Friday, December 30, 2011

My Canvas a Boring, Expensive Family History Book?


I have been trying out the My Canvas family history book creator at Ancestry.com. You can view my own project here View Annette's project.
You can use any family tree you have uploaded to Ancestry to create your book. You can also use any documents and photos you have stored there too. Using their book designer is a little tricky. Creating a book is very time consuming. You can only add 4 generations initially. You can then continue adding new pages with more generations.
It definitely could be more user friendly. For instance you have the option to upload 3 or 4 generations at a time. There should be an option for fewer, because you may end up with many more pages than you actually want. You may end up with to many time lines especially. I think I would only want a time line for key people. I can't imagine wanting a time line for every individual. So you have to go in and delete the pages you don't want. Very time consuming. More options for adding pages, and deleting several at a time would be helpful.
Adding text is a pain too. This is designed to be more of a picture book than a real Family History.
I've uploaded a few examples of the pages I created here. The family group sheet is above. The first two below are examples of individual time lines. Too bad you can't insert more events and years. You are stuck with their default events. There isn't a military confederate background either. Don't know if confederates would want Lincoln on their time line?
If you are creative and have time on your hands you can get a very nice final product. Otherwise the basic book is not worth the expense.








2 comments:

Barbara Poole said...

I liked your review because I've heard of My Canvas, but didn't know anything about it. Too bad it isn't a good product. Thanks for telling us about it.

Annette said...

Thank you Barbara!