MyHeritage introduces a whole new way to work with photos (Part 1)

11 Aug 20089 comments

Today we're excited to unveil an array of improvements in photo management on MyHeritage, that will enhance your pleasure of viewing and sharing your photos. The new and improved Photos tab of your family website provides several features that have never before been seen on any genealogy or photo sharing website. These new features include:

A fully integrated, web-based photo browser
Photo tagging with automatic face detection technology
Face Cloud - a fun way to view the people in your photos
Full access to photo albums from within your family tree
Enhanced photo search

All these exciting features are included in every family site and are accessible to all our users for free.
At MyHeritage, we are creating the ultimate place for connecting with family and friends and allowing everyone to easily share their special moments.

New photo browser
The 'Albums' page provides a new photo browser that shows all your photo albums and photos. Here you can view, edit, copy, rearrange and delete your photos. The size slider lets you smoothly adjust the display to show many small photos or a few large photos, in crisp quality.

SCREENSHOT: The new photo browser (click to enlarge)

To view a photo, simply select it in the album and click the View button (or click the little magnifying glass that appears when you hover over it). A window will appear showing a close up of the photo as well as who is in it.

SCREENSHOT: Viewing a photo (click to enlarge)

Tagging your photos
At the heart of the new photo features is the ability to tag people. Tagging people in your photos allows you to organize and search by person or name. It enriches the viewing experience of your photos by others and, from the historical perspective, it ensures that loved ones are not forgotten. When you tag a person in a photo, an album is created in that person's name and can be used to view all of their photos.

Tagging a person is easy. Simply select a photo from the photo browser and click the Edit button. This will bring up the Edit photo page.

SCREENSHOT: Editing a photo (click to enlarge)

To the right of the photo you will see the people who appear in this photo. MyHeritage utilizes state-of-the-art automatic face detection technology to detect and mark the faces in the photo for you. So all you need to do is click the 'Who is this?' link (or click one of the faces on the photo) and enter the person's name. As you start typing the name, MyHeritage will suggest matching people in your family tree to save you time.

SCREENSHOT: Tagging a face (click to enlarge)

Adding new people
If MyHeritage did not detect a face automatically, you can click the 'Add another person' button, center the frame over the person's face, and start typing their name. MyHeritage is unique in that it lets you add new people while you tag, instead of restricting you to people you have already added before.
The MyHeritage photo tagging feature is not just for family members. It can also be used to tag friends and colleagues.

With the addition of advanced features such as automatic face detection, MyHeritage is fast becoming the best place on the web to share your photos with friends and family. Stay tuned, this is the start of many great things to come!

Posted by Saar on August 11th, 2008 - 13:00

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Comments (9) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Jack Poynter
August 15th, 2008 - 01:06
The new photo facilities look great. Here's my problem: I have a working tree on my home computer. When I publish it to the website, the upload process wants to upload all the photo's all over again. Since I have a dial-up connection, this means I have to select the option to not include photo's, otherwise the upload takes five or six hours. So the website version of my tree has no photo's in it. However, the photo's still exist on the website, in one big album, from the first time I uploaded it.

Is there some way you can arrange your software so that connectivity of the photo's on the site remain connected to the appropriate individuals, even when the tree is wholly replaced?

Thanks,
JP
Jack Poynter
August 15th, 2008 - 02:36
I decided to give the new photo feature a shot. I followed the link in the email you sent, by clicking on it. It's been over an hour, and the page is still loading. This makes the feature unusable. Too bad, it looks great.

JP
David
August 17th, 2008 - 08:06
Will look forward to being able to use the new photo facility. I've just opened up my Family Tree but am not able to see any way of using it yet.
When do you plan to make it available?
Avi Dardik
August 18th, 2008 - 10:44
First let me congratulate you for both your older, existing, software and these new features.
I've been using your Family Tree Builder for some time now and it's really a great product.
Your ongoing efforts to move to the net and become an online product are also impressive.
The new online photo features are fantastic, and gives hope for a very exciting future for your online platform.

Now with all that said and done, I'm a bit concerned regarding your backwards compatibility. I've played with the new photo features, added photos etc.
BUT, once I loaded up my trusted old Family Tree Builder software, apparently there's no way to sync back the changes done online. It looks like the software only knows to export its data online and not the other way around.
Is that true or did I miss anything?

Guys, legacy support is VERY important - Your customers invest many many hours cataloging and researching their family information. You must make sure your offline and online software are always compatible and can transfer data back and forth with ZERO data loss. TRUST is a very important thing with products that deal with subject matters like yours. So while it's obvious you're working on the online side of things, and doing it VERY well - you shouldn't neglect your core value - You don't have to do anything with your offline software except making sure it's compatible with the online version.

I hope you realize the fact I even cared enough to write so much is because I'm such a fan of your product! :)
sandra kelly
August 20th, 2008 - 22:59
this is a wonderful idea and site. im new to using computers so i hope il pick it up quick. i really enjoy this site
Jlo
August 22nd, 2008 - 00:33
I like practice the photo.
ayda massiel garzon
August 22nd, 2008 - 03:39
espero que sea en español ,es un programa excelente
Anonymous
August 24th, 2008 - 15:55
I don t remember my personal information
Mulberry Messenger
August 10th, 2011 - 05:18
nice post,i like it very much