The WetCanvas! Reference Image Library is a tremendous resource for aspiring and professional artists alike. What makes it even stronger is the fact that it is truly a collaborative effort. Everyone has old vacation photos lying around.  Photos of old friends, family, pets, homes, buildings, vacation slides, etc. Break 'em out - give back to the community - it's easy! Read on...

In order to contribute to the reference library, you need a WetCanvas! community account (this is the same account system used in our message forums, so if've you already created an account there, you should be fine). If you do not already have a name/password set up, you can do that here. It's free, so why not? Second, there are a couple of rules. Not many, but they are important nonetheless. 1) Always provide a title, description and a few searchable keywords for your contributed images. The more descriptive you make things, the better it will be for everyone. Having 5,000 photos of old nondescript barns is not our goal here. Look at the image carefully - what "jumps" out at you? A keyword list of "old red barn stormy sky" is a heck of a lot more useful than "red barn". 2) Please upload your images into the appropriate category. Folks, this is critical. Granted, some images could easily fit into more than one category, for example, the barn image described above could be categorized in the general barn category as well as potentially the collection of storm photos. However, the aforementioned image would certainly not belong in the "Country Churches" category (lol!). Use your best judgement.  If the image could fit in more than one category, ask yourself the question - "What in the image jumps out at me the most? What is the center of interest or the dominant element?". If you follow rule #1 above, folks will find your "barn" even if it is in the "storm" category, as it will have the word "barn" in the keywords. 3) Don't "force" a category fit. If you have an image that you are dying to put in the library, but can't seem to find the right category, don't just "take a guess" and put it some arbitrary category. You can still upload it. You can put it in your personal "member's galleries" section - which contains all images that you've uploaded, including the ones in other categories, or, you can put it in the "base" directory of a category that makes the most sense. For example, if you have an image of a "widget", and a "widget" is a type of building, but in the "Buildings" category, there isn't a subcategory for "widgets", just upload it into the base "Buildings" directory. We can always create new categories if your images warrant it.  No biggie! In fact, we encourage category suggestions. The bottom line here is we have to keep the library somewhat policed and organized so that it will continue to be a valuable resource for all to use and enjoy. 4) Only upload images that you own, or know for a fact is in the public domain. Obviously, we want to refrain from uploading images that are known to be under copyright protection. If in doubt, post a message in the Site Discussions forum. 5) Don't crop or scale images to reduce their size! In the old system, we encouraged people to do this, however, the new system has some special features for managing large images. Thumbnails (small, preview-sized images) are generated for you automatically. And if your image is large enough, we also generate a "medium-sized" image, giving you a total of up to three (3) levels of image sizes for people to view. The benefit behind the larger images is that they will contain more detail, and will likely be more helpful to others looking for "just the right reference image" for a project. Some digital cameras and scanners can store images in uncompressed mode - don't do this, though. These types of images can be several megabytes in size (each!). 250-500K is a good rule-of-thumb in terms of size for your images, but if they are bigger, oh well, upload 'em anyway. :)