The Azalea Society of America uses pbase.com to display pictures of azaleas, member gardens and society activities. Bob Stelloh is the primary contact for this website. Upon request, he will upload a few pictures for you (any file size and any picture size of 640 x 480 pixels or more). Just attach them to an email to him, and he will edit the pictures to meet the site guidelines. Since the pictures are organized into galleries of like pictures, first go there, look around, and tell him where to put them. For each picture of an azalea, also mention the azalea name, who took it, where it was taken, and the date it was taken.
If you have a lot of pictures to add, or if you have an urge to do it yourself, read on.
The pbase.com website gives a lot of control over the organization and appearance of the pages of pictures. To do that it has a number of different edit pages, each with a variety of links, buttons and fields, and with different ways of doing the same task. At first glance it can be somewhat bewildering. The goal of this guide is to reduce that bewilderment as you add your first few pictures to the existing galleries—from then on it becomes quite easy. Note that pbase uses the term image, and this guide usually uses the term picture for the same thing.
resolution
The picture resolution should be 640 x 480 pixels (8.9 x 6.7 inches at the web standard of 72 pixels per inch). Larger pictures force the viewer to scroll to see all parts of the picture, which is extra effort and reduces the overall impact of the picture on the viewer. Smaller pictures make it hard to see the detail in pictures of flowers or people's faces.
file size
The file size of a picture should be 60KB or less. Larger files use more space the ASA must pay for, without increasing the clarity of the picture. You achieve these small files by using more JPEG compression. The exact settings to use depend upon your picture editing software. On a Macintosh using GraphicConverter, approximate settings are 30% for landscape pictures with a lot of color variation, or up to 50% for a blossom closeup (more than 50% only makes the file bigger, and doesn't help the appearance of the picture).
sharpening
Most digital pictures benefit from a slight amount of sharpening. With the right amount, the picture has a crisp appearance without looking grainy or artificial. In PhotoShop or GraphicConverter, good settings for the Unsharp Mask are:
- Radius: 1 pixel
- Amount: 60%
- Threshold: 0 levels
If the picture doesn't have that crisper appearance after using the Unsharp Mask, do it again, rather than changing the settings. If the picture looks grainy or artificial after several uses of the Unsharp Mask, undo the last use.
EXIF information
Your digital camera attaches a lot of so-called EXIF information to the picture file, such as the name of the camera, the date the picture was taken, exposure details, and etc. When you save an edited picture, one of the options lets you include the EXIF information. Do include it, since pbase.com will use it to save you a lot of typing, and it doesn't add much to the file size.
file names
Each picture stored on the ASA website should include its file name, in case the picture must be replaced due to a problem, or to let a viewer ask for more information or a higher resolution copy of the picture. When you upload a picture, pbase.com shows the file name as the picture title. When you are putting flower pictures in alphabetic order within a pbase.com gallery, it's very helpful to see the name of the plant along with that file name. Thus, it's a good idea to add the plant name to the file name before you upload the picture. Later, when you are editing the picture information, it's easy to copy the file name off the title and paste it where it belongs, and then edit the name of the plant in the title.
notification
After adding flower pictures, please email Bob Stelloh a list of the plant names, picture types (bloom, tube, spray, plant, leaves, landscape, other) and picture numbers (the 8 digit number your browser shows as the last part of the address when you editing the picture). He will use that information to link your pictures to those plants in the azalea name index.
live site
Our picture website is "live", in the sense that the changes you make are immediately visible to any site visitor. If you make a mistake, everyone will see it until you correct it. Thus, please follow these directions carefully, and please don't experiment with pbase.com features that are not covered by these directions. On the other hand, all the mistakes that are possible to make can also be fixed, so don't be afraid of adding your own pictures to the site—just follow these directions, and email Bob Stelloh if you run into a problem, preferably before clicking any delete button.
logging in
Email Bob Stelloh for the login name and password you will need to get into the edit mode, to be able to upload picture files and edit the picture information.
To be able to upload and edit pictures you must first log in as an authorized user:
- click Login at the top right to go to the login page
- type in the login name and the password
Feel free to read the rest of the stuff on the login page, but don't enter anything else or click anything else. Especially don't change the password.
- click the login button, which goes to a profile page
- click its all galleries link to go to the home page
navigating to your gallery
Click the appropriate picture on the home page to go to that gallery. Click the appropriate picture there to go to that gallery, and so on, until you arrive at the gallery for your pictures.
If you add your pictures to the wrong gallery, you can move them to the correct gallery later.
adding pictures
Click edit this gallery to go to the edit page for the current gallery. Note the edit views: line just below the name of the gallery, as you will use those links later.
Don't click or change anything else above the Upload Photos to this Gallery heading line.
If you plan to add a few pictures, do it one at a time. For each one, scroll down to show the Browse and Upload image buttons and use them to add an image:
- click the Browse button
- use your computer controls to locate and open the image file to be uploaded (its name will appear beside the Browse button
- click the Upload Image button to upload the picture file at the end of the open gallery
If you plan to add a lot of pictures, it's worth the effort to upload more of them at once. To do that:
- click the upload link on the line just below the gallery name, to open a full page of Browse buttons
- go down the list of Browse buttons, using one for each picture
- when you have used them all up, or have run out of pictures, click the Upload Image button to upload all the image files at the end of the open gallery
- when you are finished uploading pictures, click the full edit link on the line just below the gallery name
In either case, the newly uploaded pictures are now shown at the end of the list of thumbnail images on the gallery edit page, ready for you to edit their information and put them into their proper place within that gallery.
moving pictures
If you see you've uploaded your pictures to the wrong gallery, it's a good idea to move them to the right gallery first. To move pictures to another gallery:
- click the box in the Select column for each picture to be moved, to make its box show a checkmark
- below the list of thumbnail pictures, find the Move Selected Items to Another Gallery heading
- use the Choose Gallery menu to choose the name of the destination gallery—those names, such as "evergreenae", are shorter than their public gallery names such as "Evergreen (A - E)...", so it takes some guesswork to figure out the right name—if in doubt, do this:
- click the tree view link at the top right of the page to show the public names of all the galleries
- click the name of your best guess to go there
- click its edit this gallery link to see its short name beside the gallery name heading
- repeat that as needed to confirm your guess
- use your browser back button to get back to the edit page you started from
- look to be sure the pictures to be moved are still checked
- click the Add to Gallery button to move the checked pictures (they will be at the end of the destination gallery you chose, the same as if you had just uploaded them)
editing picture information
The next step is to edit the information to be shown for each of your new pictures. Until you do, the only information shown with the picture is the file name you used to upload it.
From the gallery edit page, scroll down to the first of your newly added pictures, and click the edit link to the left of its title to open an edit page for that picture. The fields we use for the standard information about azalea pictures are:
- title: plant name, enclosed in single quotes if it is a cultivar name, e.g., 'Acme', or set in italics for a species name, e.g., R. vaseyi (to set the name in italics, use the HTML tags for italics, which are the characters "< i >" before the name and the characters "</ i >" after the name—typed without the spaces and quotes shown here)
- caption: the name of the hybrid group followed by the word "hybrid", e.g., Glenn Dale hybrid, along with any other information you feel would be useful to the viewer
- artist: the name of the photographer, e.g., Bob Stelloh
- location: the name of the garden and its location, e.g., Stelloh garden, Hendersonville NC
- shot date: the date the picture was taken, e.g., 12-May-2004 (if you included the camera EXIF information, pbase.com fills this in for you)
- camera body (optional): what kind of camera took the picture—either choose it from the menu or type it in the other field to the right or leave it empty (if you included the camera EXIF information with the picture file, pbase.com fills this in for you)
- camera lens other: put the file name here, e.g., Yubai0405120019.jpg (it was loaded into the title field by pbase, so it is easy to cut from there and paste it here)
- tech notes (optional): the exposure information (if you included the camera EXIF information, pbase.com fills this in for you)
After you've filled in these fields, click the Update Image button at the bottom left, and pbase.com will save the information and show the page again. this time with an updated picture legend at the top left. If you move on to another picture without doing this last step, pbase.com mercilessly throws away all your carefully edited information! Don't panic—click your browser back button and it will probably still be there.
You can now click the view image link at the top to see the full size picture with your new information. From there you can click your browser back button to return to the edit page, whether to make corrections or to move on to the next picture to be edited.
When you have a string of new pictures, the quickest way to show the next picture to be edited is to click the next link at the upper right. You can also click the show thumbnails link, scroll down to the thumbnail of the next picture, click it, and click the edit image link at its top right.
re-sequencing pictures
Most of the pictures at the Azalea Society pbase.com website are flower pictures, arranged into galleries by type (evergreen or deciduous) and arranged in alphabetic order by name within the type (ignoring the R. for species). Since pbase.com displays the pictures in increasing numeric sequence, and it lets you specify their sequence numbers, the task is to change the sequence numbers of the pictures to match the alphabetic order you want.
When you have multiple pictures of the same plant, please follow this convention for them:
- a picture of the blossom showing the most common color pattern goes first
- images of the color variations go next
- a picture of the blossom sideways showing the flare and calyx goes next
- a picture of the spray goes next
- a picture of the foliage goes next
- a picture of the plant showing its habit goes next
- a picture of the plant in a landscape goes last
A good approach to giving the gallery new sequence numbers is to:
- make a list on a piece of paper of the names of the pictures you just uploaded, preferably in alphabetic order
- scroll down the list of thumbnails to where the first of your new pictures is to go and notice the sequence numbers before and after that spot
- on your paper list, write a number beside your first new picture that is between those two sequence numbers (e.g., if your picture should go between 120 and 130 —the existing sequence numbers increase by 10— write down 121, or 125, or any other number between 120 and 130)
- repeat that for each of the pictures on your paper list (if you are putting more than 9 new pictures between two existing pictures, giving the rest of them the same number keeps them in the order you uploaded them)
- scroll down to each of your newly uploaded pictures in turn, and type the numbers from your list of plant names into their Sequence fields
- scroll down a little further and click the Update Gallery Images button to have pbase.com put them in the new sequence
- scroll down through the list to see any obvious sequence mistakes and correct them by typing in better sequence numbers, and click the Update Gallery Images button again
- at the top of the page, just below the gallery name, click the sequencing link, which opens a new page
- at the bottom of that page, click the Resequence Gallery Items button to make all the sequence numbers increase by 10 again, ready for the next use
Don't change any of the other settings on that page.
- click the full edit link to go back to the normal edit page
This approach also works to arrange pictures of people, gardens or whatever into any sequence you want.
logging out
When you are finished editing your pictures, log out of the edit mode by clicking the Logout link at the top right of the page.
It takes a lot of clicking and setting parameters to make a new gallery. For the time being, the best way to make a new gallery is to email Bob Stelloh and tell him your needs, including the name of your new gallery, some idea of the number of pictures, and where it should fit in the overall scheme of things.
Questions? Comments? Success? Failure? Email Bob Stelloh.
/>