Images from scanned photographs or digital photographs require certain preparation to ensure an appropriate level of quality and to embed descriptive and provenance information into the image file.
See Forums > Website > Text editor help for details on inserting thumbnail images into other types of web pages which link to the image page.
Contents
Preparation
Before you upload an image:
- Check first to see that your image is not already on the website.
- Give it a meaningful name. (Check that the name is not already in use.)
- Adjust it for the best quality possible.
- Scale your images to 1000x1000 pixels but no bigger.
- Insert description and copyright information into the IPTC part of the image file.
- Save all your images for uploading into a special folder.
Viewing and editing image files:
An ideal free program for viewing image files and doing minor editing is Irfanview. It is robust, fast and easy to use. It displays virtually all image and video formats. It displays EXIF and IPTC embedded text. It supports minor editing such as IPTC, resizing, renaming, rotation, contrast, brightness and colour balance. It also has some batch editing capabilities for renaming, resizing, adjustment and file conversion.
GraphicConverter is said to be a suitable equivalent for Mac although the cost is about $50.
Download Irfanview or GraphicConverter and install it on your PC. Set it as the the default image viewer. This means that whenever you view a picture within Windows it will be displayed by Irfanview and all the editing functions will be at your finger tips.
File format:
The standard file format for the web site is jpeg (file extension jpg). This format is compact, universally readable and supports embedded textual information. It is also the standard output for digital cameras and modern scanners.
Scanning:
Scan the front and back of every photograph to ensure that you capture all available information. Use the highest practicable resolution depending on the size of the original.
Managing your files:
Keep your original scans and digital photographs in an "original images" folder. Copy them to a "working folder" before attempting to select the ones you want to use, rename them or make any adjustments. After making your adjustments copy your files to an "image upload" folder . You will use this when creating or editing image pages for the web site. If you have to re-edit a file go back to the original folder and copy to your working folder before editing. Every successive editing session degrades image quality.
Name:
The file name becomes the title of the image whether it is used within the albums or within the family tree. So the file name is all important and there should be consistency across all images within an album.
The file naming convention for Shep's Place is [Year] [Sequence number] [Location] - [Subject].
The year and sequence number determine the order of images within a gallery (alphabetical).
If you are unsure of the year, make a best guess and follow it with"c" for circa, eg, 1873c.
The sequence number is required if there are several photos in a particular year. Restart the sequence numbering for each year. Incrementing sequence numbers by 10 is a good idea to allow you to insert new pictures in the right order later on by using an intermediate number.
The location can be abbreviated rather using than a full place-name.
If there is any possibility of confusion use a hyphen between parts fo the file name especially between location and subject.
The subject should be a list of names from left to right separated by commas. If it is a large group, give it a group name like Shepherd family and rely on the IPTC embedded text data to give the details. If you don't know a person put in an extra comma.
Examples:
- 1924 Kingswood - Shepherd and Horwood families.jpg
- 1935 30 Millicent - Ralph Skitch, , Vic, Geroge Wilshire.jpg
- 1942 10 Christmas Day - Leslie St - John, David Shepherd, Bruce Boase.jpg
- 1976 March, England - Helen, Michael Boon.jpg
Warning: The only characters which may be used in image filenames are: letters, numbers, spaces, commas and hyphens.
Do not use: full stop, apostrophe, quote, colon, ampersand or any other punctuation marks or special characters. These can cause serious page loading errors.
Image quality:
Make sure that your images are the best achievable quality before uploading. In any image editor, when you save a jpeg file, it will ask you for a jpeg quality factor. Always choose 100%. The website will make adjustments but the underlying quality won't be compromised.
For more sophisticated editing use GIMP (an excellent open source image editor) to do the following:
- Rotate the image, if necessary, to get horizontals and verticals right.
- Crop the image, if necessary, to get the best framing.
- Use "layers" to make your adjustments to maintain maximum image quality.
- Adjust "levels" (brightness, contrast, colour balance).
- Use the "Unsharp" filter to improve sharpness. But don't overdo it!
- Use the "Gaussian blur" filter to reduce noise.
- Use a semi-opaque "cloning" brush to clean up scratches and spots. Zoom in to be accurate.
- Save this as your "adjusted" image in GIMP or Photoshop format.
- Save the image also in jpg format at the highest available quality setting.
Scale your images:
The standard viewing size on the web site is 600x600 pixels (preview). Thumbnails are 150x150 pixels. However, users can view an original version if they require higher resolution. The web site will scale the original images to the preview and thumbnail sizes. The jpeg quality factor is also reduced to 80% to ensure compact, fast-loading files.
Only the original retains the embedded text information.
It is recommended that you scale all pictures to 1000x1000 pixels (at 100% jpeg quality factor) and put them into a sub-folder called, say, "1000".
IPTC:
There are several places where text can be embedded in a jpeg file. There is the Windows description, the JPEG comment, the EXIF description and IPTC text fields. The most reliable and best supported one of these is the IPTC text fields which were specifically designed to describe the content of the image. The Windows description, JPEG comment and EXIF description are not universally supported and often get destroyed even by Microsoft Windows and Adobe Photoshop.
The IPTC information can be extracted automatically and displayed on the web page. The advantage is that the information has to be entered only once and it stays with the picture wherever and however it is used. (At the moment the data is only extracted in the family tree images but it will eventually appear on the albums so you should start using it now.)
The program Irfanview (or GraphicConverter) is used to insert information into your final adjusted and re-sized jpeg file.
When you are viewing the image in Irfanview click I to see the image information and then I again to view the IPTC fields (or use the Irfanview menu).
Enter information into the IPTC Caption field only. This can be a fairly detailed description including where you got the photo and any acknowledgements, copyrights or references.
Edit IPTC information
Download the original image from the website:
If you do not have the image already in your upload images folder:
- Navigate to the image page which you want to edit.
- Below the image are two links: thumbnail and original. Click on original to display the highest resolution version of the image on the site.
- Download the original image to the upload images folder on your pc. (Right click on the image and then left click on Save image as....)
- Save under the same name and overwrite your current file if asked to do so.
Edit the image on your pc with Irfanview:
- Open the image in Irfanview.
- Click I then I again to edit the IPTC information.
Replace the image page on the web:
- While you are signed in, navigate to the image page.
- Select the Edit tab.
- Under the Image heading, browse for your modified file in your images upload folder.
- Submit. This will upload the edited file and replace the old file.
Edit other linking pages:
Links will break if you have changed the name of the image.
- Check all the pages which might link to the image page especially Family Histories.
- Edit the page. Delete the image and its title.
- Insert the new image following the procedure in Forums > Website > Text editor help