Helpful tip on adding titles to photos

Buffalo.com photo by Bill Parker.

We've been kind of harping on the importance of adding titles to photos at MyBuffalo.com - it's a lot easier to find a photo if it's titled "Elks Club Street Dance" rather than "DSC445589.jpg" - and Darleen came up with a quick-and-easy way to do this if you're not crazy about cutting and pasting from a Notepad file as you upload your five photos at a time (sigh).

Here's her method:

If you open your images in batch process in Photoshop, you should get about however many to process at once.

Then, when you go to save, you get a different screen called Save options on that screen. The middle section shows File naming. There are 4 different boxes that you can string together if desired.

This is the process I used for my Glenn Colton images. I typed Glenn Colton in the first box then the second box chose 2 digit auto numbering, then let her run.

Yes, it doesn't look as neat and tidy as naming each one seperately because you get the .jpg at the end - however it's a whole lote better than img290.jpg.

NOTE: They will have to change their choices next time they save images as a batch again otherwise it will just continue with that numbering system. For example I didn't know that and my original titles for my macro flowers was glenn colton08. Strange name for a Black-eyed Susy.

Thanks, Darleen!

On posting descriptions with your photos, bulk uploading, and more

Hey photographers:

I originally wrote this in an email, and decided maybe it was something we all could enjoy...

When you post your MyBuffalo photos, you will see that there is a "Description" box where you can post a write-up. It doesn't have to win the Pulitzer! Just three or four sentences about the event - where it was, what it was about, maybe an amusing anecdote. No need to worry too much about it!

It will be a lot easier when the bulk uploader is done - and again, I'm expecting that literally any hour now. It's finished, in theory, but still needs some finishing touches.

As far as finding specific events - if the event was relatively recent, people will be able to go into the "Recent Photos" section and find them, but I think this is where tagging will be really key. You are able to be really specific with your tags in MyBuffalo, which was not the case in Spotted. My advice is to post as many tags as possible whenever you add your photos, because this will increase the power of the search tool.

Photo uploading instructions

Buffalo.com photo by Dave Marino.

It has come to my attention that the upgraded Spotted product has a slightly different method of uploading photos...here are instructions on how to get your We Spotted photos online.

1.) Go to www.buffalo.com/spotted. Make sure you are logged in!

2.) Go to the "We Spotted" section. Check the navigation bar (the red area beneath the tabs). Click on "Events I Can Post To."

3.) Find your event among the thumbnails. Click the "Create A Gallery" link. This will open a dialogue box that will allow you to fill in the pertinent info about your event. When you're ready, click "Add."

4.) This will take you to a blank page with just a single navigation bar. Click the "Upload Photos" option.

5.) You will now be taken to a page that our older interns will note looks remarkably similar to the old Spotted uploading tool (Spotted has apparently abandoned the Flash uploading tool in favor of our old friend Java). From here, the process should be pretty self-explanatory. If you don't see the uploader, you may need to update your Java settings - go to www.java.com to get the latest version of Java.

If you have any questions, please let me know.