Getting Started

Here's how to get started with Albumatic:

1. First, you need your photos. If they're already in digital form and on your computer, that's fine... there's no pressing reason to move them from where they are. Albumatic can handle JPEGs (what most digital camera produce), BMPs, and TIFFs. If you need to scan in your photos and you have a scanner connected directly to your computer, hold off for now, because you can do that from within Albumatic.

2. Start up Albumatic and create a new Album, giving it a unique name (e.g., "First Birthday").
3. Add photos to the album:
   • If you already have them in digital form, use the Add button.
   • If you need to scan them in, use the Scan button. You'll be prompted to enter a file name.
4. After you've added one or more photos, Albumatic will build the album and show it to you in the preview window.
5. If you like the album, click the Publish To Web button to copy it to your Web site. You'll be prompted to enter some FTP information (server, login, password, and directory). For help in doing this, see FTP Setup.
6. If you want to change the album, here are some things you can do:
   • You can add or remove photos. Note that removing is quite safe—the actual file is not deleted.
   • You can re-order the photos. Just click on a name in the list and use the Up or Down button to move it.
   • You can edit a photo by double-clicking on it or with the Edit button. This will bring up the Photo Editing dialog box, where you can crop, reverse horizontally, rotate, or add a caption.
   • You can change album properties, such as the title or the sizes of the photos. See Changing Album Properties to learn how.
7. After you have a few albums, you may want to gather them into a library. That way when a user is viewing one album, he or she can easily click a link to get to another album. You might use this to link together several albums from the same vacation trip, for example.