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Questions:
1. What settings should I use while scanning my pictures? Here’s what our settings look like:
As you can see on the site, these settings make the scanned images look really life-like and authentic. It is recommended to use these same settings, in order to make all scanned images appear to have the same quality. There are a lot of different programs for scanning images. We cannot tell how to set these setting in the program you are using because we don’t know what program that is. We can only tell you that even the most basic image-scanning program will most likely allow you to change these settings. So look around in some of the menus that the program provides. You’re bound to find what you’re looking for. And always check if the program didn’t change the settings back to its default settings when you start the program again. This can save a lot of time and irritation. We’re speaking out of experience here, folks! When you have scanned the pictures, please save them as .tiff-files. This is the regular scanned images format. A lot of image-editing applications support this format. It is possible to scan several pictures at one time. On our scanner (HP ScanJet 5p flatbed) we did 4 pictures at a time. Your .tiff’s now contain four scanned photos in one. With the image-editing tool you can separate these pictures by selecting an area of the tiff, which contains one picture and then saving that selection. 2. What settings should I use for formatting my pictures after having scanned them? Firstly, we want the pictures to be in the JPEG format. This is because we have an automated installation of uploaded files, and it only handles this format. So when saving the image, please go to File > Save as and select “JPEG(*.jpg,*.jpe)” as format in the “Save As” dropdownbox. Here’s an example taken from Adobe Photoshop 5.0:  Secondly, there are two different-sized versions of each image on the site. There is very small sized version, used as thumbnail, and a larger version, used as the actual picture. We want you to provide us with the large size version of your picture. We want that picture to be a specific maximum size, because of download time restriction (ie we want you guys and every other visitor to be able to see the picture without having to wait 1, 2 or three minutes for it to finally appear on your screen). 3. How do I change the settings of my scanned image to comply with the image settings of the site? We used a program called Adobe Photoshop to change the size, colourtype and format of our images. We’ve based this helpfile on Photoshop, so if you are using another program things might work a bit different. We’ve used only the most basic of instructions one can expect from a photo-editing application. If you can’t figure it out, try the built-in help file by pressing F1, or try asking someone who might now how to do it. Paint, however, will NOT do the trick! Recommended applications are Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. Open the .tiff image by going to File > Open. Select TIFF (*.TIF,*.TIF) from the “Files of Type” dropdown menu. Browse to the directory where the .tiff files are stored. Select one of the files and click “Open”. Make sure that the image mode is RGB by going to Image > Mode and selecting RGB (if not already selected). Go back to the opened tiff-file and make a selection of one of the images in the tiff-file by clicking on the top-left corner of one of the scanned photos in the tiff-image and dragging to the bottom-right corner of that same photo. Make sure you are using the selection tool for this action. Remember, there’s always Edit > Undo !! Now press Ctrl-C or go to Edit > Copy to copy the selected area. Open a new, empty image by pressing Ctrl-N or going to File > New. Now press Ctrl-V or go to Edit > Paste to paste the copied selection into the new image. In Photoshop, make sure that there is only one layer, by going to Layer > Flatten Image. Now it’s time to save the file. Go to File > Save as and select JPEG (*.jpg,*.jpe) in the “Save As” dropdownbox in the now appeared window. Enter a name for the image, for instance “photo1.jpg”. Make sure the name of the image is unique, otherwise you’ll be overwriting another image. The program will probably prompt you if that is about to happen. Read those messages, don’t just click through them. You have now saved a picture as a jpeg, exactly how we want it to be. Repeat this process for all the pictures you have scanned.This will probably take a while, Ewout did his 148 pictures in little over two hours. Make sure you take the time for this, because it has to be done right! Good luck! 4. How do I compress (ZIP) my pictures? You can compress your images using a program called WinZIP. This program is shareware, so you can download it for free from the internet if you don't have it installed on your computer yet (See http://www.winzip.com to download evaluation version). To compress (ZIP) your photos follow the next steps:
5. How do I upload my pictures? Now this is a simple one! Ewout and Marc have done almost all the work for you (nice guys, eh?). All you have to do is zip your images, 10 or less in each zipfile. For each zipfile you’ll have to go through these simple steps:
Once you have clicked the Upload-button, a window will pop up, giving you some information about the progress of the overall progress. It is of utmost importance that you do not close this window until you see "You can now close this window". When the upload has completed, our server will extract your ZIP-file, create smaller images and thumbnails and create entries in the database. This takes a couple of minutes so please be patient. After all this is done, you will be able to enter comments to your photos. You will see one of the photos you have just uploaded. You can add (funny) comments, categorize the photo and enter information about who is on it. This part is particularly important because it helps the search functionality built into the site. Please follow all instructions on screen and be as complete as possible. After clicking the “Save” button on the bottom of the screen you will see the next photo and will be asked to do the same as with the first photo. You will have to do this for each photo you have uploaded to the site. You have now uploaded photos to the Sardine Machine website. Thank you for adding to this site! You can browse through other people's photos or, of course, upload more photos. 6. What happens during the upload? First of all, your file is sent to our server. Once it has completely arrived, it will be extracted by the server. After this a smaller version and a thumbnail will be constructed from your uploaded photos and the names of the photos will be added to the database. After this, you will be redirected to a page where you can add comments and information for every picture uploaded. (See Q7: What are the guidelines for deploying my photos?) 7. What are the guidelines for deploying my photos? After you uploaded photos, you will see the following screen:
8. I, nor my friends, family or colleages have a scanner, what should I do? Okay, so you don't know *anyone* with a scanner? In this case you can do one of the following things:
9. I've got a s-l-o-w connection to the internet, isn't there an other way of getting my photos on the site? Nope, there's not unless you had your photos put on CD-ROM or PhotoCD. But you don't really need a fast connection to the internet if you want to upload your photos. Listed below are a couple of tricks to get your photos uploaded over a dialup-connection:
10. What rules apply if I object to a photo being on the site? If you want to object to a certain photo on the site, you need to have credits. You get credits by uploading photos to the Sardine Machine site. For every picture you upload (not every zip-file, every picture) you get half a credit. This means that by uploading two pictures you can object to one picture. After submitting, Ewout and Marc are notified of your request for objection. They then review the request and grant or deny. If you have a good enough reason and enough credits, your request is almost sure to be granted. After their evaluation, either Ewout or Marc will sent you an email notifying you of the outcome. Requests for objections with reasons like "I'm having a bad hairday here" or "I look ridiculous on this picture" will automatically be denied. 11. Why are Will and Jesse on every page? Now this is a very simple question. We like the picture, it fits in the colourscheme of the layout and, also very important, it fits perfectly into the area we needed a background image for.  |
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) or is it portrait (
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