You must be an administrator to do this.
1. Use "Add Categories" in the admin control panel to create your categories.
DO NOT USE FTP to create new directories. This is very important since the directories where images and thumbnails are to be stored is automatically created by 4images when the category is created.
2. Once created, go to "Edit Categories" and move your mouse over a specific category in the list into which you want to upload new images. Your browser status bar will display a URL for the category. At the end of this url will be "?cat_id=" and a number. Make a note of this number as it corresponds to the directory names used by that category for storing images and thumbnails.
3. Use FTP to upload your images to 4images/data/media/<number> and your thumbnails to 4images/data/thumbnails/<number> where <number> is the number for your category.
In order to get 4images to pick up your thumbnails, they must have the exact same file names as your images.4. Go back to the admin control panel and click "Check New Images". Select the category into which you just uploaded your files. 4images scans the corresponding directory for new files, adds them to the database and automatically assigns the category.
5. (optional) You can also use the auto-thumbnailer to create the thumbnails for you instead of uploading your own. Follow all the steps described above and just skip the uploading of thumbnails.
6. (optional) You can easily edit multiple images at once or at one page with (images that already added)
[MOD] Batch Copy/Move/Edit Images---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are uploading files to several categories and find step 4 to be time consuming, you might consider installing the mod
"Check new images in ALL categories"
You can also install these "Multi Upload" Modifications so that your users are able to multiupload images: