Adding Images to the OCA-AISIG Photo Gallery

Uploading an image to share in the photo gallery is a very easy process. Don’t confuse it with the “general file upload” mechanism referenced elsewhere on the home page – uploading a new image is a built-in part of the photo gallery software we use. Here’s a step-by-step process:

1. From the OCA-AISIG home page, click on the album type appropriate for your new image – galaxies, clusters, etc. This will redirect your browser to that gallery album.
2. If you are not already logged in to the photo gallery, do so by clicking on the ‘login’ link in the upper right hand part of the page. If you are already logged in, this area will show links that look like ‘Your Account’ and ‘Logout.’ If you don’t have a user id and password for the gallery, contact me at bw_msg01 at earthlink dot net and I will create one for you.
3. Once you are looking at the correct album page, click on the link to the left labeled ‘Add Items.’ This will take you to the file upload page.
4. Fill out the fields in the file upload page. You can upload up to 4 images at a time here if you wish. For the ‘Caption’ field, specify everything you want to share about the image – the identity of the target, your name, plus all the relevant technical data like capture date, integration times, camera and telescope type, etc. Don’t be concerned if you miss something at this point – you can always go back later and edit the field.
5. When you have filled in the data fields, click on the ‘Add Items’ button at the bottom of the page, and you will see a progress indicator followed by a notification that the upload is done.
6. At this point, you have the new image published in the correct album – but there’s one more step. We’d also like your image to appear in the ‘New Images’ gallery, and that’s quick to do. Just navigate to the detail page for your image by clicking on its thumbnail in the album page. The navigation bar at the left side of the window will change to show things like ‘Add Comment’, ‘Delete Photo’, etc. The second link from the top is the one we want at this point – it says ‘Create Replica.’ Just click on that link, and you’ll be shown a page asking you what other albums should be linked to your new image. Be sure the checkbox is marked only for your new image, then select ‘New images’ in the dropdown box for ‘Destination.’ Once you’ve made that selection, just click on the ‘Create’ button at the bottom of the page, and you’re done.

Don’t be concerned about making mistakes on this stuff – it’s all very easy to fix. And if you forget to do the ‘create link’ step, that can be done at a later time. In any case where you encounter problems, just send me an e-mail at the above address and I’ll help you out.

Before closing, I should probably say something about image file sizes. In general, our web hosting service supports uploads of very large image files. Uploading a huge file might make sense for shared editing or for one of our PhotoShop seminars, but it usually won’t make sense within the Photo Gallery. Remember, we’re only viewing images in the gallery, so everything is going to ultimately be scaled down to a resolution of 75 to 100 dpi on the monitor. But again, don’t sweat the details too much.

Anyway, let’s see some images for next month’s meeting!

-- Bruce