# Managing Patient Photographs

### Display

If a picture of the active patient is available in the database it will be displayed in the upper left corner, left of the patient search field. The picture itself is stored in the GNUmed document archive just like any other document. There can be any number of patient pictures stored for a patient the most recent one of which will be displayed. "Most recent" means: the page with the highest page number (`blobs.doc_obj.seq_idx`) of the youngest (`blobs.doc_med.date`) document.

### Storage

Patient photographs are stored in the database under the document type, well, patient photograph. They can be attached to any episode you deem appropriate.

There are two ways to add a patient photograph. For each you need to activate the corresponding patient first.

The first option is to right-click on the patient picture in the upper left corner. From the popup menu select an item to either acquire a new image from an image source (scanner, camera, etc) or to select an image file from the file system.

The image will be imported into the GNUmed database. If a document of type patient photograph already exists it is attached to this document as a new page with the next available page index. Otherwise a new document of type patient photograph will created under the episode Administration which will also be created if it does not exist.

The other option is to use the standard Document Import plugin to create a document of type patient photograph.

By setting the document date and page number appropriately one can influence which patient photograph is being displayed when a patient is activated.

Next: Writing medical (and other) letters