Projects for Image Preservation & Sharing
> Projects for Community Historical Societies
Sharing Photos and Documents in Image Galleries on the
Internet
Sharing photo or document images on the internet is one of the best ways to generate interest in community history and the activities of a community historical or genealogical society. Fortunately there are many inexpensive and relatively simple approaches available, with or without a society website.
Many community historical societies have a desire to establish or strengthen their web presence. Cost and volunteer web design experience have both been challenges. As community education and collection sharing are typical society missions, finding ways to share collection images is often a priority goal.
There are many places on the Internet where images can be displayed and shared in albums and galleries. Some of these sharing sites are specifically designed for individuals to quickly share with friends and family, and some include social networking features such as "tagging" images to allow all users of a service to find all posted images of a common interest. Examples of some sites designed primarily for individuals are Google's Picassa, Yahoo's Flickr, Apple's iphoto, HP's Snapfish, and Kodak's Kodak Gallery.
Some independent sites such as
Shutterfly.comand
SmugMug.com
have
additional sharing features
and services for
professional photographers, and organizations such as historical
societies. Shutterfly and SmugMug each have a "Pro" level service,
which allows a professional photographer, or an organization such as a
society, to offer images for sale as prints or gift items. Prices
for the items are set by the society and
Shutterfly Pro Gallery
and SmugMug Pro Account
handle
the complete administration of each sale for a commission.
Image Gallery Criteria and Challenges
Before discussing specific image gallery alternatives further , it is useful to consider what an image gallery should do and why creating an image gallery is more challenging than many other sections of a website.
A user friendly and professional appearing image gallery is
typically characterized by:
● A grouping of small preview images called thumbnails is provided to
offer a quick
gallery overview.
● An enlargement of an image is available when a preview thumbnail is
selected.
● A title and/or caption is available for either the thumbnail or
the enlarged view.
● There are simple and obvious navigation choices among images and galleries.
In its simplest form, an image gallery can be a table of rows and columns into which preview images are positioned. These images can then be made into links to larger versions of the same images, and the enlargements are then displayed in a specified area, a new window, or on a new page. Text is then added and styled as image captions. Navigational symbols, such as arrows, are also added to serve as links to move among pages or galleries.
The biggest challenge in developing an image gallery is the resizing of images of varied pixel dimensions so that they display in a consistent and properly aligned manner within a table or other format. It is possible to individually resize images with image editing software before placing the images into a table. However, this can be cumbersome and requires web design and image editing skills to develop and style the table and to size the images correctly.
Fortunately, there are image gallery software solutions available to help with these resizing and styling challenges. This software will take images of any pixel dimension and automatically size the images as thumbnails and enlargements to properly fit a selected gallery template. Software options range from simple to highly complex as one expands gallery styling options, gallery themes, and animation. Interestingly, complexity does not always correlate directly with price.
Third party gallery services such as
Shutterfly.comand SmugMug.com
encourage you to upload images at original pixel dimensions so
that quality enlargements are available to print as needed. These
services have software that produce duplicate image thumbnails and screen enlargements
of your images for professional looking display in their galleries.
The uploaded images are stored separately at the original pixels
dimensions to maintain the maximum print resolution possibilities for
future enlargements.
