How To... Make a photo album

Photo Albums are a great way for users to show off what they did on their holidays, their family pictures or even just some of their favourite things. 

To make a simple album is so easy to do, and can be done in just a couple of minutes.  It is also a great introduction to two features in The Grid 2: word lists and screen captures.

Word list auto content

You can make cells in The Grid 2 which show "auto content".  This means that they are filled in automatically from a list - in this case we are going to use a "word list", which is simply a list of words with pictures.

Each entry in our word list will be a photo for our photo album.

Screen captures

Screen capturing is a really easy way to get photos and other pictures into The Grid 2.  Simply get the picture on the screen (any picture - from a file, your digital camera, the internet...) and "capture" it with The Grid 2.

Making your photo album

Follow these instructions to make a photo album grid.

Step 1: Make a new grid

Let's start by making our grid.

• Press F11 to go into editing mode.
• Select the cell that you want to jump to your photo album.
• Select Jump Cell... from the cell options (on the left).
• Click on New Grid, type "My Photo Album" and click Ok.
• Select the new grid and click Ok.
• Press F11 again to stop editing.

You can now click on the cell to jump to the new grid we made.

Step 2: Set up the photo grid

Next we need to set up our new grid to display the photos.  First we create a large cell for displaying the photos (we need to be in editing mode for this, so press F11):

• Resize one cell to fill most of the grid.
• Select Auto content > Word List from the cell options.

Ok, now we need to make a cell that will move us through the photos.

• Select another cell.
• Click on Really Useful Cells from the cell options.
• Select More Autocontent.

We have now set up the photo gallery. All that remains is to add some pictures!

Step 3: Add some pictures

We're going to use the screen capture features to add some pictures to our photo gallery.

• From the menu at the top of the screen, select Auto content > Word list for this grid.
• Click on Add New Word.
• Type a description of the photo that you are going to add (e.g. "aunt bessy falling over").
• Click on Change Picture.
• Click on Screen Capture.

The Grid 2 will have dissapeared, and you will only have the Capture Picture window on the screen.  Move this window to one side, and find the picture that you wish to use.  It could be on a digital camera or from the Internet, but you should arrange that it is showing at about the size you want it to display in The Grid).  Once you have got your photo on the screen...

• Click on Start.
• Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to draw a box around the picture.
• Click Ok.

You can now add more pictures to the gallery by adding more words to the word list.

Step 4: View your gallery

Now you can view your photos!  They will appear automatically when you click on the More Autocontent cell.

Here's one we made earlier

There are some photo album grids included with The Grid 2, so you can see this in practise.

Open the user Dynamic Screen Starter and go to "Fun" and then "Picture Gallery".  Here are 3 picture galleries made just as described above.  Note how we used an groovy grid background to frame the images!

You can also download a sample Harry Potter photo album from our Online Grids website.