Orkney Image Library

By popular request the area formerly known as Hoy in our Area categories has been changed to Hoy and Walls. I hope this meets the approval of the folk from Waas.

You could do that in the 60s appparently! Jim Eunson has posted a series of pictures from a scrapbook detailing this operation, and the first half have been uploaded to the public area of the site today. Come back tomorrow for the rest of these fascinating pictures!

I'm delving into pictures that have been bulk uploaded in the past, that I've held back to avoid swamping you with images that are similar all at once. They don't show up in the thumbnails below, which is strictly chronological by the date the pictures were submitted - so you might not see them. But you will if you use the Latest Additions button.

I'm often asked about how to improve or resize scanned pictures, and can now offer the following advice that anyone can try, as the software to do it is freely available online, and doesn't require anything to be installed.

If you haven't edited a picture before try this yourself and have a bit of fun. The following example looks at how to brighten up a faded picture.

This is the kind of thing you would do in Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro, or Photo Plus etc. but many people do not have this on their computers, and the programs are rather daunting at first anyway. However, there is an excellent online photo and picture editing package called Pixlr, available at http://www.pixlr.com which is just the trick, and can can do picture resizing, cropping and a huge range of editing functions, and also handily has an express version which is far easier to use and can cover the basics very well.

To edit your picture-
1) Visit the link I've just given, and select Pixlr Express.
2) You'll be prompted to 'Open Image From Computer', so click that button and browse for the picture you want to edit on your computer. It will then open in Pixlr.
3) Select 'Adjustments' from the options on the left, which will expand to show what adjustments you can make.
4) 'Brightness and Contrast' are what you are after, so whap up the contrast a bit, then increase the brightness a bit to get something with an appropriate balance.
5) Experiment.
6) When you are happy with the picture click 'Apply' then the 'Done' button at the bottom.
7) You'll be prompted to click 'Save' - do that, BUT SAVE WITH A DIFFERENT FILENAME OR YOU WILL OVERWRITE YOUR ORIGINAL. Work with a copy of the image from the start if this is a concern.
8) Bob's your uncle.

A whole new world of interesting activity has now been opened...!

Cheers,
Steven