Computers have become great tools for creating family history art. You can use computers not only to research your family tree, but to create or reproduce graphics, photographs, documents and lettering for use in your artwork.

Many people use computers to copy their family photographs, using software to change the size, color and other features of the images for use in their work. Some print their photographs in sepia tones for a vintage look. A color photograph that’s faded or torn often can be restored using an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop.

Computers also come in handy when creating text for art journals, scrapbook pages and other artwork. There’s a wealth of different type styles, or fonts, from old-fashioned ornate script to modern, streamlined lettering.

Entire heritage scrapbooks and journals can be produced using computer software, and they can be shared with one’s family and friends on the Web.

Many of the techniques described in Legacy articles refer to basic computer terms such as Photoshop, scanner and digital images. The following are explanations of some computer words and phrases commonly used by artists:

Adobe Photoshop: A popular software program for editing photographs and graphics. Photoshop has all kinds of tools for manipulating images, including cropping, re-sizing, rotating, drawing, erasing and colorizing. Available in most computer stores.

BMP: Acronym for bit map, an image made up of dots or pixels. The downside of BMPs: When you scale the image, that is make it larger or smaller, it typically becomes distorted.

Browser: Also known as a Web browser, this is the software application that allows you to surf the Internet and view Web pages. Most people have either Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

CD-ROM: Short for Compact Disc-Read Only Memory. CD-ROMs can hold a lot of information—the equivalent of about 300,000 pages of text—which makes them ideal for sharing genealogy indexes, clip art and other large files. You can’t erase or add to the information on CD-ROMs, which is why they’re called read-only.

Clip Art: Graphic images you can download or copy from the Internet or from a CD-ROM disc. If you’re not adept at drawing or painting, clip art is an easy way to illustrate your scrapbooks, journals and other crafts. Many Web sites offer free clip art (www.coolclipart.com), but you may have to click through a lot of annoying advertising and pop-up windows to get to it.

Crop: To trim the unwanted parts of an image. You can do this manually, with the actual image in your hand and a pair of scissors or an X-Acto knife, or you can do it on your computer with a scanned image and an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks. Either way, you’re simply cutting out what you don’t want in a photo or graphic.

Digital: An image composed of pixels or dots, the smallest units found on monitors.

Download/upload: Download means to retrieve information from another remote computer. Artists and genealogists can download clip art, fonts, documents and other data for their work. Download is sometimes confused with upload, which means to transmit such information to another remote source such as a Web site. For instance, you can upload a photo of your ancestors onto your family Web page.

DPI or Dots Per Inch: Measures the resolution of a scanner, printer, or image; the more dots (or pixels) per inch, the sharper the image.

Fonts: Experimenting with different styles of text, or fonts, can enliven your journals, scrapbook pages and other artwork. You can choose different fonts in your word processing program, order special fonts on CD-ROMs or download them off of the Internet. Some sites, such as computerscrapbooking.com, offer alphabets that you can download for free. With a font such as Cezanne from P22 type foundry, which mimics old-fashioned script, you can add text to your artwork even if your own handwriting looks like chicken scratch.

GIF: Short for graphic interchange format. Usually pronounced “jiff,” GIF is widely used to format images that appear on Web pages because they contain compressed data, meaning they’ll download onto your computer faster. Because GIFs allow for only 256 colors, they’re used to format illustrations rather than color photos, which require a larger palette.

HTML: Short for Hyper Text Mark-up Language, a universal code used to create Web pages. Certain characters inserted between brackets determine the style and look of the page’s text and graphics. For instance, <p> indicates a paragraph. Ink-jet printers: These have become popular tools for artists because they’re both inexpensive and handy. Ink-jet printers work by spraying ink onto a page; the resolution of the image is so good you can reproduce photographs and other family history documents for use in crafts. But beware: The inks are not always waterproof or suitable for archival pieces. You may need to purchase special inks if you’re concerned about longevity.

Internet or Net: A global network that connects millions of computers, allowing for the exchange of research and communication. The Internet has no central location; there is no there there. Rather, it’s simply a vast connection of computer networks, online services like AOL and individual user components.

JPEG, JPG: Acronym for Joint Photographic Expert Group, a widely used format for files that contain photographs and other images. Many images that you see on the Web are formatted as JPG files because the graphics are compressed—the data has been reduced to make it easier to transmit and store the files.

Pixels: Short for picture elements, which make up digital images. If you’ve ever looked at a newspaper or magazine photograph through a magnifying glass and noticed the tiny dots of color that make up the image, a similar principle applies to computers. Each pixel, or dot, in a digital image has a specific color and intensity level. The more pixels or dots per inch (dpi), the better the resolution.

Scanner: Scanners operate much the same as a photocopier, except the images are captured not on paper but in pixels on your computer screen. The images are digitized, which allows you to manipulate them in all kinds of fun ways with an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. You can scan a photograph, then crop it, erase unwanted elements, change a background, change the color scheme, change the size, and so on. Scanners make it easy to reproduce your original photographs and memorabilia so you can preserve the original. Just scan the image and print.

URL: Acronym for Uniform Resource Locator, the address assigned to all Web sites. A site’s address will begin with the letters http://. Example: http://www.dmarie.com is the URL for dMarie, an excellent resource for information about a historical period.

Web or www: Both are shorthand for the World Wide Web, which links Web pages together under one massive database of information.

Resources

Webopedia (pcwebopedia.com): An online encylopedia for computer and Internet technology. Type in a word in the search field and a definition will pop up, including links to related information.

“The Genealogist’s Computer Companion” by Rhonda McClure: Explains how to turn your computer into a powerful tool for genealogy research, using simple, easy-to-understand language. Betterway Books, (800) 289-0963.