Fundamentals:
What you REALLY need to do in preparing to upload your pictures is...
1. CULL the junk pictures. Don't even process these things.
2. CROP the pictures so you show only what you want, not huge amounts of worthless background.
3. RED-EYE corrections. Don't turn a pretty girl into an evil witch.
4. BRIGHTEN the dark pictures as necessary. Most pictures are too dark to begin with.
Virtually ALL computer image processors have Crop, Brighten/Contrast, and Red-eye correction features. I don't know a single digital camera that doesn't come with a computer software package that doesn't have these basic features. Learn to use them. They are NOT hard, and you'll be amazed at how much better your pictures look!
If you still have a film camera, the place you get your film developed can undoubtedly provide you with a computer CD which contains digitized versions of your pictures. Or you can scan your pictures yourself with a scanner. Any way you choose, your pictures end up digitized and they need to go through that 4 step process to become good enough to publish.
More details:
I'm the first to admit that this process can be tedious if you want to do a good job. You'd think that it would be as easy as hooking your digital camera up to your computer and pressing "Upload!" but it just ain't that easy. If you do that, you'll wind up with mountains of dark junk up there. Nothing worthwhile is easy. I made a list of what I went through and hopefully this list will be helpful to others following this path.
You need to have an image processor on your computer. I use Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop, but almost any decent editor will do just fine. Most digital cameras come with their own software.
1. Rotate. You need to rotate your pictures so they all are straight up and you can see what you have.
2. Cull (delete) the rejects. I took 151 pictures in Nashville and only 64 of them were worthwhile sharing. I had LOTS of total losers! Some so dark you couldn't even see them, some good but duplicates, others just too "ordinary" or facial expressions the subjects would shoot me for showing. 64 out of 151 is 43% good, and that ain't bad at all. Anything over 10% is great. But if you show 100% of the pictures you took, you're either beyond incredible or you'll show a LOT of really awful pictures.
3. Crop. Almost ALL your pictures need to be cropped to isolate the really good parts. Don't show a lot of worthless background.
4. Red eye correction. Nothing turns a pretty girl into an evil witch like red eyes! Thank heaven for pre-flashes to compensate for this. Nevertheless a lot of red eyes still get though and you need to correct them.
5. Adjust brightness/contrast. 90% of my pictures are naturally too dark and I need to boost the brightness and/or contrast before they look decent.
6. Upload your pictures to your favorite photosharing website. There are dozens of them, all pretty good. I use Flickr but Shutterfly is also very good. Other sites include Snapfish, Photobucket, Bubbleshare, Kodak EasyShare, and host of others. It really doesn't matter what site you use as long as once you upload your pictures, you can obtain a URL link to your pictures. A URL link looks sort of like this...
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbuGrRszbtmLlg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russhicks/sets/72157600635248444/
And if you click on that link, it will bring up your pictures from your site.
Every site has its own uploading process, so just follow the directions for your site. Typically they will provide a very handy upload tool that lets you point to all your pictures and click "Upload." Most modern photosharing sites are very user friendly.
7. Once the pictures are up on your photosharing website, you should add descriptions (also called titles, comments and notes). This can REALLY add good information to your pictures. You can write an entire paragraphs here like "Here are Susie and Bob talking in the 3rd floor bar on Friday night after the opening reception. Yada, yada, yada..." This takes time, but it's worth it in my opinion. I'd stick to first names for security reasons.
8. The last step is to capture the URL link (see step 6 above) and load it to NSA-Conference. Go to the home page of NSA-Conference and click on "Links" on the left. Then click on the folder for the current conference, and click on "Add Link" on the top right. That's where you add your URL link. It's easy. Just follow your nose.
As I said, to do a GOOD job on this isn't easy. But you gotta start somewhere. So go ahead and upload your pictures and let everyone see them. That's what the group is all about. If I can help you in any way, please give me a holler!
Russ Hicks, russhicks@mail.com
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