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Frequently Asked Questions |
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| Access to the Directory | ||
| Q. | How do I get the username and passwords so that I can login to the directory? | |
| A. | Contact Eddy or Louis. We have a short questionnaire on the Register page | |
| Printing and Saving Photos | ||
| Q. | How do I print a photo? | |
| A. | Unfortunately, printing off a webpage directly may not yield the results you are looking for. Photos are rarely the right size and will either be too small, too large or require cropping. Try "Print Preview" on your browser and see if you can shrink or grow the picture to your requirements. Changing landscape/portrait may also help | |
| Q. | How do I save a photo? | |
| A. | Place your curser over picture, right click and choose "Save Picture As". A few photos on the website will not permit a direct copy. Try a "screen capture". If all else fails, drop us a line and we'll email you the photo. Saving photos is also the preferred method if you ultimately want to print the photo. | |
| Emailing Photos & Text | ||
| Q. | Where do I email photographs? | |
| A. | Please contact Louis or Eddy on Contact Us page We'll take it from there | |
| Q. | Any restrictions on the size of files? | |
| A. | Most email servers have file size limits around 10 Megs. If you have many photos, you'll need to send multiple emails in order not to exceed the limit. Alternately, there are cloud services such as iCloud, dropbox, OneDive that will permit you to share a link with us. | |
| Q. | What's the best format for your photographs? | |
| A. | JPG (JPEG) is the most common format. This format does exhibit loss in quality in order to reduce file size. Try and save the photos in "best quality" or "highest" resolution. I can handle most file formats, so if you do not have JPG, send them in any format convenient to you. | |
| Q. | What's the best format for text ? | |
| A. | Easiest way is to save text as a pdf, offered by most scanners. GIF format also works well. JPG format gives poor results and is not recommended. | |
| Q. | Should the photos be accompanied by details? | |
| A. | Yes. Please indicate the year the photo was taken, where and if possible, people in the picture. | |
| Scanning Photos | ||
| Q. | I'd like to scan some photos and send them to you. What size and resolution do you need? | |
| A. | Scan best quality resolution, 16 million colours(32 bit), or 256 shades of gray for black and white. When saving JPG files, please try not to use more than about 15% compression. (Highly compressed JPG files give poor results and I cannot recover the quality). | |
| Q. | My original picture is fairly dark. Should I adjust the brightness on the scanner? | |
| A. | No! Once you alter the save a scanned image, we have no way to undo it. What looks good on your monitor may not look good on ours, or the web. Please do not manipulate or touch-up the scanned images . Set the scanner to auto-exposure to provide the optimum reproduction of the original.. We have good tools to do any adjustments, so I'll do all that at our end. | |
| Q. | I don't have a scanner? | |
| A. | - Download an
app to your smartphone that turns it into a scanner - Find a friend who's got a scanner - Find a retailer who will scan - Take a picture with a smartphone or tablet. The latest Android and Apple phones have very high resolutions cameras. |
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| Q. | What's the best way to scan a photo with a smartphone? | |
| A. | Make sure you have adequate lighting and that the photo is not curled, but is flat to the camera. Try to take the picture directly above the photo so as not to create an elongated perspective. Avoid casting a shadow over your work surface. | |
| Q. | How do I scan panoramic pictures? | |
| A. | -You can use
the panoramic feature of your smartphone camera. You may have to
pin the panoramic photo on a wall to get the results you are looking
for. - If you are using a scanner, scan the panoramic in segments. Email the individual pictures to us. We will "stitch" them together. Please ensure that the segments OVERLAP. This will allow us to optimize the stitch and will avoid missing anyone off the picture. Also, please ensure that the individual segments are aligned. It's difficult to get a good stitch if the segments are not parallel. Sliding the panoramic picture along a straight edge (e.g. ruler taped to the scanner) does the trick |
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| Q. | I don't want to send my valuable pictures through the mail. How can I get them into the album? | |
| A. |
- Bring them along to the next Whittingehame reunion. We are usually
have access to a scanner on site. - Get a picture made of the picture. Most photographic stores have the capabilities to do so. The reproductions are not as good as the original, but fairly close. - Photocopy. Some of the larger commercial photocopying outlets can produce acceptable duplicates. |
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| Q. | I'll send you the pictures, but how long do you need to hang on to them? | |
| A. | Very little time. I can scan a dozen pictures in an hour and have them back in the mail to you the next day. | |