You must register on the gallery page in order to upload photos. This registration process is separate from the forum registration.
Once you have registered, you may contribute photos, but please understand how this works first.
Do not create a new album if there is already an album category in which your pictures should be placed.
For example: you have a sweet photo of your cupola. Do not create a "cupola gallery" because there already is one.
If you have photos from Sloss 2007, do not create a new Sloss 2007 gallery, there already is one. You may, however, create a sub-album inside the Sloss 2007 album so that your photos are distinguishable from the others.
If you have a bunch of pics from "somewhere university's" last pour and there is not an album with that name yet, by all means, create one inside the "pour pics" album.
If you would like to share your finished sculpture you may create an album named "my name" in the sculpture showcase album.
Click the link in the upper right hand corner of the page that says "sidebar" and you will see a menu appear on the left of the screen.
Select the album you want to add photos to (pour pictures, for instance) and then in the sidebar click "add album". This will create a new album inside the main album with the name you specify, "iron guild" for example.
Then, in the sidebar, click "add item" this will open a screen with several uploading options.
There are several ways to upload your pictures. The default method is from within you web browser window. You may browse to the file on your computer that you want to upload, select it, and enter a caption in the box and click "upload". The advantage to this method is that it is pretty easy (they all are really). The disadvantage is that its harder to do more than a couple pictures at a time this way.
The next way is for users of Windows XP, if you don't have Windows XP then you can ignore this. You can publish directly from a folder with pictures in it from your computer. You don't even have to have the website open to do it. You will need to download the small registry file from the upload function of the site first. just follow the instructions. The main disadvantage to this is that there doesn't seem to be any way to add captions at upload. It is very easy, however, to add them afterwards. Just open the album you put the pictures in and select "edit picture" from the drop down menu under each picture. Fill in the blanks and you're set.
You may also use the java applet upload which is very easy because it lets you drag and drop photos from your computer into the upload window, and add captions. You will probably see what looks like an error message when you use this application though, it will say" Imagemagick not found...blah blah", Just select "do not resize in GR" and click the checkbox to not show you the message again. You should be fine unless you are trying to upload HUGE files.
All of these methods provide some type of default image resizing and thumbnail creation when you upload.
Do not disable "create thumbnails at upload" or "resize images". These are necessary to keep the gallery from bogging down the web server.
It is even better if you have resized your own images BEFORE you upload them using Photoshop, or any one of hundreds of software packages that can do this.
I have set a default size of 640x640 pixels for all images. if your pics are bigger than this they will be resized. If you resize them yourself it will be easier to upload them since they won't be huge files.
If you resize them yourself you can just make them kind of close to a reasonable size, then the upload will finish the job.
More info on the Gallery2 software and support can be found at
http://gallery.menalto.com
