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How To - Preparing Titles and Details

About Titles

Titles are not required for any of our services but can provide some benefits you may like to take advantage of.

Titles can be used to provide On-Screen captions for "Computer Slideshows".

Titles can also be used to give meaningful names to the picture files on your "Basic Scanning Disks".  Descriptive names can be used to quickly locate specific pictures by searching the disk directory file name or partial file names.

All recent Windows variations support file names up to 250 characters.  Macintosh support for long file names is much more recent and,  as yet, is  not well supported in system utilities nor Macintosh software.  However our supported CD directory formats limit file names to 30 characters for Macintosh and  64 characters for Windows systems.  Although longer titles can be truncated for use as filenames on your "Basic Scanning Disks"  it is best to try to work within these limitations.

About Details

Details can only be used with our "Computer Slideshow" service. 

Details provide for a date and a longer description of each image.  The title and details for each picture can be "popped up" during a "Computer Slideshow" by selecting the "DETAILS" button on the slideshow menu.

Providing Titles and Details

 If your order includes several slideshows you should prepare one document per slideshow.
Up to four "items" can be supplied for each picture.  These are: 

  • Picture number,  
  • Picture Title, 
  • Picture Date and 
  • Picture Description.

If you are only interested in the titles facilities  just code number and title.

There are several ways that you can prepare documents to provide us with  title and detail information about your pictures. 

Paper

The first method is a simple list on paper (preferably typed).  

This option is more expensive that electronic submission and the difference is reflected in in the costs generated by our Cost Estimator.  

Word 2000

Our preferred method for receiving titles and details is as a Microsoft Word-2000 document.

If you use Word 2000 (or a compatible Word version) download this document to prepare your titles and/or details.   The document contains a simple Word table with one table row for each picture.  Simply tab from field to field filling in the data you go. 

Save the text file where you can find it later calling it something useful eg:
 "Holiday Slideshow Pics.doc".  

Excel or Works Spreadsheet

Simply enter the data into a worksheet with one row for each picture,  using up to four columns for the four items that can be entered for each.

Save the text file where you can find it later calling it something useful eg:
 "Holiday Slideshow Pics.xls".  

Delimited Text

Using a simple text editor (eg Notepad)  type in the data for each picture separating the items with a TILDE character (~) and pressing the return key at the end of each set of items.

Save the text file where you can find it later calling it something useful eg:
 "Holiday Slideshow Pics.txt".  

Entry Form

The following form can be used for entering small batches of titles and details.  To do this follow these steps:

  1. For each picture type  the information and press the ENTER button .
  2. After each group of pictures press the FINISH button.
  3. After a few seconds a new window should open with all the data laid out in an odd looking format.
  4. Start the simple text editing program that comes with your computer (eg for windows this is NOTEPAD)
  5. Select everything in the window that popped up in step 3 and paste it into the text editor.
  6. Save the text file where you can find it later calling it something useful eg:
     "Holiday Slideshow Pics 1 to 20.txt".  etc
  7. Shut down the window that popped up in step 3.
  8. Return to this window.
  9. If you have more pictures to describe,  press the RESET button and then set the picture number to the next picture in the batch you are working on.  Continue at point one. If you do not press RESET the new data will be added to that data already entered. This is not recommended.

We recommend small batches (perhaps up to 30 per batch) because this facility is not particularly robust and does it have any inbuilt backup to safeguard the data you have entered in the instance of power/system failure.  You may find you are comfortable entering larger batches.


Picture:
Title:
Date:
Description: