What We'll happily archive any photograph you send us that includes faeries who've died; we hope to post them someplace on the Web, hopefully soon. They won't get any fancy processing for the time being, until there are more volunteers -- but at least they'll be accessible and safe from physical damage. We especially are looking for scanned pictures we can crop to make a couple of thumbnail images for each person. Aren't these examples nicer, and more recognizable, than just a name? Don't give up if all you have is a newspaper clipping; it's surprising how well those can be cleaned up! (This black-and-white example was scanned from the Bay Area Reporter.) No scanner? See below. How Quick summary: we recommend tiff, RGB, 200 dpi (or up to 300). Although we'll take anything we can get, a few details can make a huge difference in the quality of your result. It's worth taking a few minutes to figure them out! After all, this will be the version of your photograph that'll last the longest, and will be available to the most people.

Questions? Confused? Email us at (It'll be helpful if you can tell us what software you have.) fey-ancestors2 at pobox dot com.

Format is important. Most scanners are set to store in JPEG if you don't specify otherwise; this gives a nice-looking first version of the picture, but causes odd glitches and loss of quality when the picture gets manipulated and adjusted. (You've probably seen photos on the Web that suffer from this; strange noise where there are edges.) Most photos benefit from some adjusting, so this becomes a problem.

So when saving your scan, set the file format to TIFF (or any of the other "lossless" format, e.g. Photoshop or PDF). Most pictures scan well at 200dpi, though a small print might benefit from 300dpi. Greyscale is fine for black-and-white (unless there are stains that show up in color); otherwise, use RGB.

Fancy stuff: If you absolutely have to scan to JPEG for some reason, use the highest quality setting when saving.
If you want to help out and are comfortable with adjusting photos, our thumbnails are 130w x 165h jpeg, high quality. Please do include the whole picture as well. Halftone newsprint? I get excellent results with a Gaussian Blur.

Sending
Email with big attachments sometimes doesn't get through. So if you send pictures this way, please also send a separate short note to say they're coming. We can also make other arrangements for delivering large files (e.g., ftp).

No scanner? We'd be happy to scan your pictures here, and return them promptly. Please contact us before putting them in the mail, so we can make sure they stay safe! (We suggest a photo mailer or a sturdy envelope with heavy cardboard, marked Photos Do Not Bend. Postage: there are new, complicated rules for non-machinable mail.)

Referrals
If you know of pictures that somebody else has, please let us know so we can put them on our list — and maybe we can arrange to get their pictures scanned.

Seeking
We'd love some nice graphics for these pages. Do you have a photo of the Memorial Altar at Wolf Creek, for example? And I'm looking for any photos of Gryphon Blackswan.

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