Who was actually
close to whom.
A family tree records who is related to whom. It cannot tell you that your mother stood in three times as many photos with the uncle who married in as with the brother she grew up beside. Connections draws every person as a circle, and the line between two people is the photos they both appear in.
Legend
Larger circle = More photos saved
Thicker line = More memories together
Top Connections
- One circle for each person your family has named
- The circle grows with the photos that person is in
- A line is a pair who appear in photos together
- Select a person to rank everyone they appear with
- A line appears once two named people share one photo
- Its weight is the count of those photos and nothing else
- Relationship labels are what your family typed in
- Raise the filter to leave only the heaviest ties standing
What is Connections measuring?
One number, counted one way. Two people are linked when both are named in the same photo, and the weight of that link is how many photos that is. Nothing about it is inferred from the family tree, and nothing is weighted by how recent or how flattering the photo happens to be.
The circle is the same idea turned on a single person: it grows with the number of photos they appear in. Whoever sits largest in the middle is whoever the camera was pointed at most, and in most families that is not the person anyone would have named first.
How is this different from a family tree?
A tree records claims. It says this person is that person's brother, and it says so with the same confidence whether they saw each other every week or twice in forty years. It is a diagram of who counts as family, drawn by whoever filled it in.
Connections counts. It says these two are in thirty one photos together and those two are in four, about the same family, on the same map. That is where it goes somewhere a tree cannot follow: the uncle who married in and was at every table, the sister who moved two states away, the neighbor who is in more of your childhood than half your cousins are.
Do I have to name everyone first?
No, and the map is better read as something that grows. One name puts a circle on it. A second name in one of the same photos draws the first line, and every name after that thickens something. A person nobody has named yet is simply not there, which is the same rule the rest of the archive follows. The map also lays the same collection out by relationship rather than by year, which is what the timeline does with it.
What will Connections not do?
It counts photographs, not closeness. Two people who were inseparable for thirty years and rarely photographed together sit far apart on this map, and no amount of counting will move them nearer. What you are looking at is a map of your collection, which is not the same thing as a map of your family.
A box of photos is not a fair sample of a life either. Whoever held the camera is missing from almost everything they were present for, weddings are photographed and Tuesdays are not, and a run of years can go thin because one album was lost. The map inherits every one of those gaps.
It draws only the people your family has named. An unnamed great-aunt has no circle, and two people can share fifty photos without a line between them until somebody puts names to both faces. Naming is work your family does, and Connections sits downstream of it.
A relationship label is whatever was typed in. Connections reports it back and never argues with it, so if the label is wrong the map will repeat the mistake in a confident circle. The counts are the part the map computes; the labels are the part it is told.
Do I keep what I paid for?
You buy a collection once. It is not a subscription, and nothing you have already paid for is taken back from you later.
Downloading your photos is never gated and never charged, at full resolution, whatever the state of your account. See pricing.
Back to what Phossil does. Every line on the map begins as a face somebody put a name to, which begins with getting the prints in.