It would be very useful and a big time saver if there were a way to do a bulk upload of the yearbook photos (the photo for the upper fright corner of each classmates profile).

I have ~270 classmates, and it's going to be a big job just to get these scanned, then a lot more work to do the repetitive task of uploading. And there are even larger class sizes.

My job is automation which might explain why repetitive tasks bug me so much, but it sure seems like there should be a way to come up with an "Easy Button" for this.

Yes, it would be nice but depending on the number of classmates per page in your yearbook, scanning doesn't take terribly long. Maybe you've tried this but I found that scanning whole pages of the yearbook and then cropping out each person from that page was fairly easy.

I scanned, optimized (photoshop), cut and uploaded over 650 yearbook photos which took some time but still was very doable. I got into a rhythm one weekend and just knocked 'em out. I also realized that not every person had a yearbook photo, so I created a placeholder image for them.

What you suggest is also doable but would require some software to be developed and would put the onus on the user to create a matching list of members and photo set where each person in the spreadsheet that goes into the database on the site refers to the exact filename for each image on the user's computer. And then there'd need to be a bulk upload. I wonder what the level of support for that might be with a user group as disparate as this? It sounds easy, but having done this sort of thing in my day job with professional tools that users here don't have, that ease can be deceptive.

Still, it's sure worth exploring.

It is worth exploring, agreed, but I have to be honest, there are hundreds of issues on the task list that I would have to give more priority to than bulk senior photo uploads. Although it's a perfectly valid recommendation.

Tom is right though, there's more than meets the eye to this. Plus it's a task you only have to do once. Maybe do 10 a day until done.

The upcoming community photo gallery feature will have a bulk photo upload feature.

I do automation programming myself, and understand the problem of prioritizing enhancements (and finding time for enhancements). I have to do this in my own work based on the expected time for me to implement a solution compared to the benefit in time savings and convenience for users. It's the old cost/benefit situation, we can't always afford what we want.

I'm speculating that the paths for these images (and much of the page html code) is generated dynamically server side based on a back-end database lookup, and if so the problem becomes one of associating each image in the bulk upload with the correct member_id row. I can see lots of challenges in that task.

Wow! And I thought I had it bad uploading the photos for my class! I won't complain anymore since we are only 132 people. I feel bad for you folks with hundreds of classmates!

Vicki

1285.......... graduates, that is. There are more if you count the NON grads.......
But, I will get it done........ after we are up and running....
it's too cool NOT to do it!

I'm playing with a firefox plugin called iOpus iMacros. I was able to record the uploading of a couple images and think I can get the whole list uploaded that way. It will be tricky, and I'll be building the iMacro code in Excel so that the list of classmates and my system image paths match up. I'll let you know how it goes.

Might be helpful if those individual photos had a naming pattern that matched the class members' names.

I chose lastname_firstname.jpg. It helped somewhat in the manual uploading of images because when I clicked on PHOTO in the Classmate Management area, I was already in the folder of all 550 images and I could just start typing the last name and it would either bring up the only name [chidester, for example] or a short list of people I could then choose the right one from [smith for example]

Our class list was uploaded with middle initials if we knew them. So if CC were to create some sort of system to allow you to FTP or upload a folder full of images, you'd need to have an exact match (all lower case) with the class member file field such as lastname_firstname_i.jpg.

A tip on converting scanned yearbook pages of senior pictures to individual images of class members. I wish there was a way to create a crop box with the same height-width proportions, but I don't know what it is.

So I just eyeballed it using the crosshairs and dragged from upper left to right, adding a bit of white space around the actual photo. Our yearbook names were right under the photos so I included that in the crop.

I copied that selected area, created a NEW image window. In PhotoShop, this window is automatically the size of the pending copied image.

You type the name the image right then and then paste it into the space. Here's the important step: Set the HEIGHT on each of those to the same standard. The width isn't as important and it will be adjusted automatically. But by setting the height the same for all, when you insert pictures of classmates side-by-side on your webpages, they will look much better if they are the same height rather than the same width.

Then save the image.

One trick I used was the browser search function. When on the Manage Classmates/Edit.Enter Classmates page, use the browser FIND function and search for the classmate you are working on. After you add the photo, just press the SEARCH AGAIN key and you will be on the same page of classmates that you were previously. (I used FireFox, the search again is the F3 key)

This works good if you are uploading classmates alphabetically.

John Chidester wrote:

I used the same naming technique as John (no initials though), and I use Picasa to manage my photos, so when I cropped a classmates photo, I just used a "canned" standard size - 5x7 photo ratio. When I exported the cropped image, I set the output to the smallest (320 pixels high) which is more than sufficient for the website. So all our profile pictures are standardized. After exporting a photo, you can do a recrop and just move the crop window to the next classmate and repeat. After the page was done, I'd repeat the process on the next yearbook page, which I scanned all at the highest resolution my scanner could provide.

We have a 3 year reunion group and I did around 600+ or so classmates over the course of a week or so, and I got into a rhythm. Subsequent to that, I've used the same technique to pull pre-grad pictures from previous yearbooks for those who for whatever reason, missed getting a grad picture taken. Again, the "workflow" allowed me to standardize the photo proportion & size with a few exceptions where the source picture was too small to yield more than the 320 pixel dimension.

Success!

Using this Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3863

And following this example:
http://wiki.imacros.net/Demo-Loop-Csv-2-Web

I recorded the entry of a few Yearbook pictures and combined that into the attached iMacro code.

I made a csv file (imageload.csv) that had a single column with no header of the complete path and filename of the yearbook photo. The list of photos has to match your already existing class list exactly. As it just clicks the add button and pastes the next photo path. I made a "Not Available" photo to fill in for classmates who didn't have a photo so I didn't mess up the order.

Now if I could have only automated the scanning, cropping and naming of the yearbook images!

That's quite remarkable, good for you!

Oh to be young and smart again! Great job, Clark! I looked at the files and the links and I must say it was brilliant -- all 'greek' to me -- but brilliant, still. I'm sure all your work will be helpful to others.

How many years of free service does that get me?

Only 1. Hey now, if we give you more than that we lessen your incentive to keep doin' cool stuff like that.

Thanks!

OK folks! I'm subscribed, so reply here to let me know if you need help with the method I described above!

Keywords: bulk auto automatic automated upload yearbook image senior photo batch macro

You can also extend your subscription with the Refer A Friend program. Each time you refer a friend and they create a website and subscribe, you get $50.00 (almost the same as six months free).

I have about 30 photos to upload to Photo Gallery (I'm new to PG). I've searched questions in the Help Forum, but there are literally 100s & none so far tell me how to upload many photos at once. I've been thru the instruction pages, too, & can't find anything on that topic. Help!

Hold down your control key while clicking the photos you wish to upload. Or to select a continuous group of photos, hold down your Shift key while clicking the first photo, keep it depressed and then click the last photo. All photos in between will also select for upload. Then just click the Upload button.

Did that "Bulk Classmate Photo Upload" feature get into the product?

I have one classmate willing to scan/crop/paste into Class Creator...what's the best way to be efficient with the site?

There is no bulk upload of yearbook photos in the system. You just need to take it one classmate at a time. Or divide out the work among different classmates to make it easier on you.

Hi Eric,
We have all been where you are... ADDing senior photos. Three years ago, I added the senior (yearbook) photos one by one to my class site in one sitting - it went by fast. I just started adding yearbook photos to a class on my alumni site but this time, it is all last names beginning with A; check. Next I'll do the names beginning in B and so on. It may seem like a big task, yet you will get to the end.

Kyle Erickson wrote:

So this is definitely an improvement that new people will really appreciate. Sure, the rest of us did this in the stone age way, but there really are solutions to make this task flow much faster.

I suggest that CC take a bit of time to make this task easier. Yes there are easier ways to associate pictures with names vs current design.

For example, automatically advance to the next alphabetical name (without a photo) vs having to select another name. Once one photo is uploaded, it advances to the next name asking for that photo and so on. Put in "skip" option if a picture is missing and go to the next member.

Above is one that is relatively easy to do on on your end since it's merely concatenating what you have now automatically vs user manually selecting.

There are other solutions too, for example one tied to the original XL names, but that might be a tad harder to explain or maybe not?

Maybe someone can think of another way to improve this aspect of creating photos for profiles. If so, please jump in. This one is begging for help

I totally agree when you have multiple year site it's even worse. I have 582 classmates in my year alone and I have potentially 70 years to load. Even after having all the photo's in a file and subfile by alpha structure for easy access it still took over 10,000 clicks to get all those yearbook photo loaded. It's a brain numbing experience.

Are they any updates to the bulk upload of photos?

I have posted over 48,000 photos in the seven school sites we maintain and I sure would like some automation.

I have automated the name loading with Excel VB by importing the folder with all the .jpg photo files. It creates the template layout in a CSV format for upload.

However, the one by one upload is very tedious. Seven to ten clicks per photo.

I agree. We need some automation.

Recently CC did add the senior photo filter option (at my request) to show only classmates with no photo.
When I come across a classmate with no photo to load, I edit his name by putting lower case "z" in front of last name. This puts him at bottom of list so I can continue to work from the top of the list. I just have to remember to un"z" his name when finished.