Hello and welcome Kirsty and thank you for joing in.
We are fairly thinnly spread from all over the world (I am in NSW Australia, north of Sydney) but there a few Scots registered.
In terms of posting images, if you do not have an image editor (generally there will be bundled with your camera) you can download one of the following free tools:
Picasa from Google:
http://picasa.google.com/FxPhoto (basic edition is free, deleuxe is $USD44.95)
http://www.fxfoto.com/fxfoto_editor.htmPhotoScape:
http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.phpGIMP:
http://www.gimp.org/Here is a review of these and more (which rates PhotoScape is number 1)
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pixelbasedwin/tp/freephotoedw.htmNo doubt other members have their favourites and will let you know of their experiences. Photoscape is probably a good place to start as it has a simple interface...and you can always try others too.
Once you have set up one of these (just download and install) here are the basic steps to publishing on Light Art:
1. Make a copy of your original file. You want to always preserve your orignals untouched. So literally go copy & paste and it will duplictated.
So myphoto.jpg, will become copy_myphoto.jpg
2. Open your copy. If it looks good as it is you will want to resize to a maximum 1024 pixels on the longest side.
3. Now, are the blacks nice and rich and are the whites crisp? Without getting too fancy yet, you can adjust these a bit via contrast and brightness.
4. There are a lot of options at this point but these are the basic steps, so now just save the image.
Uploading.
Select the gallery tab at the top of the Light Art website
You can browse the galleries and see which one matches your subject. Click on the chosen gallery.
1. Go to the bottom of the page and select up load image.
2. A dialogue box will open where you can name your image with a short title and provide a few words of when, where, why.
3. Now select the browse button and navigate to the location where you saved the file.
4. When you click save, your image will upload and a new post is automatically created that contains your title, image and descrition and the data from your image file. This will appear on the discussion board under the section "Discussion by Gallery genre". This is where members will view your image and make helpful comments and suggestions.
You are equally enititled and encouraged to comment on the work of others, that's what this is all about. You will get to know quite a few people on a first name basis very quickly and many visit here at least once or twice each day. (Some need help, they are addicted
)
Each month we also run a theme challenge we ask members to post an image on a topic. Last month was 'portrait' this month is 'street photography'.
They always have their own gallery. The 'winner' of this just-for-fun comp is determined by the member comments and ratings on each image.
This is done from inside the gallery. So to vote, you go to the theme gallery make a comment and select from 1 to 5 stars. You shouldn't really vote for your own, but I suspect many do
and you can vote for more than person according to how your rate their images. Currently, until I run out of money, the winner gets a nice big print of there entry (or another image of theirs)
Hopefully that is enough to get you started. Enjoy!
