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From Chattanooga Grotto

If you would like to submit something to the Grotto's digital archives, please do so! We can store any kind of file you want, videos, songs, pictures, word documents, pdf's, anything! If you'd like to contribute something, let Jonny know, he'll help you out :-).

If you're going to scan documents in, here are some general guidelines:

Required for ALL FILES

First off, you need to make sure you are allowed to share them! Don't put copyrighted material up here, unless you are the copyright holder and you are allowing the information to be shared. Once your stuff is on the internet, it's hard to control what people do with it. Keep that in mind.

Make sure you include the following with your file: Author(s), Title, Publisher, Year Published, ISBN, Magazine Name, pages, Short Description, Photographer, Names of People in Picture, Place Picture was Taken, Date Picture was taken, anything else you feel is pertinent. Obviously, not everything is going to apply. Use your judgement.

Pictures

If you would like to share pictures so that people can print them off, scan them at at least 600 dpi. Any lower than this, and the picture will lose a lot of detail and look fuzzy when you print it.

If it's a black and white picture, make sure you select that option when you scan it. The picture will take up significantly less space that way.

If you edit your pictures in Photoshop or some other picture editing software, make sure you don't save them as a JPEG or GIF when you are working on them! Every time you save a JPEG or GIF, your computer does special magic to shrink the file size down. You lose a little bit of quality in the image each time this happens. If you edit and save and edit and save, you lose more and more quality. It's like photocopying a photocopy.

The following are all safe to use for editing:

• PSD (Photoshop favorite)
• XCF (The GIMP's favorite)
• BMP (Microsoft Paint's favorite)
• TIFF (my favorite)

Save a copy of them as a PNG or a JPEG before you get ready to send it here, however. PNG's and JPEG's save a lot of space.

Article/Documents/Text

If you would like to upload something that is predominantly text, such as an old TAGLine, please scan it at a minumum of 150 dpi. While text documents don't require as high a dpi as pictures do, they will still get fuzzy when you print them if the dpi is too low.

Again, if the document your are scanning is black and white, make sure you select that option in your scanning software.

Make sure you save these as a PDF.

Everything Else

If you don't care if something is fuzzy or small when you print it, scan it at 72 dpi. It will look good when displayed on a computer monitor at that resolution. If you try to zoom in on it though, it will be a little fuzzy.

You probably want to save these as a PNG or JPEG.

For More Information

The following link has a lot more information if you would like to know more: PDF Specifications