Import Guide

Bring Your Photos Out of Ancestry

Ancestry keeps your tree. Nostalgia keeps the photos restored, captioned, and shareable. Here's the workflow.

Why you'd bring photos into Nostalgia

Ancestry's tree is the system of record for names, dates, relationships, and DNA. The photos attached to those names often deserve more care than a general tree tool can give them. Nostalgia handles that side of the work.

Your tree stays where it is. Ancestry remains the system of record for names, dates, relationships, records, and DNA.
You get restoration, captioning, back-of-photo notes, and private Family Vaults on the photo side — things Ancestry's photo tools don't specialize in.
Download is non-destructive. The original stays on your Ancestry profile; you're working with a copy.

Step 1 — Download from Ancestry

Sign in to Ancestry. Go to ancestry.com and sign in to the account that owns the photos you want to bring over.
Open the Gallery for the ancestor. Navigate to a person in your tree, then open the Gallery tab. You'll see all media attached to that person: photos, stories, documents.
Download the original image. Open a photo, click the Tools menu (three dots or gear icon depending on your view), and choose Download. The file saves to your device at the resolution Ancestry has on file — use that original, not a screenshot.
Repeat or batch-download a gallery. Ancestry does not provide a bulk-download button for a single person's gallery, but you can work through a gallery one photo at a time quickly. For very large collections, the Ancestry support team can sometimes assist with a bulk export on request.

Step 2 — Upload into Nostalgia

Open the Nostalgia library. On web or mobile, open your Library. Use Upload (web) or the Library Add button (mobile) to add the downloaded files.
Let Photo Insight analyze them. Every upload gets a Photo Insight report: damage labels, era estimate, a ranked repair plan, and conservation notes when the print needs careful handling. Use it to decide what's worth restoring and what's worth rescanning first.
Restore, caption, and organize. Run the recommended restore pass. Add captions — names, dates, occasions. Group photos into albums or a dedicated Family Vault so relatives can browse them without creating an Ancestry account.
Keep the original alongside the restored version. Nostalgia never discards the original upload. The archival master and every restored version stay linked so you always have the authentic source file to hand back to your tree if needed.

Common pitfalls

Don't rely on a browser screenshot. Screenshots lose resolution and compress colors. Use the Download option on Ancestry to get the file as uploaded.
Watch for very small thumbnails. Some photos uploaded years ago were auto-downsized. If the download looks tiny, check whether Ancestry has a higher-resolution version attached somewhere else on the tree — often the same photo was uploaded twice.
Keep the story attached to the photo. If the Ancestry gallery has a story or description tied to a photo, copy that text into Nostalgia's caption field for the matching photo when you upload — future you will thank past you.
Photos tied to records aren't always downloadable. Source documents, census pages, and index records are usually view-only due to licensing. This guide is for family photos you (or a relative) uploaded, not for record scans.

When to send the restored photo back to Ancestry

Totally up to you. Some family historians prefer to keep the restored version in their private Nostalgia archive and reserve the Ancestry profile for the original as-uploaded scan. Others replace or add the restored version on the Ancestry profile so branches of the family see it when they browse the tree. Nostalgia never assumes either — your restored files are yours.