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Genealogy Home Page Tutorial

Genealogy Graphics and Clip Art



Graphics

There are many varieties of graphics that can be added to enhance a genealogy home page. Family photos, maps and pictures of original documents can make your family history come alive.

The key to designing an outstanding web site is to balance the number and type of graphics with content. Keep in mind a visitor to your site wants to view your pages as quickly as possible. If the graphics take to long to download, you take a chance he or she may leave before your content (which is the reason you want the visitor there) is viewed. After you have added the graphics to your webpage, be sure to first clear your cache to see how fast your web page loads with your graphics for a new visitors.

When choosing a background, be sure the color font you choose is still readable.

Genealogy Graphics

The following are collections of genealogy graphics. These collections include sets (matching backgounds and icons), backgrounds, icons and clipart. Be patient when you visit these pages. Graphic pages take a while to download.

To copy graphics: Place your mouse cursor over the graphic. Click the RIGHT mouse button. Choose 'save image as' from the popup menu. Save to your computer. It is best to create a new folder called Web Graphics to store all your new icons. Upload (using EZUpLoader on GeoCities) or ftp to your web page.

Once uploaded to your web page, refer to HTML Goodies - Graphics or Create it 101 - Images for HTML instructions to add the graphic to your web page.

To activate a background on your web page, go to Create It 101 - Backgrounds

And for further image manipulations, go to Create It 101 - Basic HTML

If you have chosen a background color or background image for your web site, you may want to use transparent GIFs for any graphics you place on the page. Otherwise, any background color (usually white) in your graphic will show up and ruin your lovely graphic! Transparent images are easy to make--an excellent tutorial can be found at HTML Goodies -transparents

General Graphics and ClipArt

A wide variety of backgounds, icons, clipart and animated graphics. Also banner and button generators.

Family Photos

You can make your family history come alive if you add a virtual photo album. Keep your photo album simple, quick to load, and interesting! If you have a brief biographical text, use that with your photo.

GIF formatted graphics are the generally known as the universal web graphic format, but JPEG graphics tend to be smaller, thus loading faster. Most browsers now support JPEG graphics as well as GIFs.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your photos sizes to 30k or less. If you have a very large photo which must be large to be viewable, use a thumbnail of the graphic in your web page, and make the thumbnail a link to the larger graphic. That way people can view the larger image only if they desire to. A tutorial on thumbnails can be found on the HTML Goodies page at HTML Goodies - thumbnails.

To get a photo or other image onto your web page you'll need it scanned or otherwise digitized. You can use a flatbed or handheld scanner, a digital camera (to take a picture of the photo), or send the item off to one of the many digitizing services.

Once you have your image scanned, you will need to convert it to a graphic format that will be recognized by web browsers. GIF and JPEG graphics are the most common. GIF has the advantage of being able to become what's known as transparent, while JPEGs are on the whole smaller and thus faster loading.

Whether you have your picture scanned professionally or you do it yourself, you may want manipulate the image. Some very old photos are faded, or were very dark when the photo was shot. Using a graphics program such as Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop (see below), you can change the colors, the brightness, contrast, shadows, soften or sharpen the picture, crop it, repair it, and any number of things.

Graphics Programs

One of the most widely used graphics program is Jasc's Paint Shop Pro. What can you do with this program? For starters, you could scan your photos (with a scanner, or course) and retouch them, crop them, resize them or add borders or decorative frames. You can repair old family photos and erase torn edges, creases, and spots. You can combine two photos or erase a person from a photo. You can create your own graphics surprisingly easily. You can change a .gif image to a .jpg image. The list is endless.

Paint Shop Pro:






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