Yesterday I wrote about expanding the usable space on the static pages of my blog (thanks to the Ancestral Wormhole blog). I particularly like the “Ancestors Tree’s” page in which TonyTimmons had displayed the pedigree trees of his four grandparents. At the time I asked about how he developed the images for those trees.
Impatient one that I am, I began today to develop my own “Ancestral Trees” page. Since I use Libre Office suite (a successor to OpenOffice.org), I opened the Drawing program and created boxes in which I could put text. Within each box I followed an abbreviated standard format for data in pedigree trees: Name; Birth Year and Place; Marriage Year and Place; Death Year and Place. It was necessary for me to enter all the data individually. (I had searched for a tree template that would work satisfactorily, but did not find one.)
I added some color to each of the boxes (and increased the transparency to 75-85% to tone down the color. After placing each of the boxes in their respective spots, I added lines to show the relationships. I saved the resulting image as a Libre Office Drawing file (.odg) and also exported it as a .jpeg file. The .odg file will allow me to add or change data in each of the trees as necessary. The .jpeg file allows me to 1) edit the file in GIMP (image manipulation program). I resized the image (removing a lot of white space) and added the title of the tree. The result of my editing the .jpeg files in GIMP was the four images which were uploaded onto my “Ancestral Trees” page.
I am pleased with the result. (You can check it out by clicking on the “Ancestral Trees” tab above.) These simple trees give me a quick view of where there is missing information in my records, as well as showing me what data I have. Of course, there are not source citations for these trees. They are just visual images and not a replacement for my RootsMagic 4 desktop softward or my TNG online website.
Wow, I thought you had generated this with a genealogy program. (It must be nice to be techno-competent…) They look really good!
My hope had been to generate the trees via some template that could handle a GEDCOM input. So far, I have found that… so I will keep looking. In the meantime, I found that doing it manually was not that difficult (approximately 30-45 minutes per tree). Sometimes being techno-competent is just being willing to try (and having the right tools at your disposal).
I like the ancestral trees page, but wow, you must be very patient to have done that all by hand as images. I would probably have generated the trees in one of my genealogy database programs, exported to PDF, then converted the PDF to jpg in Photoshop Elements. I used to draw org charts and pedigree charts by hand, but no longer have the time or patience with a busy 5 y/o to take care of! Nice work, GeneaPopPop!
Elizabeth, Thanks for the comment. I looked at exporting the trees from my RootsMagic 4 program, but the exported file was far too busy for my tastes and would probably taken me as much time to get it looking the way I wanted it as it did to draw it by hand. I remember when my father-in-law remodeled their house. Every room but one bathroom has changes made to it. When done he exclaimed, "It would have been a lot less work to have just built a new home. I had to tear everything down and then build it back up." That was what led me to draw my own trees. In the final analysis, it was a fairly easy task.
Oh, yes! I am retired and don't have a busy 5 y/o around all the time. One of the nice things about being a grandparent (7 & 4 1/2 y/o grandkids) and retired is that I can spend quality time with the grandkids and then go home.
Bart, thanks for the mention. Elizabeth has roughly explained how I did it – Using Family Tree Maker as the database, then Charting Companion to output a nice looking chart in pdf, finally converting the image to a web compatible png file. Great blog and very informative. Tony.