Wanted to ask a quick question, and review a few points, since pictures are a HUGE part of what makes this forum tick.
First, the question. We used to be able to embed pics in the post with html (the picture’s URL) but it seems that option has disappeared? Has anyone figured out a way to do this?
Second, the review is regarding picture size.
Picture files that are in the MB size load slower, often show sideways or upside down, and are bigger than needed (when you upload pics it will tell you the size in MB or KB). I will often resize them down to KBs, which is a much more reasonable size. But I only do it when I have time, just to make the forum a little more user friendly, and get the pics loading right side up.
If you see a thread where the pics are sideways or upside down, then next time you look they’re right side up, its probably because I downloaded them to my computer, reduced the size, then uploaded them back in their thread.
To avoid this, you can set your camera to a lower resolution, or edit them with MS Paint, and reduce them. You can even crop them with your phone software.
To illustrate, I will post some (MB sized) pics below that I pulled at random from the forum, followed by their resized 35% (to KB) counterparts. A few I cropped just a bit, as well. Using MS Paint, its easy peazy, anyone can do it.
yes I did re-size your pics. No flipping involved, they only flip because of the size (a quirk of the forum I have no control over), get them down into KBs and they show properly. No techie skills needed, MS Paint is very very basic. Just click resize on the menu, then pick a percentage (35% works frequently, and I’ll resize your latest 2.19 MB down to 35%, 479 KB, to include here).
If you just can’t figure it out, then don’t worry. Just post pics as you always have. We don’t want to discourage the posting of pics, because in many ways pictures are the lifeblood of this forum. Just saying that if you can take a few minutes to learn how to resize them into KiloByte size, that would help them to show up correctly, and load more quickly.
Much of the time I’m on the forum via my phone, and when that’s the case I just have to avoid certain threads, because they take so long to upload for me. I’m assuming I’m not the only one, as I’m on a pretty generic phone. So sometimes I think some threads suffer a lack of comments and participation, and the poster may not realize its just a photo issue, not a lack of interest in their posts.
I have found over the years that if you re-size image “width” to 600 pixels (aspect ratio locked), the file will be small enough to open fast and is still plenty big enough for viewing on any public forum.
Great thread huck, i have now found that if i email my pics from my phone to myself, from an iphone, i can select the option to send them as medium size and it eliminates the issue as a 3 meg picture is reduced to 500 kb, or something like that.
Lots of people don’t realize how big a pic is, straight out of the camera. In the days when I had dialup it was very annoying to get an email with pic attachments at 3000 x 2000 size. Took forever to load. For web viewing, 1600x 1100 is about as big as you should go, and 1200 wide is just about optimum.
For instance, I just picked a random image I shot recently that was not ediited yet. Right out of the camera (Nikon dSLR) the size is 4288x2848 pixels, yielding a 4.89MB file size. Simply re-sizing the width, in P-shop, to 1200 yields 1200x797 pixels and a 557KB file size. Perfect for online size.
Also, for forum purposes I use tinypic.com. They use a captcha function to prevent spambots, but it’s free with no signup. Upload there, and copy the code. If you use a different hosting site you need the image url, which should end in “.jpg”, “.gif”, “.png”, or other image file type.
Then you add at the back with no spaces, and it will link.
Like this
EDIT:
Obviously, something in this forum is broken, as it’s not working. It has always worked in the past.
I usually open photos in GIMP, crop to selection, then export as .jpg file. Ticking the ‘Show preview in image window’ box allows you to see the file size while reducing the image quality %. Stop reducing when it’s small enough. I usually stop once it’s less than a MB, but from what you say in this thread, I should probably reduce it further.
It really depends on the picture content if you need high quality or not.
.
Reducing the image quality is also a way of ‘copyrighting’ your photos. You should be able to prove that you actually took the photo, not someone else, if you own a higher quality version of the photo.
.
Everyone should also consider if they want to remove EXIF data from their photos before posting them. GIMP also allows to do this while exporting the photo after editing. That way you don’t share your location and all sorts of other info with the world.
Here is a link to explain the EXIF data problem.
ttps://www.howtogeek.com/203592/what-is-exif-data-and-how-to-remove-it/
I wonder how many ‘secret location’ shots have their GPS location data embedded!
