Thursday, November 7, 2013

An Amazing Software Find

Today, I went to a class at my local Family History Center. I don't usually go in for such things, but the topic was great free software programs for image manipulation and I couldn't resist.

If you care to scroll back through my piteously few postings, you'll see that there is an issue with the scans from the State Archives of Belgium.  That is, you have to save them as screen shots and paste them back together in an image manipulation program.

Until today.  Go and download Microsoft ICE.

I went to the archives and found the birth record for my Great-Grandfather, HonorĂ© DeClerck.  I had to scroll down to capture the entire image, it took two shots:


The first thing you have to do is to take them into an image manipulation program and crop off the borders, so all you have left is document...


Now, you open up Microsoft ICE and drag these two images into it.

It works really fast with only two to merge.  The class instructor merged 31 photographs into a huge panorama and it took just a minute or so.

Now, this is a little picture of this, and this was only two pictures, but it has seamlessly merged these two together to make one intact picture.  You can crop from this program to get rid of the jagged edges and save in a variety of formats.

Wow!  I am so excited about this now!!  I have been avoiding these records because of this.
H/T to instructor Mike Maddox, who turned us on to this great tool!