engineered the book-building tool with you, the average person with no design training, in mind. And third, Marie has provided helpful tips for combining all the different elements of your book into a beautiful, harmonious whole.

With that in mind, I’d like to tell you about some new features that will make it easy to amp up the “wow” factor in your AncestryPress projects.

Frames

I hope you’ve been taking lots of photos this summer — or scanning lots of old ones — because as soon as you’ve finished reading this blog, you’re going to want to experiment with our new frames, masks and corners. Go to the new Frames tab on the left-hand side of AncestryPress. You’ll see three separate folders for frames, masks and photo corners.

Let’s start with frames. Since these frames look like embellishments, your first instinct will be to grab a frame, drag it over to the page and place it on top of a photo. But hold on a second. These are smart frames. To apply a frame to a photo, just select the photo…

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…and then click on the frame.

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The frame will magically appear on the page, perfectly centered over the photo. The frame automatically resizes itself to fit the photo. However, if the photo has a different aspect ratio than the frame, but photo gets automatically cropped to fit the frame’s aspect ratio.

What if your photo magically cropped itself and something important got lost? No worries. You can adjust the crop by dragging the photo within the frame. Just select the photo and then click the pointy icon with four arrows in the image editing toolbar (it’s just to the right of the Zoom icon).

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Move the photo…

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…and then click somewhere else on the page (anywhere outside the frame) to apply the change.

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Note that you cannot rotate these magical frames. So if you apply a horizontal frame to a vertical image — as I’ve done in the example above — part of your photos will get cropped off. If you want to rotate a frame, you can use a non-magical frame from the Other Content tab (click the Embellishments folder and then the Frames sub-folder).

Masks

Think of a mask as a cookie cutter that you use to change the shape of your photo. You apply a mask in exactly the same way you apply a frame. The only difference is that no frame appears on the page.

Again, select the photo…

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…and then click on the mask you want to use.

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If the crop doesn’t turn out quite right, drag the image within the frame…

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…and then click anywhere outside the frame to apply the change.

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This page shows some of the different effects you can get by using masks. Notice that the photo in the bottom left corner is a rectangle with rounded corners and the photo across the top of the page has fuzzy borders. In my opinion, the fuzzy borders work particularly well with sepia and black-and-white photos. In the example below, I’ve made the top photo 30% transparent so that it blends into the background, which makes the other two photos stand out a little more.

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Photo Corners

The photo corners work in a similar manner, except that there’s no automatic cropping or resizing. Select a photo and then click on the photo corner you want to use. It will be magically applied to all four corners of your photo.

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In case you’d rather apply your photo corners in a tedious, manual fashion, you’ll find an identical set of corners in the “Borders & Corners” folder under Embellishments (in the Other Content tab). I can’t imagine why you’d want to use the non-magical corners, since they require a lot of copying, rotating and nudging, but there they are. Just in case.

Borders

I can think of some reasons why you’d want to use the non-magical borders in the Borders & Corners folder. Sometimes you want to put a decorative border around an image without changing the shape or aspect ratio of the image. In that case, you can adjust the size and shape of the border to fit the image.

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Pick the border you want, drag it over to the page and resize it to fit vertical sides of the image. You’ll need two copies, since there are two vertical sides. Then repeat the process for the horizontal sides. In the example above, I followed Marie’s advice to put a frame around a census record. It does look better without the black edges, no?

Of course, you can automatically apply a solid-colored border without changing the shape of the image by using the drop-down menu and color picker in the image editing toolbar.

Adding Pages

On a separate topic, we’ve recently made it easier to add pages to your book. To insert a new page, right-click on a page thumbnail at the bottom of the AncestryPress interface. You’ll see a little fly-out menu that lets you add new pages from templates, add a single blank page, or delete or copy the page you’re currently on.

If you select “Add pages,” you’ll see a screen that looks like this:

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Note that you can only add one family history template at a time. That’s because most of these templates are based on an online family tree and you have to select a tree and starting person for each template. But for photo book themes, you can add as many pages as you want. Use the Control key to select multiple pages.

Let’s say you want to add record pages for all the records linked to a particular person. Click the Record Page thumbnail and then click the “Add Page(s)” button. Select the tree and the person. You’ll see a list of all the records that are linked to that person.

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Check all the records you want to include in your book and then click “Add Page(s).” In this example there’s only one record available, but if there were 10 or 20 records I could include all of them — or just pick the ones that contain the most relevant information.

Facing Tree Pages

Finally, if you feel that a single page doesn’t give you enough space for a family tree, you can now build a spread with two family trees — a left-facing tree and a right-facing tree.

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This approach essentially lets you create a combination tree with a starting couple and four generations of ancestors, whereas a single-page combination tree lets you include a starting couple, two generations of ancestors and one generation of descendants.

We’ve got lots of good stuff coming out in the next few weeks — including several new themes and some new output options — so please check back often and tell us what you think.

SC: If I’m creating an AncestryPress book, how can I use embellishments to enhance a page without overwhelming it or detracting from the family history information?

MM: I would say the first thing you want to do is make sure your embellishments match. If you already have a lot of information on your page, you might want to use fewer embellishments. But don’t be afraid to manipulate them so that they enhance the elements you already have on the page and bring them to life. If you have a lot of photos on the page and you don’t have room for a lot of embellishments, you can use embellishments to accent the photo corners. They won’t detract from the photo if they all match and they go with the background.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try combining two or three embellishments. You can layer the elements on a page and place an embellishment behind something so that only part of the embellishment is showing. You can use an embellishment by itself on one page and combine it with something else on the opposite page, so that each page has a unique look, and yet the two pages match.

SC: Should I have a consistent look and feel for each page type? For example, should all the family tree pages look the same?

MM: When I did a family history book, I wanted some consistency between all the timeline pages and all the family tree pages. The timeline pages didn’t look exactly alike, but they all had the same background, so I knew it was a timeline page. And then to differentiate between a woman and a man, I would put the same feminine tag on all the women’s pages and a more masculine tag on all the men’s pages.

SC: So you’re using the embellishments and backgrounds not just to make the page more visually interesting, but also to help orient the reader.

MM: Right. You don’t have to do it that way, obviously, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little bit of consistency when you have so much going on and so much information.

SC: What should I keep in mind when I’m selecting a background for a particular chart or image?

MM: You have to think about what’s on your page. If there are a lot of photos, are they all in color or are they black-and-white? Think about the other information on the page as well. We have several country backgrounds that are perfect if you’re highlighting an ancestor from a specific country. But you want to be careful that you don’t make your images so large that you’re filling up the whole page and you can’t even see the background.

SC: So if you have a large image you should use a more subtle background that doesn’t have a lot going on.

MM: Right, or maybe a background that has repeating patterns. And if you have a lot of text on your page, you don’t want to use a busy background. If you have a page that’s just photos, or just a photo and a caption, that’s where you could use a background that has a little more movement. But if you have a ton of information, it’s going to be better if you have a simple background so that your information really shines and it’s not competing with the background.

When you’re doing a book, it’s also good to think about what you’re going to have on both pages of a spread. Pick backgrounds that go together. If you have a really busy background on one page, I would go with a more subtle background on the opposite page. The page with the simple background functions like white space—it gives the reader’s eye a little bit of a break. The simple background is probably highlighting the information better, but the more elaborate background is probably a more of a “hero.” Because they work together as a spread, you’re going to have a balancing effect.

SC: So people really should be thinking more in terms of spreads rather than individual pages?

MM: I think both, because you want to concentrate on one page and make sure you get it just right. When you get one page done, you can play off that design in your next page. So in that regard, yes, you’re going to think about the spread. But you don’t want to overwhelm yourself. It can be overwhelming for some people to think about two pages at one time.

SC: Is it OK to mix color photos and black-and-white photos?

MM: There are going to be cases where you want to mix photos. My preference would be to stick with all color or all black-and-white on a particular page. It harmonizes a lot better. But that’s not going to work every single time.

SC: Most people, as they get further back in their family history, have fewer and fewer photos. How can I add visual interest to timelines and family group sheets if I don’t have any photos of those ancestors?

MM: You try to find maps or embellishments that are consistent with the rest of your book. And then really embellish the one photo you do have, or highlight the little bit of information you do have. Try to find generic images, like a historical postcard or maybe a document from the country the person was born in.

SC: Do you have any advice about formatting text for family history charts and photo captions?

MM: If you want to spice it up a little bit, don’t be afraid to play with color. You can do a lot with color, but you don’t want to go overboard. For instance, on a family tree, you could use dark green text for the men and pink text for the women. Use a complementary pink that matches some of the embellishments throughout the rest of the book, so it doesn’t look like you’re just picking random colors. Or you could decide that all the men on one side of the family are going to be in green and all the men on the other side are going to be in blue, so that you have a pattern.

SC: So there again you’re orienting the reader.

MM: Right. But it also adds a little bit of color to the page, because most of your pictures are going to be in black-and-white if you’re doing a family tree. In that case it’s nice to add some color. If you have color photos you probably would want to stick with black text.

SC: Would you recommend that people pick one font and stick with it throughout the whole book?

MM: I definitely would. I know it’s exciting to use different fonts because you think it’s going to add more variety to your book. But I would use one font for your headlines and titles, and then I would pick a nice, very readable font for your body copy so that it’s consistent and it looks nice and people can read it. Or you can use the same font for everything and just do your headlines and titles in capital letters, so that it still has the same look and feel. Capital letters are a great way to differentiate between a headline and body copy. Italics work great for sub-lines, because you’re using the same text but it’s a little bit different.

SC: How can I make a census record or other historical record interesting and meaningful to someone who isn’t familiar with historical records?

MM: The first thing you want people to see is the name of your ancestor. So you want to include the whole record, but you can also duplicate it and then crop and resize the copy and place it on top of the original record. You want to expand the row where the person’s name is so that people can see it and read it. You can also play with the color options or drag over a highlighter to call attention to the person’s name.

I would put a frame around the record, because most of the time the edges are uneven. Crop the record as close as you can and put a frame on it so you don’t have those uneven black edges. A lot of the images need to be rotated too, because they were scanned a little bit crooked. So don’t be afraid to crop and rotate. You really can make the image look better and it isn’t that hard to do.

My feeling is that if you spend your whole life developing a profound knowledge of a particular field, you can’t be too annoyed if your friends and relatives take advantage of your expertise. Whereas if you spend many years getting a “well-rounded” education and don’t really commit to a career path until you’re well into your 30s, you’re pretty much safe from ever having to give anyone advice about anything.

Since I fall into the well-rounded category, it behooves me to tap the expertise of others so that I can provide you with useful information. Fortunately, I’m surrounded by experts on many subjects, including family history, publishing, photography, graphic design and software engineering. My team here at AncestryPress also includes a former Naval officer, a certified ski instructor and a guy who builds 7-foot model rockets in his spare time. So as you can see, you’re in good hands.

For our first issue of the AncestryPress Monthly, I interviewed Maureen Taylor, who is both a professional photographer and an avid family historian. After talking to Maureen and reading her new book, I put some of her advice to the test. I was surprised at how easy it was to improve my photography skills by following a few simple tips. And the timing was perfect, because AncestryPress has several new features that let you do some really cool stuff with your photos.

Create your own backgrounds

Here at AncestryPress, we often get messages like this: “I love your page backgrounds, but I wish there were more options. When are you going to add a background having to do with X?”

I’m happy to report that as of this month, your background selection is limited only by your imagination. Any image that you import into AncestryPress — a photo, document, old map or any other image you’ve saved in a JPG or PNG format — can be a page background.

To add a background, go to the Backgrounds tab and click the “Upload Background” button. You can grab any image file on your computer and turn it into an AncestryPress background. All the backgrounds you’ve uploaded will appear in the “My Backgrounds” folder.

In addition, you can convert any image in the My Photos tab or the Ancestry Records tab into a background. Just right-click on the image and then click “Use as background.” The image will be applied as a background to the current page. It will also be saved in the “My Backgrounds” folder. You can also right-click on an image that’s already been applied to a page to convert it to a background.

What I love about this feature is that it lets you fill up a whole page with one photo. You can let the photo stand on its own — which is a great way to showcase a particularly interesting or dramatic shot — or layer other images on top of it.

Here are a couple of examples…

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I like the effect of using a close-up of a face as a stand-alone page. The thoughtful child in that last example belongs to one of our engineers, Greg Burgess, who happens to be a pretty good photographer. The photo of the German storybook village is from my brother-in-law, who is also a software engineer and photography buff (I’m seeing a pattern here).

The “Use as background” feature also works really well with scenic shots. Try using a scenic photo as a background and then placing a detail shot on top of it.

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Note that when you convert an image into a background, the image is automatically cropped, resized and centered to fit the background area. Images that have a portrait rather than landscape orientation might not work very well. And depending on their resolution, smaller images may not look so good when they’re scaled up to fill the whole page.

Take your photos to the edge

Here’s another trick for showcasing your photos: drag a photo to the vertical or horizontal edges of the page, leaving some white space along one or two sides of the page. You can keep the white space white or add a solid background in a color that complements your photo.

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To get this “full bleed” effect, drag the photo OFF the page, meaning that the edges of the photo will get cut off. In the screen shot below, the green outline shows the dimensions of the photo. This technique doesn’t work for every image — obviously you wouldn’t want to chop off someone’s head — but it works well in this case because the pieces I’m cropping out are mostly grass.

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In the example below, I layered a vertical full-bleed photo over a textured background (”Green Cursive”) and then added a detail shot.

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Check out this two-page spread by Greg Burgess, featuring another of his photogenic boys:

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I like how Greg made the photo from the left page overlap onto the right page. What he actually did was make a copy of the photo and then crop both versions to make them look like one continuous shot. This is a bit tricky to do, but it’s a fun idea to play around with — especially if you’re a “power user” who likes to get creative.

Adjust the transparency

We just launched another new feature that opens up all kinds of design possibilities: a transparency meter. Just click on an image and then click the icon with the little blue circle in the image editing toolbar. By default the meter is always set to 0, meaning that the image is fully opaque. Scroll down or move the slide bar to change the transparency.

If you’ve applied an image to a page with the “Use as background” feature, you can adjust the transparency and/or flip the image by clicking the “Edit Background” icon at the top of the screen. Alternatively, you can right-click on a page and then choose “Edit background” from the fly-out menu.

You can create some interesting pages by using a transparent image as a background and placing a smaller, 100% opaque image on top of it. In the example below, the German village is 25% transparent (75% opaque).

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If you place a transparent image over a colored background, the color will of course show through, which lets you create some interesting effects. In the example below, the Alaskan wilderness is 50% transparent and the background is pale blue (”Light Blue Distressed”).

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In the final three examples below, I’ve left a border so you can see the background color at the top and bottom of the page. The German wildflowers are 50% transparent, the flamingos are 35% transparent and the moose is 20% transparent.

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I don’t typically include pictures of myself in this blog, but it isn’t every day that you get to pose with a moose.

I hope the sample pages I’ve presented here have sparked some ideas for showing off your own photos through your AncestryPress projects. Have fun experimenting with these three new features — and as always, let me know what you think!

“I’ve created a book in the 8.5×11 inch format, but now I want the larger size. Can I upgrade to the 11×14 inch format?”

Our two current book formats have the same aspect ratio, so it seems like it should be easy to convert from one size to another. Unfortunately, scaling up presents some technical problems that we haven’t solved yet. The area of the 11×14 inch page is about 50% bigger. Depending on the resolution of your images, some images that look fine on the 8.5×11 inch page might look grainy if you enlarged them by 50%.

The other issue is the text. If you automatically changed all the text from, say, a 10-point font to a 14-point font, some of the lines would wrap differently, and you’d have to go through each page and make a lot of adjustments — especially to the family trees and family group sheets.

At a minimum, we’d like to allow you to convert the final, print-ready file of an 11×14 inch book into an 8.5×11 inch print-ready file. This means you’ll be able to order a printed copy in the smaller size but you won’t be able to edit the smaller version. I’ll let you know as soon as we have the downsize feature available.

I suspect many of you will want to order an 11×14 inch book for yourself — you’re the one who’s done the work, after all — and several 8.5×11 copies as gifts for various family members. If you think you might want to order the same book in two sizes, or if you aren’t sure which size you want to order, you’re safer creating your book in the larger size.

“Now that you’ve raised the page limit, I want to combine two books into one longer book. Is there an easy way to do this?”

Yes! You can’t actually merge two books (yet), but you can copy pages from one book into another book. And you don’t have to do it one page at a time, either. Read on…

Better page management

Earlier this week, we launched a new page management feature. You can now copy multiple pages within the same book or from one book to another. Reordering pages, which used to be a tedious process, is much easier, and so is deleting pages.

To access this feature, just click the “Manage Pages” icon at the top of AncestryPress. You’ll see a screen that looks like this:


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To select multiple pages, just hold down the “Control” key. You can print, copy or delete the selected pages by clicking the appropriate button on the right side of the screen. Reorder the pages by dragging them to a new spot. To keep facing pages together, click “Arrange & Manage Double Page Spreads.”


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To copy pages to another project, select the pages and then click “Copy to a Project.” A little box will pop up with a list of all your projects. Select the project you want and then click “Continue.”


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More desktop printing options

Many customers have told use they’d like to print more than one page at a time on their home printer. Several people have asked for a “Print All” button that lets you print the whole book. The problem with this idea is that most people have lots of images in their book, and sending all those files to print at once would cause a system meltdown for most computers and/or printers.

Our product engineers have settled on a compromise: to let you print up to five pages at a time. When you click “Print,” you’ll see a Print Manager box that lets you choose which page(s) you want to print.

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If you click the “All” button or enter a range of more than five pages, the pages you select will print in five-page batches. Based on customer feedback, we may adjust that limit up or down. The optimal batch size really depends on how much power and memory you have, so if printing five pages is making your computer crash, try printing only two or three pages.

Now take a look at the “Print Quality” section of the Print Manager box. When you print pages at home, you can now choose between two print methods: raster and vector. I’m not an engineer, so please don’t ask me what those words mean, but I can tell you how they affect you.

When you print using the raster method (“Normal quality”), your images are converted into a series of pixels. This is important because pixels do a good job of capturing subtle effects like drop shadows, variations in opacity, etc.

When you print using the vector method (“Higher quality”), your images are converted into a series of mathematically generated outlines. For some mysterious (to me) reason, this method produces sharper text and images. But for some equally mysterious reason having to do with Flash technology, subtle design effects like drop shadows don’t come out very well. Because of this limitation, embellishments, drop shadows and semi-transparent images will not show up if you print using the vector method.

In the screen shot above, I selected “Normal quality.” All of the design elements on the page appear in the print preview box. When I change my selection to “Higher quality,” the drop shadow around the photo and the embellishment around the caption disappear from the preview box.

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The best print method for you depends on the type of content you have in your book and what you are trying to accomplish.

If you are printing proof pages:

• Choose “Normal quality” if you just want to check the overall design before ordering a professionally printed book.
• Choose “Higher quality” if you want to carefully check the text and images before ordering a professionally printed book.

If you are printing pages that you want to keep in a binder or scrapbook:

• Choose “Normal quality” if you have a lot of embellishments and other design elements.
• Choose “Higher quality” if you have a lot of text and few design elements.

Please note that when you order a professionally printed copy of your book, the design elements, text and images will all come out sharp and clear (unless your images were scanned at a low resolution to begin with). Our printer uses a different, offline printing process, so there’s no tradeoff between the design elements and the text and images.

Our goal is to provide you with output options that work for you. Most AncestryPress users are also Ancestry.com subscribers, and you’ve made a significant investment in your family history research. Of course we’d love to have you order a professionally printed book from us, but if you prefer to print at home, we want you to be happy with the results.

By the way, several customers have told us that having us print their book is actually cheaper than buying high-quality paper and ink cartridges, so be sure to factor in all of those costs when deciding how to print your book. If you choose to print your book at home, you might want to forgo embellishments and drop shadows when you’re making your book so that you can pick the high-quality print option.

Tip: If you’re printing proof pages and you mostly want to review the text and images, check the “Print without background” box. It’ll save save ink and speed up the printing process.

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Finally, on a separate topic, this weekend would be the perfect time to put together a quick gift for Dad using our Father’s Day photo book template. I may be biased because I work here, but I think the guy who designed the template did a terrific job. The order deadlines for delivery before Father’s Day are June 2 for standard shipping and June 4 for expedited shipping.

Alex: “Where are you going?”

Me: “To the store.”

Alex: “Why?”

Me: “Because I want to buy some shoes.”

Alex: “Why?”

Me: “Because I’m a girl, and girls like shoes.”

Alex: “But you don’t need any shoes.”

Which, from an objective point of view, was certainly true. I had a whole closet full of shoes. I needed another pair of shoes like Alex needed another Buzz Lightyear action figure. But I didn’t feel like getting into a philosophical conversation about needs vs. wants with a preschool kid, especially if it meant forgoing a new pair of sandals in order to set an example of self-restraint.

With that in mind, I’d like to tell you about a few things we’re doing here at AncestryPress to address both your needs and your wants. I’d also love to hear more about what you need in a self-publishing application (e.g., “I really need to print a book with more than 100 pages”) and what you want (e.g., “It would be cool if I could create a custom cover with one of my family photos on the front”).

Several customers have written in to say that they love the book building tool, but they can’t do justice to their family history in 100 pages or less. If you share that sentiment, you’ll be glad to know that we’ve just raised the limit to 250 pages. The binding process for longer books is slightly different — books over 100 pages are not hand stitched — but you can still expect a very high-quality product.

Several weeks ago we also added a large-format book (14″x11″) to the product line. The new size is obviously great for near-sighted people who prefer bigger fonts. It also provides the look and heft of an heirloom-quality coffee table book.

If you’d like to make a large-format book, be sure to select the larger size when you start your project. At the moment, it isn’t possible to convert a book from the smaller size to the larger size or vice-versa, so please make a careful decision about which size you want when you start your project.

You don’t have to choose the type of cover you want until you place your order, so it’s OK to change your mind about that halfway through the project. You can even order three copies of the same book with three different covers. And, just to be clear, you don’t have to do anything special to create a book that’s longer than 100 pages. The only decision you really need to think through at the beginning of the process is the size of your book.

Finally, a quick word about the various cover options. Our basic book cover is “leatherette,” which is a paper-based material that simulates the texture of leather. People in the printing industry refer to it as nuba. The leatherette book was our first product offering because in our early market research, most customers told us that what they really needed was an affordable way to publish their family history research.

Last month we added a bonded leather cover that is available in black and burgundy. Bonded leather is real leather that’s been processed so that it can go through an imprint machine, which allows us to stamp a gold foil title on the front.

Our leatherette cover comes in charcoal gray. It actually has a very nice look and feel. The biggest downside is that it doesn’t wear very well if stuff gets spilled on it, whereas you can wipe peanut butter off the bonded leather and it still looks as good as new.

I’d love to hear what you think of our current product offerings. Are we meeting your needs when it comes to book size, length, format and cover choices? Are you happy with the manufacturing quality of the printed output? Are there other products that you don’t really need — like the strappy yellow sandals I bought on Saturday — that you’d like to create just for fun?

Me: “But I came all the way from New York to visit you. We did puzzles together and played tennis and Monopoly. Isn’t that better than a present?”

Liesel: “No.”

Me: “Are you saying you would rather have me put a present in the mail and not come visit?”

Liesel: “Yes.”

I’m happy to report that Liesel has matured to the point where she no longer demands a present from every grownup who walks in the door. But you can’t really blame a kid for pointing out the simple truth that walking through the door with a present in your hands is better than showing up empty handed.

Sure, your mom will be happy to see you or hear your voice on the phone when you wish her a happy Mother’s Day. She’ll say she’s just glad you came or called. But imagine how she’ll react when you give her a totally unique gift that you created yourself.

The deadline for ordering a gift from AncestryPress in time for Mother’s Day is April 27, so you still have plenty of time to make a photo book or family history book for your mom. But if you want to do something that takes less time and has just as much impact (by which I mean it’s just as likely to make your mom cry when she sees it), you might want to check out our new collage posters.

Here are a couple of examples that I threw together in just a few minutes. I can’t take credit for the photos or the cute kids, although they are related to me.

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AncestryPress collage posters are currently available in two sizes (20″x16″ or 24″x18″) and four layouts (with 4, 6, 9 or 20 images). You can also make a poster from scratch if you’d prefer to start with a blank canvas. Choose from 15 professionally designed backgrounds or use a solid color background and dress it up with a few embellishments. Some of the backgrounds have a family history theme, while others work well for showcasing photos of kids blowing out birthday candles or frolicking on the beach or what have you.

Here are some examples of what you can do with vacation photos. The camera I used to take many of these pictures was ruined in a canoeing incident (tip: leave your camera in the car during water-based activities), but I’m glad to say that the memory card survived.

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As you can see, you really don’t need a lot of embellishments. Personally, I prefer a “less-is-more” aesthetic, but it’s pretty easy to do something more elaborate. As always, my motto is “Do what works for you.” Use an existing poster layout or modify one to create your own template. Insert some text…or not. Add embellishments or keep the look clean and simple. Just by picking the right photos you can design a great looking poster in 10 or 15 minutes.

All of the posters come in standard frame sizes, so you can easily pick up a frame at your favorite mass merchandiser. If you want to make your gift look a little fancier, get a frame in a larger size and add some matting. But honestly, we have some sample posters here at the office in $25 frames that somebody got at Target, and they look terrific. You’d never guess that the poster and the frame together cost less than $50.

By the way, collage posters are also a great way to decorate a kid’s room. I’m working on a poster for my nephew with photos of him in his favorite superhero costumes. I’ve learned not to take my Favorite Aunt status for granted.

P.S. I tracked down the NPR piece that I mentioned in last week’s blog. It features a poem called “The Lanyard” by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. After you’ve read it you’ll never think about your mother in the same way again.

I tried to remember the last homemade present I gave to my mom. I think it was a pencil holder I made by wrapping yarn around an orange juice can sometime during the Ford or Carter administration.

If it’s been a few decades since you created a gift for your mom with your own hands, now would be a great time to give it another try — even if you weren’t an artistic prodigy in elementary school. The new Mother’s Day photo book template in AncestryPress makes it super easy to create a personalized gift in a couple of hours. If you have a little more time, you can take it a step further and create a family history book dedicated to your mom.

I’m going to offer a few tips for creating a photo book in AncestryPress, but keep in mind that you can use all of the backgrounds, page layouts and quotes from the Mother’s Day photo book template in a family history book as well. Do whatever works for you.

1. Pick the page layouts you like. When you select “Photo Books” from the Choose your product page and then select “Mother’s Day Photo Book,” you’ll automatically get 24 pages with pre-designed layouts. Some of the layouts include image boxes only, while others have a combination of text and image boxes. A few have text boxes only.

If you want to include some narrative text, great. You can ask members of the family to write down their favorite story about Mom/Grandma. You can interview your mom and write a brief history of her life. Or you can just put some of your own memories down on paper. If you’re not sure how to start, try finishing the sentences from D.G. Fulford on the AncestryPress home page (there are more where those came from in D.G.’s new book, Things I’d Love You to Know).

If you’d rather tell the stories through images, that’s fine too. Life is short, and there’s no reason to spend all day staring at a blank page if writing just isn’t your thing. Delete the text box pages and add some more pages with image box layouts.

To add a page, go to the “Pages” icon at the top of AncestryPress, click “New Page,” select “Photo and Text Layouts” and then click “Next.” You’ll see a menu of more than 25 different layouts. An even quicker way to add a page is to make a copy of an existing page. Just go to the “Pages” icon and click “Copy page.”

The layouts provided are meant to help you get started. If they work for you as they are, terrific. But it’s really easy to resize the image boxes and move them around, so feel free to modify the layouts and create your own page templates. And you can always add a blank page if you want to design a page from scratch.

2. Add photos to your book. To upload photos from your computer to AncestryPress, click the My Photos tab on the left side of AncestryPress and then click the “Upload Images” button. You can upload multiple images by holding down the Control key. All the photos you’ve uploaded will appear in the My Photos content tray. You can also import photos from Picasa or SmugMug. If you have an online family tree on Ancestry.com, you can access the images attached to your tree by clicking the Ancestry Records tab.

To place a photo on a page, drag it over and drop it into an image box by releasing it when the cursor is over the box. If the image box is empty, the photo will fill up the box.

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When you place a photo in an image box, the size of the photo adjusts automatically. If the photo has the same aspect ratio as the box, the entire photo will fit inside the box. If the aspect ratio is different, part of the photo will get cut off. You don’t need to crop the photo before you place it on the page. Just drag it over, release the cursor, move the photo so that it’s positioned how you want it, and then click somewhere else on the page. The parts of the photo that were hanging over the edge of the box will get cropped off.

If you drag over a new photo and there’s already an image in the box, a blue outline will appear around the box. You’ll see a dialogue box asking whether you want to replace the image highlighted in blue.

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If you click “No,” the new photo will be placed on top of the existing image. You can then resize it and move it wherever you want.

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You can choose whether you want to see the dialogue box every time you replace an existing image. Once you’re comfortable with how this feature works, click the box that says, “Always apply during this session.” You won’t see the dialogue box again until the next time you open AncestryPress.

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Anytime you want to add a photo to a page without replacing an image, just make sure you release it in a spot where the cursor isn’t over an existing image.

3. Add captions and stories. You can add text by either typing it in or pasting it from another document. If the page layout you’re using has a text box, just drop in the text. If there’s no text box, click the “Abc” icon at the top of the page to create one. You can position the text box anywhere you want on the page. If you don’t like the default formatting, you can use the text editing tools to change the font type, size, color and style.

Here’s an example of how a page with text might look:

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4. Change the backgrounds. Every page layout comes with a default background, but you can easily change the background of any page. To browse the available options, click the Backgrounds tab on the left side of AncestryPress.

5. Add quotes and embellishments. Some of the pages in the Mother’s Day photo book template have quotes from famous authors like Robert Browning and Mark Twain. To see all of the Mother’s Day quotes, click the Other Content tab and then go to the Mother’s Day folder. A quote is just like any other embellishment. You can drag it over and place it anywhere you want.

Here’s an example of what you can do in just a few seconds with a quote and a couple of photos:

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If you like the layout of a particular page but the quote doesn’t quite fit the photos you’ve picked, use a different quote — or don’t use one at all. Again, do whatever works for you. And, as always, let me know what you think!

Sharing: Phase I

To share a project, go to the My Projects tab and click the “Share” link under the project you want to share. Enter the e-mail address of the person you want to invite to view your project. If there are multiple addresses, just enter a semi-colon after each address. Enter a subject line and a brief message explaining what action you’d like the recipient(s) to take: provide feedback, send you missing photos or other information, purchase a printed copy of your project, etc.

Under the field for the e-mail addresses, you’ll see a box labeled, “Allow invitees to copy my project.” If this box is checked, the people you invite will be able to create an electronic copy of your project in their own AncestryPress account. This means they will be able to modify their own copy of the project, but they will not be able to make any changes to the original version (the one that lives in your AncestryPress account).

Once you’ve shared your project with someone, that person can forward it to others, so it’s important to only share your project with people you trust. If you’re concerned about the privacy of data in your project, be sure to mention in your message that you don’t want the recipients to forward your project to anyone else. While sharing, please keep in mind the copyright restrictions noted in the image upload agreement.

Later this year, we will launch additional sharing and collaboration features that will allow several family members to work together on a single project. We’ll also launch an online gallery where you can share your project with the community. As a project owner, you’ll always be able to control the level of access you provide to specific individuals and to the community.

Backgrounds

In the content directory on the left-hand side of AncestryPress, you’ll notice that we’ve added a new content tray labeled Backgrounds. When you click on the Backgrounds tab, the tray will expand so that you can scroll down to see thumbnails of the available backgrounds. Browse the entire collection or click on one of the folders to see a particular type of backgrounds (floral, military, etc.).

Hold your cursor over a thumbnail to see how that particular background looks on the page. If you like how it looks, click “Apply to page” from the fly-out menu — or, if you want to make it the default background for the entire book, click “Apply to all.” The background you see when you hover over the thumbnail is a low-resolution version; once you’ve applied the background to a page you’ll see a high-resolution version.

You’ll notice that we’ve recently added more than a dozen new backgrounds, including country backgrounds for Norway, Sweden, Scotland, England and Canada, an Old Ships background for showcasing immigration records and a collection of feminine-looking backgrounds that are perfect for a Mother’s Day photo book or family history book.

Norway

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England

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Old Ships

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Speaking of Mother’s Day, be sure to check back next week for new products, features, templates and content ideas that will help you create the best gift your mom has ever received. I’ve made a goal to finally finish the book I started for my mom before Christmas…before I got sidetracked by running a marathon, going to China on vacation and buying a house. I think I’ve finally run out of excuses!

You’ll want to get started early — the standard shipping deadline for Mother’s Day delivery is April 27 — but not too early, because our special Mother’s Day templates won’t be available until March 26. I’m telling you now so that you can set aside an evening or weekend to create a fitting tribute to your mom, grandma and/or mother-in-law.

In the meantime, enjoy the new backgrounds and please let me know what you think of our new sharing feature!

Picasa and SmugMug

AncestryPress is now integrated with Picasa and SmugMug, two leading photo sharing web sites. So if you’ve uploaded your vacation photos to Picasa, for example, you can import your Picasa web album into AncestryPress and use those photos in your AncestryPress project.

Within AncestryPress you’ll see four main content trays on the left side of the screen: My Photos, Online Photos, Other Content and Ancestry Records. If you click My Photos, you’ll see all the images you’ve uploaded directly to AncestryPress. If you click Online Photos, you’ll see any images you’ve imported from Picasa or SmugMug.

To import your photos, go to the Online Photos section and click the “Import Photos” button. A dialogue box will appear. Select the correct photo site (Picasa or SmugMug) and then enter your user name and password for that site. Hit the “OK” button to start the import process.

AncestryPress will import all of your Picasa or SmugMug albums at the same time. In the Online Photos directory, each album will appear in a separate folder. If you are a Picasa user, please note that AncestryPress will only import photos from your web albums; it cannot access any photos that you’ve saved in Picasa’s desktop program.

Let’s say you’ve imported all the photos in your SmugMug albums into AncestryPres, and then a couple of weeks later you upload a new batch of photos to SmugMug. To import those new photos into AncestryPress, just go to the Online Photos section and hit the “Refresh” button.

Image Boxes

Our new image box feature lets you create your own page layout templates. Let’s say you get a page laid out just how you like it, but then you come back later and decide to swap out a photo. Instead of cropping, resizing and rotating the new image so that it sits in exactly the same spot as the old image, you can just drag the new image over and place it on top of the old one. The new image will automatically adjust to fill up the “box” — the space defined by the old image.

Here’s a really simple example. Let’s say I like the layout of this particular page, but I want to use a different photo.

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This photo has a portrait aspect ratio (it’s taller than it is wide), but the new photo is landscape (wider than it is tall). Instead of cropping and resizing the new photo, I just place it on top of the old one. Note that when you drag an image over an image box, a blue outline appears.

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Anything outside the box automatically gets cut off. In this case, I don’t want to cut off my dad’s elbow, so I move the new photo to right a bit.

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When I’m satisfied with how the image inside the box looks, I just click somewhere else on the page (anywhere besides where the images are) and the photo replacement is complete.

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Of course, you can always delete the old photo and start fresh with a new photo, using the image editing tools to create the look you want. But if you like the layout of a page and you just want to swap out a photo without too much fuss — or if you’ve created a photo collage page that you want to use as a template for other pages — image boxes are a handy tool that will save you some time.

You don’t need to do anything to turn this feature on: any photo that you place on a page will automatically function as an image box when you put a new photo on top of it. If you replace a photo by accident, no worries — just hit the Undo icon at the top of the screen to get the original photo back.

We’ve also added image boxes to the templates for family trees, family group sheets and timelines. When you create a page using one of these templates, you’ll see gray boxes with the words, “PLACE IMAGE HERE.”

Here are a couple of examples:

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If you have a photo of one of the people on the page, just place it on top of the image box and it will automatically adjust to the correct dimensions. If you don’t have a photo for a particular person, you can just ignore the image box — it will not show up when you print the page.

Keep in mind that you can still place photos on a page using the same free-form process that you’re used to in AncestryPress. The new image box feature does not replace or change any of the image editing tools — it’s just another option that’s useful in some situations. I’d love to hear your feedback on this particular feature. Do you find it helpful? Is it easy to use? (Note: please read my response to Joycelyn’s comment below for more detail about how the image boxes work.)

You can also use text boxes as templates in a very similar way. When you drop a new block of text into an existing text box, the new text automatically takes on the formatting and position of the original text box.

Image Size Meter

Another nifty feature that makes it easy to work with images is our new size meter. As you scale an image up or down, the meter adjusts to tell you the exact height and width of the image — in inches — at any point in time. To see the size of the image, just click on the bottom left corner of the image or click and hold one of the crop icons (the little boxes that appear on each side of the image when the image is highlighted).

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If you click on an image and continue to hold down the mouse key, you’ll see another meter that tells you the exact position of the image relative to the left side of the page (the first number you see) and the top of the page (the second number). To see the angle of the image, just click and hold the Rotate icon (the swirly arrow).

We’ll be adding lots of new features just in time for Mother’s Day, so be sure to check back in a couple of weeks to see what’s new!

Please note that this feature only works for pages that have been created since February 21.

Here’s how it works:

1. To update an entire page, click the Update icon in the top navigation.

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You’ll see a dialogue box that asks if you want to continue or cancel. If you hit the Continue button, AncestryPress will automatically regenerate the entire page using the new data in your tree.

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This option may work well if you’ve made a lot of changes to your tree. However, you will lose any edits you’ve made to text or photos that were pulled from your online tree. You will not lose photos, embellishments, text or backgrounds that you added after the page was originally created.

2. To update a single element — such as a specific person in your family tree — highlight the element and then click the Update icon in the text editing toolbar. It’s the third icon from the right.

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Again, you’ll see a dialogue box that asks whether you want to continue. If you click the Continue button, AncestryPress will update the information for that person. The advantage of this method is that it doesn’t mess up any changes you’ve made to the images on the page. You will still lose any text edits you’ve made to that particular element (such as changing font type, size or color).

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3. To update multiple items on a page without resynching the entire page, hold down the Control key and then select the items you want to update. You can also select multiple items by holding down your left mouse key and then dragging the cursor across the page. You’ll see a set of black lines forming a rectangle. Any elements that are inside the rectangle when you release the left mouse key will automatically be highlighted.

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Once you’ve highlighted all the items you want to update, just click the Update icon in the texts editing toolbar and then click the Continue button.

If you’ve made extensive changes to your tree, it may be easier to regenerate your whole book as a new project instead of updating your book page by page. Of course, if you start a new project you’ll lose your edits and design elements, so you’ll need to consider how much time it would take to replicate your previous work.

Please note that it is not possible to synchronize your data in the other direction. That is, if you edit the data in your book, those changes will not be reflected in your online tree.

One last caveat: If you’ve used data from more than one tree in your book, keep in mind that a particular page will update based on the tree you originally used to create the page. The update feature assumes you’re using the same tree as before — it doesn’t give you the option of selecting a different one. If you want to update a chart to include data from a different tree, you’ll need to redo the chart as a new page.

However, if you created a page using a particular tree and then you dragged a birth or marriage event from a different tree onto the same page, that event will update based on its own tree. The update feature knows which tree each element is associated with and will synchronize the data accordingly.

I hope you enjoy using this new feature. As always, try it out and let me know what you think!