Call Family

Here are the blog posts relating to the ancestors of my great grandfather Charles Joslin Call. 

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Brightening Up A Hard to Read Document in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements

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Sometimes digital images of documents are just hard to read – the paper is gray, the ink close to the same color, and often with ink bleeding through from the back. Brightening up the document and sharpening up the words can sometimes make it easier to read  and hopefully find the clue that helps you break through a brick wall. Sometimes it just takes a couple of minutes in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to clean it up. The steps are the same – just the commands and menus are in different places. So here are directions for both – I’m using Photoshop 2025 and Photoshop Elements 2023 on a Windows machine. I don’t know the commands on the MAC and don’t have an updated version of Photoshop Elements – so hopefully you can figure it out if my directions don’t match what you see on the screen. Photoshop 2025 1. Open the Document   2.  Use a Levels layer to adjust contrast.     a.  From the layers button on the Layers panel (half black/half white circle – Choo...
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Early 1900s Call Album - Page 5

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  Sometime in about 1904, someone in my grandmother Evelyn Clara Call's (1895-1962) family started taking photographs and placing them in an album. My grandmother was nine in 1904, so she could have been the photographer. Or it could have been one of her parents Charles Joslin Call (1859-1939) or Elizabeth Ann (Coe) Call (1861-1956). Most of the early photographs are of family gatherings and places someone visited. I believe by about 1911, my grandmother was taking the photographs. There are photos of her classmates at Batavia High School and groups of teenage girls.  The Call family live in Stafford, Genesee County, New York. They had a cottage at Silver Lake in Wyoming County. So many of the photos were taken in these locations.  Several of the photographs on page 5 were taken in July 1904 around the time of Robert Call and Charlotte (Joslin) Call's Golden Wedding Anniversary.  Three Generations of the Robert Call Family Very back, standing: Russell White Call, Arc...
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Combining Two USGS Topographical Maps in Photoshop Elements 2023

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Sometimes when you are working with USGS Topographical Maps, the area you’re interested in on the border of two maps, which can make it harder to get an understanding of the topography. The solution is to combine the two maps into one. Usually, I’d just use photo merging or panoramic software to created the merged map. But since there is no overlap between USGS maps – that won’t work. I have to do it by hand. Here's one way to do it in Photoshop Elements 2023 1. Open both maps in Photoshop Elements. Make sure you know how the maps should align so you know where to place them in your combined document. 2. Crop both maps to edges of the map. Make sure to write down the info in the corners so you geo-reference your combined map in other software.  Save your cropped maps under a different name File > Save As   3. Expand the canvas If you are working with two maps that align next to each other, make the left hand map your active map (or if they align top to botto...
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