Preparing Photos
For Posting on the Site

1. Get the photos scanned!  Obviously, a digital format is necessary.  Generally, JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format is the most appropriate.  The final size should be no more than about 1024 pixels in the longest dimension.  If you have almost any image editing program, you can resize your photos appropriately and add a copyright to them.  The copyright should be large enough to be read on screen, but in as inconspicuous a corner of the photo as possible.  Generally, I use either white or black lettering, depending on the color of the background.  In general, the finished file size should be no more than about 200 KB, although there is no hard limit.
2. Select a nice set of the most relevant or unusual photos you have.  There is no hard limit on the number, but avoid several views of the same thing; pick the best one.
3. Once you have selected your set, rename the files with your initials and a trailing number with leading zeroes so that they sort in numerical order on your computer.  For example, if you had 30 pictures and your initials were "xxx", the photos would be named xxx01.jpg through xxx.30.jpg.
4. Now open Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac) and make up a text file that contains a title and a caption for each of the photos.  I can't begin to explain how important this step is and how many times it isn't done.  Start with the first photo, type "1. " and then place a descriptive title of just a few words beside the number.  After the title, place a carriage return and then type in the full description, taking as many lines as you need, but don't place hard carriage returns within the caption; just let it flow and wrap to the next line as it will.  If the photo is a picture of an aircraft, place the complete tail number in the caption, as this facilitates text searching.  For example, if you had a photo of 4188, place "62-4188" in the caption.  Continue with this list to include a title and caption for each photo.
5. Once you are satisfied with everything, send your webmaster an email with the photos and caption file as an attachment.  It may be necessary to send several emails if you have a lot of photos, as I would limit things to no more than about ten attachments per message.
6. If you have no way to get your slides or photos scanned, contact the webmaster to make arrangements for me to do it.  This is very labor-intensive, however, and it will take me a while to get it done.  Even in this case, it would be necessary to place a sequential number on each slide or photo and provide the caption file.
7. It is also a nice touch to add a brief biographical sketch for use on the index page of your photos.  This can be placed in another Notepad/TextEdit file.

The graphic below shows the general layout of our photo album pages and how each part is used.