Images

The main thing to look for when choosing images for your web site is good composition and good lighting. Because our site template is fairly wide, we suggest uploading images that are 1500-2000px wide with a file size of less than 1.5 MB.

If you need images of campus or campus life, the Office of Strategic Communications maintains a collection in their Flickr account. The public side of this account is mainly commencement and some stock images of buildings. If you would like access to the full collection, please send your email address or Flickr account name to flickr@caltech.edu and ask to be invited to connect to our account.

All the images on your site can be managed from the "Images" link on the admin sidebar.

Adding Images

To add a new image, click on the "Add An Image" button in upper right corner of the admin interface. This will take you to a page that will allow you to choose one or more images from your computer - or drag and drop them onto the box at the top of the form. The Title, File, and Alt fields are required so before you can use the uploaded images, you will need to add a description of the image that can be used by screen readers. For tips on how to write good alt text, please read "Writing Useful Alt Text".

Some of our image display styles allow you to show an optional caption and photo credit so please fill in those fields if you have that information.

Editing Images

To edit an image, search for it using the search box at the top of the images page. The search service uses words in the title and tag fields. Once you see the image you want, click on it and you will be taken to an edit form that looks very much like the upload form above.

When editing an image you can replace the file associated with that image record. This means you can update images without having to update the pages on which they are placed.

Focal point

If the most interesting part of your image is not in the center, you may want to set a 'focal point' that will tell the systems automatic cropping mechanism which part of the image you always want to be visible. For example, in the image above, we have set the focal point/region to include the person's face so that any time we need a smaller version of this image, the crop will include the face and not just the man's jacket and tie.