The Pictures Tab

You can assign digital photos to each individual and each family in your database. ChurchTrac also can display individual and family thumbnails on the General Information tab, which quickly puts a name with a face. Assigning pictures on the picture tab also makes it possible to print pictorial directories from within ChurchTrac.

To use pictures in ChurchTrac, you can either scan existing pictures, or take digital pictures. Here are some tips for getting the best results using the picture features in ChurchTrac:

• Most modern digital cameras take high-resolution pictures (based on the number of mega pixels). Make sure you “shrink” the resolution of the images you are using in ChurchTrac. There are several good, free software-based image resizing programs, including a good one from faststone.org. The picture features in ChurchTrac work best if you shrink the images to a resolution of 800x600 or smaller. It is not recommended to use images larger than this resolution. In fact, most have found that picture sizes of 400x300 work well in ChurchTrac without degrading image quality.
• Use .jpg (jpeg) or .bmp (bitmap) images. If you are unable to view jpeg images in ChurchTrac, contact technical support for a patch to correct this problem.
• All of the pictures that ChurchTrac uses must be stored in a single folder somewhere on your hard drive, or in a shared network folder that ChurchTrac has access to. Use the settings window (in the utilities menu) to specify the location of the folder that ChurchTrac will use for pictures.
• ChurchTrac also has the ability to synchronize photos between all your computers (a data sharing subscription is required). For this to work, each picture should be in jpeg format and have a file size of less than 100 kilobytes. The smaller the pictures, the faster the synchronization process will work.

Creating Picture Directories

After you have assigned a picture to each family (or individual), click on the “picture directories” button on the toolbar (this button is visible only when the Picture tab is selected on the people screen). The picture directories screen gives you several options, including the style of directory that you want to print.

Tip: One church has an annual “picture day” where dinner is served after the morning church service. Either before or after dinner, each family has an opportunity to have their picture made using a digital camera. These pictures are used in ChurchTrac and to create a pictorial directory using ChurchTrac built-in pictorial directory feature.

For more information on creating picture directories, see this knowledgebase article, or watch the video below.