How to upload:

First and foremost YOU MUST be a member of the Media Gallery - You can Join & Register Here

• Go to the album in the Media Gallery where uploads are being accepted for that particular venue and click it.
  Don't forget to check - the "upload open" album may be a sub-album of the venue, i.e. "2009"
  Albums open for upload are indicated accordingly.

• You will see any photos already in there, or an "Album Empty" message. Open the sidebar and only if you are a member you will see an option to "Add Items"

• Click Add Items and a you will be presented with a choice of options to use to get your photos into the media gallery ->

   

  

   

  • 1. From Web Browser - This is the simplest albeit cumbersome option for say just 1 to 4 photos. (option 6  is easier for 3 or more)

  • 2. Link - If your photos are stored on your own server you may place a url link to your location here.

  • 3. From Picasa 2 - If you use Google's free image manipulation program.

  • 4. Windows XP - The option I and Len Wiseman use and the easiest. (It involves adding a key to the registry so that "northlancs.com" is displayed as an option in Windows Explorer {My Computer} when you select "Publish this file to the Web" - trust me its perfectly safe to do this and the gallery explains exactly what you need to do to add NLCC as a network place)

  • 5. Gallery Remote - This involves you downloading a compatible interface - for the serious user!
    (Clicking "Download Gallery Remote" within this option takes you to a page that explains more before you download the application)

  • 6. Upload Applet - (Give the applet time to initialise - up to 20secs! - then click the add pictures button) This is an easy to use Java application that allows multiple tag & upload, and the option shown selected in the screen shot above where Dsc05480 & Dsc05483 would be sent to the server leaving the un-highlighted ones not sent. To tag multiple files hold down and keep held down the Ctrl key whilst clicking the individual files, to highlight them all click one file and press 'Ctrl A'. When your specific files are highlighted click the Add button - when the files become listed in the applet window, click the upload button. That's it done! (This is the method of upload Paul Holt uses so it must be right!!)

  • 7. Embed Video - (this option not shown in the screen shot). This is not for photos but for adding a video you may have discovered on YouTube, Dailymotion, etc., etc. to the Media Album

   

• Choose your method of upload and follow the onscreen instructions. Any comments or descriptions can be added later using "edit photo".

• The gallery will accept any size of photo up to a filesize of 32Mb - It will be automatically be resized and re-compressed by the northlancs server to a maximum image resolution size of 1024x768.

• You may want to cut, crop & resize your photos as described below before you send them to save upload time.

File Names: You will notice that within the gallery the image's actual file name is displayed by default as the photo title {this can be changed in 'edit photo'}. Do bear this in mind if you change the image file name before upload or the title after upload, please keep it short (10 characters maximum) otherwise the whole justification of the gallery will be displaced. Better to leave the name as it came off your camera, as most cameras use a sequential or time/date method of file stamp, allowing your photos to be displayed in the correct chronological order within the gallery should the exif header not be available or stripped out by a dodgy photo editing program.

Archive Pictures: If you have any older photos you want to send in and the upload option for the album they belong in has been closed then as a member, click on the "Your Album" link and you will be taken to your personal album within the Members Area (one will be created if it does not already exist). Then just upload as described above. Creating your own album in the Members Area gives you full rights over that album including access permissions. 
If you do this then please drop me an email to notify me of where they belong so I can move them over into the 'public' area of the gallery.

If you are unsure of any of the above don't hesitate to contact me for any fine point clarification. Plus in the members area you will find a "Temp Test Area", this is an area you can use to practice on and play around with! Nothing in there is important so if you make a mistake and delete something by accident it really doesn't matter!

If you don't feel confident at uploading your own photos, I am still able to receive photos by direct email at the usual address
It may just take some time for me to publish them and you would not have any future rights over editing, deleting, etc.

Uploading yourself gives you full permissions and credited ownership over your pictures.

Re-Sizing: where does one begin on this confusing subject?

Firstly before you do anything always make sure you are working on a copy of your photo, never work on the 'master' - the photo as it came off your camera. Place a copy (or copies) of your intended photo(s) to send to the website on your desktop or better still in a temporary folder.

Photos that come off your camera can be in a variety of sizes, I've had all sorts sent to me from 640x480px (pixels) up to an enormous 2272x1704px and all sizes in between! The original photos from your camera, depending how your camera is set, will nearly always be at a very low JPEG compression ratio. This is to preserve high quality for personal printing. So an original photo of say 1280x1024px could have a filesize of around 500 Kb (½ Megabyte) - far to large to send.

Photos that are published on the website are resized automatically on the server by the Media Gallery software to maximum of 1024x768px, this gives them an average size of between about 85 to 130Kb each.
Ideally any photo you send should already have a minimum horizontal resolution of 1024px and at 4:3 it will have a vertical resolution of 768px.

Of course if you feel confident you could crop off the unimportant bits of your photo, (excess foreground, sky, someone's elbow, etc!) and then go on to resize the photo yourself or not. Please make sure you don't reduce the horizontal resolution to below 1024px.

Re-sizing will greatly cut down your upload time.

If you send in photos of less than 1024px horizontal (say 640x480) then they will still be accepted and  published BUT, at below 800px horizontal will appear noticeably smaller in the gallery and without the 1024 size there will be no larger copy for the slideshow. (all of the older photos moved over into the gallery from the main website have a resolution of 800px and so no larger 1024 copy exists - newer uploads you will notice display a larger image in the slideshows)

As an example:-  If you crop your photo to a non-standard size, say 1461 x 968, when you upload it to the gallery it will be resized to 1024 x 678 an aspect ratio near to 14:9 and will appear semi-wide screen. This is fine!

To avoid confusion; when the media gallery re-sizes photos it doesn't crop them, the full image you uploaded is still there - it just alters the resolution of the photo to save storage space.

Up to now I have been talking exclusively about photos taken in Landscape format, should you rotate your camera through 90 degrees and send in a portrait picture then crop image / resize so it comes out with a vertical resolution at around 768 minimum.

To sum up: The Media Gallery will always resize your photo so either the maximum horizontal is 1024 or the maximum vertical is 768 - altering the other side proportionally to maintain the original aspect ration.

Right that's the technical description - How do we do it?

Firstly for those using Windows XP:-

You may or may not be aware of a "Powertoy" plug-in from Microsoft which makes the job extremely easy.

First download the small (520kB) 'plug-in' from the Microsoft site at:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe  and install it.

What this little program does it to add a choice "Resize Image" to the right click context menu.

So... Copy the photos you want to send to the website into a separate temporary folder, left click one of them to highlight it and then hit Ctrl A to highlight all of them.

Next right click on the highlighted list and select "Resize Image" from the pop up menu.

A box will open, select "Large (fits a 1024 x 768 screen)"
Now click the advanced button and tick  the two boxes:-  "Make pictures smaller but not larger" and "Replace original pictures"  then click OK.

The utility will then resize and recompress the picture files before your very eyes, watch the filesizes shrink of all the highlighted photos.

When finished upload the photos to the Media Gallery as described above or as an attachment to an email at the usual address.

If you don't  use Windows XP:- 

Virtually all image manipulation programs will resize your photos - its just knowing which buttons to click!

Failing that send them in 'as is' and I'll do it for you at this end.