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Make a Photo Timeline

A photo timeline puts pictures in the order they happened, with a date and a caption beside each one. It is a good way to tell the story of a year, a child growing up, a house being built, a trip, or a family over several generations, because the gaps and overlaps between the photos are as visible as the photos themselves.

In Preceden, each photo belongs to an event. The event carries the date and the caption, and the photo is drawn on the timeline next to it.

1. Pick the photos that tell the story

A photo timeline works best with a small number of pictures, each marking a moment worth a place on the timeline. Preceden's own advice is no more than 10 events with images on one timeline: open Appearance > Recommendations on a timeline with more and it will say that too many images can make a timeline slow to load and sometimes cause PDF exports to fail. 6 Tips for Creating Timelines with Preceden covers the rest of that check.

That limit is on photos, not events. The events without a photo still fill in the story between them, so a timeline can have plenty of dates and a handful of pictures.

2. Add an event for each photo

Add an event for the moment the photo shows. A photo of a single day, such as a birthday or a graduation, only needs a start date. A photo that stands for a longer stretch, such as the years in a first house, can take an end date as well, and the event draws as a bar covering the whole period.

Preceden does not read the date stored inside a photo file, so you type the date in yourself. Your phone or photo library usually shows when each picture was taken. If you only know roughly, Preceden accepts a year on its own, such as 1994, or a month and year, such as June 1994, and you can check Approx. next to the date to mark it as an estimate. Supported Date Formats lists the rest.

Use the event's name as the caption and its Notes field, which accepts Markdown, for the longer story behind the picture.

3. Attach the photo

In the event dialog, open More Options and click Choose Image. You can upload a photo from your device, paste a link to one, search the web, or pick one you have already put on Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive or Dropbox. Before it is saved you can crop it, rotate it, or cut out a circle, which suits portraits. Add Images to Your Timeline walks through each step.

Each event can have one photo, up to 5MB. Larger pictures are resized to fit within 1000 pixels, so there is no need to shrink them first.

4. Organize with layers

Put different threads of the story on their own layers, such as one per person, one per place you lived, or one for the wider events of the time. Each layer can have its own color, so a reader can follow one thread through the photos. A new timeline starts with a single layer called "Events", which you can rename by clicking its name in the list below the timeline.

5. Decide where the photos show

Photos appear in three places: drawn on the timeline itself, in the popup when you hover over an event, and in the event list below the timeline. Under Appearance > Content Visibility there is an Images checkbox for the timeline and a second one for the popup and event list, so you can turn each off separately.

Turning off the timeline one is useful when the photos crowd each other or make the timeline too tall. Each picture then stays one hover away, and the event list below the timeline still shows every photo at a readable size.

Sharing and printing it

New timelines are private until you change that. When it is ready, you can share a link with family or friends, or download it as a PDF or an image to print. If a PDF export of a photo-heavy timeline fails, Troubleshooting PDF Export Issues explains how hiding the images on the timeline usually gets it through.

Adding photos is available on every plan. The free plan allows up to 10 events on each timeline, which is enough to try it out, and our paid plans lift that limit.

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