Tips on Searching the Photo Gallery (Obsolete)

[Bill Boehme]

NOTE: This information was written for the previous forum software (vBulletin with PhotoPost) so some of the details are no longer applicable.

I have been asked recently about searching the photo gallery. After thinking about it a bit, I had to agree that things aren't exactly intuitive so I have put together a brief tutorial with screen shots that, hopefully, will take some of the mystery out of the process. If anybody has any additional suggestions or questions, please post them in this thread.


The quickest path to get to the gallery search page is to click on the Gallery button at the top of forum pages as shown in the first figure below:



This opens the page shown in the second screen shot. If you want to peruse through the photo gallery in chronological or alphabetical order and aren't interested in keywords, then you can click on Member Galleries as shown below.



The page shown in the third screen shot opens after clicking on Member Galleries. There are several search options shown here. On the left you can select the number of photos to display per page. On the right, the drop down menu shows four different options for searching. In the center, you can click on a letter or number to show all photos from usernames beginning with the selected character. Also in the center is a simple keyword search box. You can also enter a username in the box, but the results seem to be somewhat sporadic.



More search options coming in the next post.

 

[Bill Boehme]

... gallery searching continued

... continuing on with search options for the photo gallery, the next screen shot shows the left side of the same window as shown in the second screen shot in the previous post. In the block labeled Search, there is a simple keyword search box and just below that is a link for doing an advanced search. In the Posting Calendar block, you can locate photos posted on a particular day by going to the month and then the day. This is OK for searching for photos recently placed in the gallery, but would be a slow process to scroll back to a particular date several years ago.



A more refined and powerful search can be made by using the Advanced Search feature as shown in the next screen shot. The advanced search allows you to use keywords, username, and date as well as indicating what and where to search.



As an example, when I use the search parameters shown in the screen shot above where I use my username and the keywords "box elder", the following result was returned.



If I were to click on the thumbnail image in the search results, it would take me to the gallery page for that photo which is a box elder vase.

This brings me to my next post topic about adding keywords to your gallery photos. Including keywords greatly improves the searchability of your gallery photos.

 

[Odie]

Bill.....I am continually right at the maximum disc space allowed for an individual AAW gallery. I have to delete photos every time I add new photos. I assume my deleted photos are no longer searchable......?

ko

 

[Bill Boehme]

Bill.....I am continually right at the maximum disc space allowed for an individual AAW gallery. I have to delete photos every time I add new photos. I assume my deleted photos are no longer searchable......?

ko

That is correct. When they are gone, they are completely removed from the database. An Admin might possibly have superpowers to restore deleted images, but I haven't seen any tools that allows me to do so.

 

[Gerald Lawrence]

That is correct. When they are gone, they are completely removed from the database. An Admin might possibly have superpowers to restore deleted images, but I haven't seen any tools that allows me to do so.

Bill this brings to mind a question. If photos are resized smaller does that mean we could post more photos? or is the disc space a number of photos limit?

 

[Bill Boehme]

Bill this brings to mind a question. If photos are resized smaller does that mean we could post more photos? or is the disc space a number of photos limit?

The forum rules on posting photos says that the limit is 10 MB per member (25 MB if you are an AAW member). The size limit for individual photos 250 KB (2 MB if you are an AAW member) and maximum pixel dimensions of 1920 pixels per side.

Check out the sticky threads at the top of the main forum index for the correct information. BTW, your question prompted me to check out the seldom read FAQs and I discovered some very old contradictory information dating back to when monitors were much smaller and memory and hard drives wasn't anywhere close to what it is today.

There a number of things that you can do to increase the number of posted images in the gallery. You could increase the JPG compression as well as do a "save for web" which strips most metadata from the image. Keep the physical dimensions of the image within reason. While a 1920 X 1920 pixel image looks impressive, I'm not sure that many monitors have the vertical dimension to show the whole image.

 

[Gretch Flo]

Bill-thanks for taking the time to do this!!!!!! Gretch

 

[R Henrickson]

It might be useful to make this a sticky, so that it remains visible.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Keywords, title, and description

Keywords are an essential ingredient in optimizing the searchability of your gallery images. While the search tool is effective in looking for words in the title and description, keywords provide a great way to categorize your turning and enables the search tool to improve the filtering of the search results.



The screen shot of the page for uploading gallery photos shows the fields for entering the title, description, and keywords. Note that the keywords field is more than just a little inconspicuous which is unfortunate considering its importance. When writing the description, it is a good time to tell us something about the turning beyond the obvious (like walnut bowl). You can even include how many times it flew off the lathe or how much time you spent looking for the bark that you thought was tight if you wish. An interesting story always adds interest to a turning.

Some suggestions for keywords are the wood name, type of finish (oil, poly, shellac, lacquer ...), basic category of turning (bowl, platter, sculpture, spindle, handle, spoon, spatula, dibble, dipper, vase, jar, hollowform, ball, sphere, frisbee, funnel, dish, dustcatcher, box, jewelry, hat), terms that further categorize the turning (calabash, carved, segmented, pierced, burned, textured, layered), inlaying and other filling (epoxy, Inlace, CA, clear, colored, turquoise, malachite, abalone, glitter, filings, coffee), terms to describe wood characteristics (spalted, punky, bark, fiddleback, curly, quilted, figured, burl, exotic, flame, crotch, reaction, feathering, inclusion, void, pith), and miscellaneous terms (acrylic, resin, paint, freeform, inside-out, dunno, FOG, FID). Please post other suggestions as I am having a senior moment ... actually, it's much more than a moment.

Thanks to Kelly Odell (AKA, Odie) for helping me with this list a couple weeks ago.

 

[Bill Boehme]

It might be useful to make this a sticky, so that it remains visible.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Bill Boehme]

I forgot to mention earlier that the forum software doesn't automatically know if you are a member of the AAW, so in order to have the privilege of greater storage space and larger images (in terms of file size, not pixel dimensions), you will need to send Steve Worcester a PM and include your AAW member number. There was a sticky about that, but it seems that several sticky threads were deleted during the recent maintenance update. I am sure that most AAW members have taken care of this long ago, but some new members may not be aware of the requirement.

 

[Jack Dohallow]

I sure want to thank you for making it easier to view all the past great work our members have done!

I sure appreciate the info

Have a great day