Adding Multimedia to a Person

[Susan Park]

When I add multi media items to people I've noticed that the "set to preferred picture" box is always checked, which means that after I've added the item I have to open it and unclick the box.

I don't remember it being that way in Reunion 9. I've tried finding a solution in the manual but have struck out so far. Does anyone else have this problem? What's the trick to turning that setting off?

[ttl]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

It appears that the first picture added to a person in Reunion 9 is automatically assigned as the preferred picture, and I'm not aware of any way to turn off that behavior in Reunion 11.

If you're adding documents to the person and don't want them to show in the family view, you can check the "treat as document" box. It's not any quicker to make this setting, but it allows Reunion to manage the file more properly.

[Susan Park]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

Thanks Tim for confirming what I suspected. I've been linking pdfs to my people, not documents, so I'll continue doing what I've been doing. It's only a couple of extra clicks....

[Bob White]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

Thanks Tim for confirming what I suspected. I've been linking pdfs to my people, not documents, so I'll continue doing what I've been doing. It's only a couple of extra clicks....

A PDF is a document!

[mjashby]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

A PDF is a document!

Oh no it isn't. It's an image of a document!

[theKiwi]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

Oh no it isn't. It's an image of a document!

Au contraire - they often contain selectable and searchable text, making them much more than an image.

Roger

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

Au contraire - they often contain selectable and searchable text, making them much more than an image.

More to the point, they are the documents actually issued by certain agencies. Remember Barack Obama's birth certificate?

A pdf.

[Susan Park]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

No need for bickering as to what is a document and what isn't. According to the Reunion Help Files it says this:

"In the Media window, a distinction is made between document files and image files.

document files include: RTF, Text, or MS Word files
image files include: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PDF, GIF, PICT, Photoshop, or BMP files.

Document files linked to people and families have limitations compared to image files. For example, a preferred picture must be an image file (such as a JPEG, PNG, or PDF file) and can't be a document file (such as a RTF or Text file). Document files will not appear in ReunionTouch on your devices."

I have to confess that I was mentally separating PDFs from picture files, but according to the above they are both "image" files. Documents, as defined here by Reunion, are not the same as documents in general.

[Bob White]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

Then Leister needs to correct their Help file. If the text is selectable, it is a document. Period!

Of course, they may have a totally different reason for listing PDF as an image file. Life can be full of surprises.

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

One way of making the document vs image distinction is by its use, its subject matter - so if it’s a mugshot or a family photo it’s an image and if it’s a birth certificate it’s a document, whatever the file format may be. This is certainly how I think when using Reunion, and the software helpfully facilitates that by enabling one freely to treat a file as document or not so.

I agree with Bob that in Reunion Help, one might expect to see pdf listed among the document files, because that is what it is typically used for, but I don’t know why he is being so doctrinaire (“Leister needs to correct…”). Does it matter?

The reason one might think of it in either category is that in one sense, a pdf is an image of a document: in the sense that (except with special software that most people don’t have) one cannot edit it, even if one can select and drag elsewhere. I find that limitation useful, and when I send people a document I’d rather they didn’t alter, I choose pdf not only for its portability to other systems, but also for its read-only nature.

But I admit it's not really an image like tiff or jpeg, and not often used as such.

[ttl]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

One way of making the document vs image distinction is by its use, its subject matter - so if it’s a mugshot or a family photo it’s an image and if it’s a birth certificate it’s a document, whatever the file format may be. This is certainly how I think when using Reunion, and the software helpfully facilitates that by enabling one freely to treat a file as document or not so.

^^^ This. If the content of a file was defined by the file type, we wouldn't need a "treat as document" button. Reunion could figure things out all by itself.

I have census images that are in jpeg format and portraits that are in Portable Document Format. For what it's worth, PDF is a bit like a wrapper for other things... it can hold rasterized images (including rasterized text), text data, and vector graphics. Maybe other things too.

[ttl]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

This thread has lived longer than Susan probably ever anticipated, but I thought I'd throw in one more point of clarification to address what she's posted.

In the first couple posts in this thread, it still wasn't clear we were talking about PDF files. As it turns out, back in Reunion 9, PDF files were automatically treated as "documents," meaning Reunion saw ".pdf" and pigeonholed it as a document, and didn't allow it to be treated as "not a document." Ramifications included not being able to use a PDF file as a preferred picture even if you wanted to, and not being able to add a PDF file to a slide show in Reunion.

In Reunion 11, PDF files are treated as images unless you specifically check the "treat as document" box. This means that unlike in Reunion 9, when a PDF file is the first file added to a person's multimedia, it will become the person's preferred picture, hence the reason for the original post in this thread. This is a change, and I assume it's because nowadays it's not uncommon to find a rasterized image in a PDF file instead of raw text data.

I think if one looks in the Multimedia window at a PDF file added in Reunion 9, one will find the "treat as document" was automatically checked and is still checked after the upgrade to Reunion 11. To be consistent, new PDFs (that are documents content-wise) added in Reunion 11 perhaps should have the "treat as document" box manually checked to match those that were automatically checked when added originally in Reunion 9.

[Frank]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

...As it turns out, back in Reunion 9, PDF files were automatically treated as "documents," meaning Reunion saw ".pdf" and pigeonholed it as a document, and didn't allow it to be treated as "not a document." Ramifications included not being able to use a PDF file as a preferred picture even if you wanted to, and not being able to add a PDF file to a slide show in Reunion.

In Reunion 11, PDF files are treated as images unless you specifically check the "treat as document" box. This means that unlike in Reunion 9, when a PDF file is the first file added to a person's multimedia, it will become the person's preferred picture, hence the reason for the original post in this thread. This is a change, and I assume it's because nowadays it's not uncommon to find a rasterized image in a PDF file instead of raw text data...

Your summary is correct.

Things change.

Today, devices like the ScanSnap (and I assume other popular scanners), by default, save scanned images as PDF files. And so we felt it was time to cease treating PDF files differently in Reunion 11. That's why we didn't want to designate them "treat as document" by default in Reunion 11 (as we did back in Reunion 9 and Reunion 10).

Also, just to confirm...

...the first picture added to a person in Reunion 9 is automatically assigned as the preferred picture, and I'm not aware of any way to turn off that behavior in Reunion 11...

This is correct, and intentional.

Before making this behavior standard procedure, the most common tech support question was, "I just added a picture to somebody, but it doesn't appear... How can I make it appear?" By defaulting the first linked image as "preferred," that issue disappeared.

[Lawrence E Moore]

Re: Adding Multimedia to a Person

^^^ For what it's worth, PDF is a bit like a wrapper for other things... it can hold rasterized images (including rasterized text), text data, and vector graphics. Maybe other things too.

It may be helpful to understand that Portable Document Files (PDFs) are generated by a variety of software applications to preserve the document appearance. If a word processor, spreadsheet, desktop publisher, database, mail, or other text based program is used to save a file in PDF format, then the text in the PDF file will be searchable, can be highlighted and copied, and the copied material pasted into Reunion or another text based application. Usually the text may not be edited except with a PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat. On the other hand, if the PDF file is produced by a scanner or camera without further processing, it will be an image, and the text in the document will not be searchable, etc. (Think census images or scanned historic books.) Scanners often come with optical character recognition (OCR) software that attempts to convert the image to text with varying degrees of success. Online OCR services are available that use more sophisticated text recognition algorithms; upload the image; get back text, usually for a modest fee.
Mac users have great free software, Preview, which can open PDFs as well as images in JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, and other image formats. I use Preview to annotate files by adding comments and titles to the image or PDF and to place boxes and arrows to draw attention to items of interest. Preview allows one to merge PDF documents or delete pages from documents. (Eg. a several-page deed or will scanned at the court house with a handheld scanner can be merged into a single PDF document of several pages). Just remember the distinction between annotate and edit; Preview annotates; it does not edit images or PDF text. Preview's capabilities have grown with each upgrade. It is valuable if preparing items for a publication application. Users of Acrobat Reader may also have some of the same features.
Sorry for the length of the comment. I hope some find it useful.