How do I submit photos for the site?

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Art
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How do I submit photos for the site?

Post by Art »

Great! We'd love to add to the photos available on this site.

We are especiially interested in documenting the different families, locations, events, and groups associated with Asturian-Americans. We also encourage you to write a description of yourself and include relevant photos, if you like, for our About Us section of the site.

Which photos should you submit?
Sharp photos are good, but more important is the content. If, for example, you have an image of bagpiper, drummer, and people dancing, we'll all be excited to see it! Even if the image is a little out of focus or dark, we may be able to use it. If you have 150 photos of your Asturian grandfather, send us the 2-3 most interesting images. All the same, if you don't feel like deciding, we'll be happy to help out.

What are the legalities?
As I understand this, in submitting images to us, you retain all rights to the photos, except that you are agreeing to let us display them. There is the possibility that someone will copy your image and re-use it in another way. It is impossible to control this kind of theft on the Internet. We do, however, recommend that you can place a copyright on the image to try to ward off thieves. If the images get lost in the mail (should you be mailing them to us or we returning them to you), Asturian-American Migration Forum will sincerely lament the loss with you, but cannot be held responsible.

How do you submit photos to us?
You have several options.

One option is to send me, Art, your photo, slide, or negative. I can make the scans and will return the original to you. This may result in the best quality images, since I do this regularly.

Another option is to scan the image yourself and email me with the image(s) attached. If you have many images or they are large files, please consider using the next option.
A third option is to send me by mail a CD or floppy disk with the image(s) on it. This is the best option if the files are large (over 1 MB) or if there are a lot of images.

How large should the image be?
The album displays images with a maximum size of 500 pixels wide and 380 pixels high. Thus, we need an image at least this large. To a degree, larger is better, because most images require cropping. We don't need huge 50 MB files, though, because Web pages don't display a lot of detail.

What kind of file should you send?
You will probably want to send the image as a .jpg (or .jpeg) file. You could also send a .psd file, but this may be much larger.

What information will you need in addition to the image?
Please include the following data:

title
who/what
place
date
file name
name to be used in the copyright notice

If you are doing the photo-editing, then there are a few more details to include, too. This is covered below.

Can I do the photo-editing for you?
Yes! And bless you! This is detail work that many people won't want to do, but if you are comfortable with using a program like PhotoShop, we'll accept the help.

If you are not going to be image-processing your own photos, then you can stop reading this post now.


INFORMATION FOR THOSE DOING PHOTO-EDITING

How do I tweak the image for use on the Web?
This is a complex topic. I'll just say that I often have to adjust the Levels and Curves, and sometimes the Gamma (in ImageReady), Color Balance, and Selective Color. I generally do not adjust Brightness/Contrast because the other commands take care of the underlying problems that cause contrast and brightness problems. Adjusting an image is an art, so it's impossible to describe an approach that works for every image. You'll get better with practice.

What image sizes do you need?
The photo album uses two sizes of images: thumbnail and large. It needs one of each type for each photo.

Thumbnails are no larger than 150 pixels in either direction. So if the pic is horizontal, it might end up being 150 x 92 pixels, for example. Thumbnails are shown on the index page, a bunch of them all on the same page.

Large images (which I've called "details") are a maximum of 500 pixels wide and 380 tall. Anything more than that blows out the formatting on the page where they shown by themselves.

What format should I save the pictures in?
Normally, photographs are best saved in .jpg format. Note, though, that the more times you save a .jpg, the worse they look because the data is saved in a way that loses information each time. So if you have any choices, it is best to save it in an "non-lossy" format first (such as a .psd) and then do your work on the file to crop, size, etc. Or just don't save the image until you have what we need.

What resolution (dots per inch) should the images be?
The files should be saved at 72 dpi. Any more or less and the image will display as larger or smaller than you expect.

PhotoShop automatically transforms the image to 72 dpi if you use "Save for Web." Using this command will give you the opportunity to resize your image to be no larger than 150 x 150 for thumbnails, and 500 x 380 for details. The command also lets you see the effect of different compression quality settings before you do the final save. But be sure to add "tn" to the end of the file name before you save the thumbnail!

What image compression quality setting should I chose?
It is important to keep file sizes small. You have to look at the preview to decide what "compression quality" to use. I try to keep most pics at low, medium at the most. In PhotoShop that means numbers of 10 to 30. Sometimes, I'll even go to 0. The real need is to keep image file size as small as possible, while still getting decent image quality. Image quality is an eyeball thing, but file sizes should be 2-4K for the thumbnails and 10-13K (maybe up to 20K for a really important one) for the larger details. Anything over that, and we'll have trouble with download times, bandwidth, file storage, etc.

How do I put a copyright on the image?
If you want to "protect" your images, you have to place text on the images that reads:
© your name 2003

To do this in PhotoShop, you add a text layer to the image. Try to choose a color that shows up clearly, but not too loudly. I often use one of these: white (#FFFFFF), a dark green (#445544), or a light purple (#E5CFFF). "©" can be made by holding down the alt key, then typing 0169 in the keypad. The size of the type should be legible but not dominating.

As I wrote earlier, this method doesn't have much muscle, but it is a minor deterrent to theft and it does indicate that you intend to maintain your rights, should you decide to prosecute a thief.

What other information should I send with the images?
There is specific information we'll need to add the photo to the site. The closer your information is to the following format, but faster we can get it up on the Web.

We need this info:

title
who/what
place
date
file name
detail width
detail height
thumbnail width
thumbnail height

If you are doing the image editing for us, you'll be sending two files for each image (thumbnail and a larger detail). The two images should have the same name, with "tn" added to the end of the thumbnail file, like this:

gomezFamilyHome.jpg = the large detail image
gomezFamilyHometh.jpg = the small thumbnail

I have begun each image file with a little letter, and capitalized the
beginning of every other word in the name for ease of reading.

Just so you can see how this is used, this info gets input on the page,
like this:

work[0]=new Work (
'Gomez Family HomeV','Jose & Maria in front of their house','Spelter, WV','c1927','gomezFamilyHome',233,380,92,150
);

The closer we get to having the info in that order, the easier my job is.

That's it!

If all that seems daunting, then just send us the images and we'll do the image editing for you. You don't have to be a digital media specialist to participate!

If you have questions, please pm or email me. We look forward to seeing your images on the site!
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