Tina Lyons posted in her blog “Gen Wish List” on 17 January 2010 about how some of Ancestry.com’s census images have been enhanced recently, rendering some of the pages unreadable.
Ancestry has been working toward a goal of making higher-quality census images available on their site. This has involved rescanning the images, and enhancing them with graphics software. It seems that some of these enhancements must have been batch-processed, however, as Tina relates that the census image of one of her ancestors, that was previously able to be read, is now “washed out.”
This is not a new problem, but one that was a major issue with Ancestry’s original images. Supposedly, this is one of the problems that Ancestry is looking to correct.
There is a way around this issue, however. Ancestry provides access to its unenhanced scans, where you can view the original. If you are familiar with photo enhancement software, you can even download the image and attempt your own enhancement to increase clarity and readability.
From the new census viewer, just above the window, you will see a button labeled “Options.”
When you click on this button, you will see that there is a check mark next to “Use Enhanced Images.” If you click on this menu item, the check mark will disappear.
In the census viewer, you will see that the census image is no longer enhanced. This is the original scan of the record that Ancestry made, in these cases from the NARA microfilm.
To download this unenhanced image to your own computer for editing, click the “Save” button in the upper right corner of the screen. A menu will appear whereby you can save the image to your computer. Open the image in your favorite graphics program, and play around with it until you can read the details.
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