Should family tree photos be stored in the file or linked?

For most people, storing photos inside the tree file is the safer choice, because the whole of your research then lives in one file that can be copied or backed up without anything going missing. Linking is better if you already keep a large, well organised picture archive and want the tree to stay small. In Family by Zaweba you choose in Tree settings, and you can convert in either direction at any time, so the decision is never final.

The trade, in plain terms

Every tree in Family is one .oft file. When media is stored, each photo or scan you attach is copied into that file. When media is linked, the tree keeps a note of where the picture sits on your disk and shows it from there.

Stored media wins on safety and simplicity. Copy one file to a memory stick and you have everything: people, sources, notes and every picture. Move it to a new computer, open it, and the photos are there. Nothing depends on folder names staying the same.

Linked media wins on size and on avoiding duplicates. A tree with a few thousand high resolution census images can grow large when stored. If those images already sit in a carefully named folder structure, linking means one copy instead of two.

The weakness of linking is fragility. Rename a folder, reorganise your pictures or move to a new PC, and the links point at nothing. The weakness of storing is mainly size, which matters less than it used to on modern disks.

Questions that decide it for you

Do you ever open the tree on another computer? If yes, store. Open a linked tree on a laptop without the picture folders and the names and dates are all there, but the pictures can't be found.

Do you reorganise your photo folders? If you tidy and rename often, store, or at least store the pictures attached to your tree.

Is the photo collection enormous and already well managed? Then linking may suit you, especially while you are still adding pictures.

How do you back up? A single stored file is easy to back up and easy to restore. A linked tree needs its picture folders backed up too, and restored to the same places.

A pattern that works for many people

Plenty of family historians use both, at different stages. While you are gathering and sorting, linking lets you attach pictures from wherever they are without making copies. When the research settles, or before you hand the tree to a relative, convert to stored in Tree settings so it becomes one self contained file.

Because the conversion goes both ways, you can also do the reverse. If a stored tree has grown larger than you like, convert it to linked instead.

Where your photos come from

If you sort photos with Disk Sort by Zaweba, Family can pick from that library directly, showing your stars, keeper marks and keywords. Family only reads Disk Sort's data and never changes it. Pictures chosen that way can then be stored or linked like any others.

Sharing a tree that has pictures

GEDCOM, the standard file for moving trees between programs, is text only. When you export from Family, an option saves stored photos to a folder beside the GEDCOM file, so you can send the pictures along with it. That is another small point in favour of storing: the export knows exactly which pictures belong with the tree.

For the photos themselves, attach each one where it belongs: to a person, an event, a source or a citation. A good portrait set from the person profile appears there and in the family book Family makes as a PDF.

Whichever way you choose, keep a backup. The best media setting in the world won't help a tree that only exists on one disk. Store, back up the one file, and you have the simplest arrangement there is.