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	GUIDE TO THE WOODWARD PORTRAIT EXPLORER
	Easy to use touchscreen system The Woodward Portrait Explorer has been designed with all Gallery visitors in mind. Anyone can start exploring the Gallery's collections simply by touching one of ten 21 inch screens in the IT Gallery, which when not being used by a visitor will display a changing sequence of portraits. No computer skills are required and no use is made of a real keyboard, mouse or other device.
	Different ways of exploring the collections A main Contents screen indicates the nine main ways in which visitors can explore the collections. Visitors can find out about the people associated with a portrait - the sitter in a portrait or the artist of a portrait by their name, a sitter's profession or group with whom a sitter or artist may have been associated. Alternatively they can study certain portraits in focus, explore the collections by types of portrait or with the help of a timeline, or listen to video interviews with artists.
	Exploring by name of sitter or artist Very simple on-screen prompts can help visitors explore the Gallery's collections, but the whole system is very intuitive. Looking for a certain sitter or artist is as simple as touching the letters of a surname using the on-screen keyboard. As visitors type more of the surname of the person they are interested in, they are informed about how many possible matches have been found.
	Selecting the sitter or artist At any time touching a 'show people' button will then reveal the names of the sitters or artists matching the surname or part of the surname typed in using the on-screen keyboard. At any stage there is a 'Back' button that will take visitors back to the previous screen, where they could change or modify the name of the person they are interested in. Touching the name of a sitter or artist will then lead visitors to more information about the sitter or artist.
	Exploring sitter and / or artist information Once visitors have chosen a sitter or artist, biographical information is displayed, followed by thumbnails of portraits of the sitter and / or by the artist selected. Many biographical entries have highlighted names, which if touched, lead the visitor to information and portraits of another sitter represented in the Gallery's collections. Sitters or artists well represented in the Gallery's collections have a 'More' button when all the information can not be contained on just one screen.
	Exploring one portrait Touching any thumbnail on the main part of the screen leads to a screen where the portrait of the sitter or by the artist can be explored in more detail. The portrait is presented on screen as large as it can be in its entirety, and there are buttons or tabs to the side of the image that allow the visitor to choose different paths of interest.
	Magnification of portraits A magnify tab presents each portrait in greatest detail. Only a portion of the whole portrait is shown at one time, and there are navigational arrows presented at the bottom of the screen to move to a different detail. Alternatively a small white square appears superimposed over a section of a thumbnail of the whole image, with the highlighted section relating to the detail being viewed in the main body of the image. Visitors can drag this square round the thumbnail or touch another section in the thumbnail to view a different detail.
	Information about the portrait The most well known portraits have captions that have been specifically written by curators at the National Portrait Gallery about that portrait.
	Entries from The Concise Dictionary of National Biography In addition to the Gallery written biographies about sitters and artists, there are more detailed biographies on nearly 4,000 of the 8,300 different sitters and artists presently represented on the Portrait Explorer . These have been reproduced from The Concise Dictionary of National Biography, with the kind permission of Oxford University Press.
	Additional information Some portraits have additional tabs which allow visitors to explore other aspects of interest. Companion portraits can be seen side by side. Other tabs allow visitors to see the front and back of medals, preparatory studies or sketches for a final portrait or link to other related portraits.
	Archival documents The Gallery has made available to the public hundreds of archival documents not normally on display to the public. These are in the main letters from sitters or artists or their descendants to the Gallery that provide visitors with a different insight into the portrait being viewed.
	Who's who in a portrait Visitors are able to identify who is who in over 300 group portraits by touching the head of a sitter or the name of any sitter listed underneath the image of the portrait. A white square frame is superimposed over the head in the main image and an enlarged detail of that head appears to the right of the image. Touching the button below the detail leads to the screen with the biography and thumbnails of all other portraits of that sitter.
	Other ways of exploring the collections If a visitor does not wish to explore the collections by the name of a sitter or artist, there are a number of alternatives. Throughout its history the Gallery has acquired collections of portraits at the same time related in some way. For example visitors can see all of the caricatures in the collection of sitters represented inVanity Fair in the second half of the 19th century.
	Professions, groups and other groupings Alternatively visitors can search for sitters by certain professions, such as Literature and Writing, or groups, such as Bloomsbury or groupings, such as Rock and Pop musicians.
	Exploring with the help of a timeline Visitors can search by historical period with a Timeline feature from a menu divided up by reign from the 15th to the 20th centuries.
	Visitors can then see the major events of the reign and some of the portraits in the Gallery's collection from that period. Touching on any portrait in the Timeline allows the visitor to explore that portrait in more detail.
	Creating personalised tours of portraits on display Any portrait on display in the Gallery has an 'Add to tour' button on the screen for that portrait. Touching this button allows visitors to identify the precise location of the portrait in relation to the plan of the Gallery, and then build up a tour of the portraits they would like to see. When visitors have finished creating a tour, they can be printed out in colour for free. Each location is highlighted on a printed plan and a small thumbnail illustrated next to the plan with the room number in which it can be seen.
	Black-and-white and colour prints The Gallery controls the copyright in over 8,000 portraits represented on the system. For any of these portraits visitors can either choose to print out a free black-and-white copy of the main screen, or print out a label so that they can purchase a digital colour print from the shop using the Portrait Printer.
	Portraits in focus There are a dozen portraits in the Gallery's collections which have been singled out for special treatments on the Portrait Explorer. Some of the strengths of computer technology have been exploited to provide insights into the portraits that can not be easily provided through any other means.
	One of the most unusual portraits in the Gallery's collection is an anamorphic portrait of Edward VI. An animation shows how the distorted image of the king would have been visually corrected when viewing the portrait from an oblique angle to one side through the portrait's original viewing device. This viewing device has been reconstructed on screen, and the animation shows how the viewing device would have moved in and out of the slots in the back of the portrait, painted on panel.
	In the 1990s the Gallery acquired a miniature portrait of Charles I along with 17 semi-transparent mica overlays. These mica overlays are too fragile to handle, but when originally placed, one by one over the top of the miniature, told a different episode in the imprisonment and execution of the king. Animations are used which allow visitors to place representations of the mica overlays on top of the portrait miniature.
	The photograph of Christine Keeler on an Arne Jacobsen chair is one of the most well known photographs of the 20th century. This portrait focusses on contact sheets and allows visitors to see all the photographs of Keeler taken by the photographer Lewis Morley during the shoot.
	Video interviews The Gallery is very active in the commissioning of portraits, and the video interviews feature allows visitors to listen to artists explaining how painted, sculpted and photographic portraits in the Gallery's contemporary collection were realised.
	Visitors can select a particular artist or photographer of interest, then listen to the whole video interview, or touch individual questions that appear underneath the area in which the video portrait is played.

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