Readers love online photo galleries, as evidenced by the spectacular increase in page views on our Web site, from 361,789 hits in July to 3.1 million in November.

The man behind the galleries, multimedia editor Seth Jones, has instructed his photographers to develop photo galleries for many local news and local sporting events, aiming to produce three local galleries per day. UH football games merit at least two and sometimes up to four galleries, and any kind of breaking news event — from car crashes to the heavy floods earlier this month — also produce big results.

More than 1,000 wire photos come across Jones' desk each day and we know that we can only print 2 to 3 percent of those in the newspaper. So Jones developed three regular features each day to capture those images for our online audience.

By noon each day, he produces a "Midday Report" of breaking news from around the world. By 8 p.m., he posts "Seth's Pix," which he developed last year. This gallery is an eye-catching selection of features and human-interest images. Jones also provides a gallery called "In the Spotlight," a roundup of celebrities, fashion shows or other entertainment photos.

Of course, big news always means more galleries.

"The terrorist attacks in Mumbai required five separate galleries over three days," Jones said. "During the presidential campaign season, we did daily galleries on the Democratic and Republican campaigns before the conventions, and daily galleries on both John McCain and Barack Obama after the convention right up to Election Day. Now I'm planning several wire and local year-end galleries. Other possibilities if I find enough pictures would be nature, animals, politics and weird photos."

Galleries over the past three months have generated nearly 7 million page views. During the past month, that number has been aided greatly by Metromix photo galleries, which spotlight Honolulu's nightlife and parties.

November's top hits included the remembrances of Madelyn Dunham, President-elect Barack Obama's grandmother (30,000 page views) who passed away just before his election, "In the Spotlight" (22,000 views) and the Peggy Chun memorial (15,400 views).

October's 2.4 million hits were driven by Obama's visit back to Hawai'i just before Dunham's death with more than 100,000 hits. September's total of 1.36 million hits were driven by 26,677 hits from University of Hawai'i football practice.

The sports department also posts photos from National Football League games, Major League Baseball, college football and other major sporting events.

Jones culls through the hundreds of photos that move on the wires each day and pulls 50 to 80 aside for his galleries. He decided how many galleries he can develop and in what grouping they should be placed. On any given day, Jones might be looking at everything from photos from the Mumbai terrorist attacks to a fashion show from Paris.

Pictures are then run through the production process, starting with Photoshop software. Titles are written to place the photos in a specific gallery lineup. The pictures are sent to the East Coast for Web site processing. In a few minutes, the pictures are returned and captions are written for each photo before they are placed on our site. Every 10-picture gallery takes about 20 minutes to process.

"Why have galleries become so popular?" Jones said. "An easy answer is that more and more people are looking at our online edition. Also, we know that people like to look at images to get their news and entertainment. It's easier than reading."

Mark Platte is senior vice president and editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at 525-8080.