Images
You’ll want to have some images on your web site, of course.
Getting photos uploaded, at the right size and location is probably the place where most folks first run into trouble. Fortunately, WordPress gives us many choices here. You can use about any image management software to size and compress images: PhotoShop Elements, PhotoShop CS3, Adobe Lightroom, Paint Shop Pro (PSP) X2, and Google’s Picasa2. Of these, Picasa should be your first choice if you’re using a PC or Linux machine (not yet available on Mac). Why? Because it is blindingly fast, free, and simple.
For the last few years, I’ve been using Photoshop professional to create web photo galleries. The templates allow customizing the look of the resulting pages, and automatically resize the files to match the needs of the web site. The problem has been maintaining the galleries once created. I’ve gotten some very reasonable requests to add or delete a few photos, or change a title. I’d like the individual artists to be more involved in maintaining their web presence (and, I’d like to have time to do my own work!)
Enter Google’s Picasa2. This free software product is incredibly fast and convenient to use. It doesn’t have the full range of tools one might like, but might meet the need of most folks. The one glaring omission is the ability to fix perspective, especially on flat art photographed slightly off center.
Read the pages in this section (use navigation at right) to learn a little about Picasa and soon you can insert your own images and slideshows!