# Tutorial on adding images to messages



## Adam (23 Jun 2004)

Don't be put off by the length of this post, the start is relevent to beginners, the end bits to advanced people only. Adam



Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> I've seen some great messages with pictures in them - how do I do that?


Right, firstly you need to get some actual images of your project/workshop/plans/etc. This involves either using a digital camera, or using a scanner.

Cameras and Scanners normally come with some sort of software for you to review, edit and resize pictures.



Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> Great, I've been out and got some pictures, and they are on my computer - can I link them into the messages now?


No, not quite, the images have to placed somewhere from which they can be accessed 24/7. It's not good on your computer, you might only have it switched on for a few minutes everyday. You are going to have to upload them to _the internet_ :shock: 



Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> Whooaaa, upload to the internet, this is starting to look complicated - isn't there an easier way?


Nope, not really, not only that, it's a lot quicker uploading pictures via a broadband (or from work if you have internet access at work). Dial-up works fine also, it's just takes longer.



Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> OK, I'm ready to have a go at uploading - what now?


OK, You need to make a couple of decisions.....firstly, are you just going to upload the very occasional picture?, regularly upload pictures? or think you've got some other pictures, you'd like friends and family to see (you know, Uncle Albert 80th bif-day bash, Christenings, etc?)

For example, (and this link may not work forever), click on this link below

http://www.pbase.com/mattis/englishchurches

This website creates all the snazzy website around your pictures, you just upload them. (And before you ask, I picked this at random 'cos it had some nice woodwork in it).

On the other hand the same site allows me to insert an image into a posting (like what you want to do) like this....









Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> OK, so which site should I use, and will it cost me?



Firstly, yes you can upload for free to many sites, but it is worth noting that most people who are using this (and other) forums alot end up paying for storage.

Companies that let you "upload" and create a webpage around you images have to make money somehow - that's normally by having advertising around it, or offering to sell you prints of your images etc - the very thing they don't want is for you to use the storage on their computers, and then they don't get any custom.



Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> Well, what do I care, I hate advertising anyway....



Well, it's not quite so simple. To get an image into a message, we have to input to the message something called a direct link. This tells the computer to replace the link with the picture it is pointing at and as the reader, you get to see a nice image. Some companies have wised up to this and you cannot direct link. I believe this is the case with the Kodak website storage, but haven't checked so can't confirm it. You must use a website that allows *direct linking*.

For example.... When you are creating a post and you want to add an image you click the "Img" button at the top of the message page - I've marked it here with an arrow






This creates some square brackets in the post with the word "Img" between them. 

e.g.

```
[img]
```

after this you need to put the location of your pictures, after you have put the location of the picture, click the "Img" button in the top right, and it will add another set of square brackets with a /img inside them. e.g.


```
[img]http://www.pbase.com/image/28350872.jpg[/img]
```

In a real message, this text (above) would not appear, all you would see is this (aren't I an ugly mug eh?) :wink: 








Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> Hang on, you've jumped too many steps. Go through it a bit slower.



OK, where I'd got to was getting you to understand that once you have uploaded the pictures somewhere onto the internet, you have to point the messages here to exactly way they are. This has to be exact. For example if I made a mistake in the link below


```
[img]http://www.pbase.com/image/28350872.jpg[/img]
```

and insert a few errors for comedy...


```
[img]htt://ww.pbas.co/imag/2835087.jp[/img]
```

OK, I've overdone it but even a single letter/number in error will end up with a "red-X" or emply picture being displayed. I'll try linking to that crazy picture above...






Doesn't work right? OK, So thats the #1 reason why people who post pictures find they don't show up. You must copy the address to the picture exactly.



Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> OK, got it, I know I have to upload them onto the internet, and that I have to use the little "img" button in the top right, add in the link to the message and tehn press the "img" button again - and hey presto my pictures should come up - I still haven't worked out where to send them to?



Well, as a start here's a few places you can store and direct link to pictures....

Your ISP's webspace? Remember that - when you signed up - they said "50MB" of free space. Well - use it. Don't ask me how - get the manual, or logon to their homepage and surf around until you find some information on it. You ISP is likely to be someone like Freeserve, BT Connect, Yahoo, AOL etc, and their homepage may have information about uploading images to your personal space.

Or...

Use a webspace company like

www.uploadit.org
www.pbase.com (my preference - but I pay £ so it won't suit everyone)
www.imagestation.com

Or...

Ask Chris (Waterhead) nicely, (Chris, any chance you can repost your kind offer you made some time ago about webspace in here as a reply somewhere). This is the option to use if you are only going to upload a few images now and again. Basically, Chris already has some storage space, and has kindly offered to host things here. If you are interested- have a read in to the replies to this post and hopefully Chris will have re-offered his hosting facility.

Or.. 

This site has an excellent gallery, but maybe just two problems, it's complicated to work out how to link to the picture, and because it's moderated it takes a day or so for the pictures to be viewable by all the forum members. It is worth the effort and is free. (see the *very bottom *of the post for information on how to link into pictures from the UKworkshop gallery.




Forum Noobie":2rsf9v14 said:


> Well, I'm in the middle, so one of these 3 you mention sounds good what now?



Well, you're on you own for a while you need to A) Register and learn how to upload pictures to that particular site. Often, once registered you get a webpage from which you can surf you own harddrive, and pick the pictures to upload.

*The key thing to remember in all of this is to link to the photo itself *- _NOT THE WEBPAGE!_

Once you can see your picture on the internet there are a couple of steps, it is not normally the text in the "address" bar at the top, it is the image it self. You get the link to the image using this process.


In a browser window, view the image at the ImageStation website.

Right mouse click on the image, and select Properties.

A new window will open displaying the image properties. Find the property label Address: (URL) and highlight the value. It will be something like http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sra ... de9f44.jpg

Once the address is highlighted, right mouse click again and select copy.

Now got to your post, and use the Img command. Right mouse click and select Paste for the image address

Picking one of those websites at random here are some further instructions...


Go to ImageStation and sign up for an account. It is Free and easy.

Once you have an account, log in and click on the _Upload Images_ button.

There are multiple ways to upload images, all with explicit instructions. Pick the method that is best for you and upload your images.

Once your images are uploaded, they will appear in your Storage Bin in My ImageStation.

Follow the instructions in My ImageStation to create a New Album and add your images to the album.

Once you have your images in an Album, your ready to use them in a bulletin board post.

In a browser window, view the image at the ImageStation website.

Right mouse click on the image, and select Properties.

A new window will open displaying the image properties. Find the property label Address: (URL) and highlight the value. It will be something like http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sra ... de9f44.jpg

Once the address is highlighted, right mouse click again and select copy.

Now got to your post, and use the Img command. Right mouse click and select Paste for the image address. Here is an example. 


```
[img]http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid114/pf4bd4e2f867c269e6666f9d66a0cc46b/f8de9f44.jpg[/img]
```

gives you......






That's it.  I know it seems complicated, and perhaps overwhelming at first. But it becomes quite easy once you start doing it.

*Some advanced usages*

Since large images can tend to break up a post too much, not to mention take more time to load, smaller pictures are preferred. However, sometimes larger picture are needed to show details.

One method I like to use is nesting the Img command inside a URL command. Using a smaller image for the post, but allowing the viewer to click on the smaller image if they want to see the larger more detailed version. The Img command would be for the smaller image, and the URL command would be the larger image. I also like to put instructions in italics under the image. Like so,


```
[url=http://www.myphotos.com/LargeImage.jpg][img]http://www.myphotos.com/SmallImage.jpg[/img][/url]
[i]click on image for larger view[/i]
```

Here is an example. 


```
[url=http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid114/p5f812e13729c753d1a786f70bf9fd0ac/f8de9f49.jpg][img]http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid114/pf4bd4e2f867c269e6666f9d66a0cc46b/f8de9f44.jpg[/img][/url]
[i]click on image for larger view[/i]
```
gives you.... (if you put your mouse over the picture, and click, it'll open a larger picture in new window.)




_click on image for larger view_

Not sure if that helps, but that's my take on it anyway....... some of this is a rehash of stuff I've written before, so you can use the search facility for more help, or try posting and everyone here is bound to help! 

[Moderators, fancy making this a sticky? and deleting this line (in square brackets), and using your powers of Mod to correct any mistakes you see?]

Adam

(And a repost of how to link to images in the UKworkshop gallery that I wrote a while ago)

Alternatively, it is free here on UK_Workshop. It's just a bit complicated. It does work however. (see below photo for more details)

E.g.





Having uploaded an image (and you have to register first - your membership of this forum doesn't count - you have to re-register over there too - from scratch), you wait for Charley to approve it (day or two, and PM him to remind him!) ...then....

you open some image tags like this


```
[img][/img]
```

And insert into it:


```
[img]https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/gallery[/img]
```

Then, you go and look at your image.... and if you are using internet exporer - you got to "view source". "View" is one of the options in the toolbar of Internet exporer, and "source" is one of the options inthe drop down menu it brings up. This brings up a very complex text file, but you just have to read through it slowly. Contact Charley for assistance, he's got it sussed.

(Looking through this, the key bit to find is this: "data/media/8/DSCN1561.jpg"

This is made a lot simpler if you use a filename you recognise "DSCN1561.jpg" - is something I'd recognise this as from my camera, but it might help to save things as NOELY1.jpg or similar....

And you finally add this to the code above to make 


```
[img]https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/gallery/data/media/8/DSCN1561.jpg[/img]
```

Which gives the image above. You have to ignore everything before the "data/media/8/DSCN1561.jpg" - and make sure you get a "/" between the "https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/gallery" and the rest of it.

In the source, the /data bit comes from a line which in total looks like: 

```
<img src="./data/media/8/DSCN1561.jpg" border="1" alt="Scheppach TS2500" width="1024" height="768" /><br />
 <br />
```

You have to make sure you don't pick up the thumbnail by mistake - which would look like:


```
</data/thumbnails/8/DSCN1561.jpg
```


You made it this far? What are you crazy? :shock:


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## Anonymous (23 Jun 2004)

Adam

A masterpiece :shock: 

Cheers

Tony


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## Charley (23 Jun 2004)

Thats great  Thanks Adam..

I'll go and make it a _sticky_


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## Alf (24 Jun 2004)

Adam, brilliant, mate. Have a cigar.


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## Chris Knight (24 Jun 2004)

Adam, 

Excellent stuff. Yes, my offer is still open for anyone who cares to use my site to store pictures. You need to go here http://www.chrisknight.info/gallery/Woodwork and look at the little box at the top right hand corner that says admin options. Click this and you are presented with exactly one option - add photos, Click this and a popup window opens offering to download a java applet - don't bother with this, it does not hurt but it does not work either! Instead, click on the tab marked Form. This will open a small file browser on your computer allowing you to select the picture(s) you want to upload together with a caption if you wish.


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## Aragorn (24 Jun 2004)

Adam - that's terrific! I still haven't worked out how to do all this, but mainly because I don't know how to upload images to my webspace.


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## ike (30 Jun 2004)

Adam,

Great job. I didn't know and now I do. 

thanks,

Ike


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## devonwoody (27 Jul 2004)

*to aragorn*
do you have a web page active?
If so what software do you use to make your own web page?

Back tomporrow morning my isp finishes at 4pm daily.


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## Aragorn (27 Jul 2004)

I have my own website active for promoting my acupuncture business. I designed it all, but a friend made it into a website for me and got it up and running. He used Dreamweaver I think.
Later on this year, I'm getting the whole thing re-made by another friend who's going to make it easy for me to update it :roll:


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## Anonymous (27 Jul 2004)

Very nice site Aragorn - I am real fan of accupuncture and chinese remedies. Mrs Tony is a trained aromatherapist and practices acupressure using the same meridians. She is employed by the local hospital as a nursing sister specialising in pain management and hopes to bring the Aromatherapy into the hospital soon. She really wants to train as an acupuncturist too.


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## Chris Knight (27 Jul 2004)

Aragorn,

That is a very smooth looking site - congratulations!

It doesn't work properly in Firefox however (menus especially and images).
As a recent convert to Firefox I suggest you ask your friend to make sure of compatibility. For many things Firefox is so much better than IE, I suspect the rather small user base will grow a lot in the near future.


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## devonwoody (28 Jul 2004)

*I think you would need a software program of your own if you wanted to change the pictures on your own website. Some of these programs can be very exspensive. I use SERIF "Page Plus 9" I think it cost me around £20. The serif products are in my opinion good value for money because you get telephone technical support at the cost of only a local call rate (0845) number.*


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## Alf (28 Jul 2004)

DW,

Same here. Although mine's an even earlier version I think - only cost me a tenner. :wink: I like it because it seems to produce reasonably clean code, which doesn't _appear_ to cause problems with various browsers. (Okay, braced for all the complaints from Mozilla, Firefox, Opera etc users now... :roll: )

Cheers, Alf

P.S. You've got the code for bold text weighed off now, then? :wink:


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## Adam (17 Oct 2004)

waterhead37":1lkcmgli said:


> Adam, You need to go here http://www.chrisknight.info/gallery/Woodwork



Howdy Chris, 

This is now AWOL - is their anything in it's place - or shall I pull the relevent bits from my posting?

Adam


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## Chris Knight (18 Oct 2004)

Adam,

Folk can use http://www.woodgen.com/gallery/

I have managed to recapture my chrisknight.info domain name but it will be some days before it propagates and ages before I get it hooked up as a functioning website. Meanwhile there is plently of space on woodgen.


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## Jake (27 Jun 2005)

Imageshack is a very good free hosting site, and has the tremendous advantage that it does all of the coding for you. When you've uploaded an image, it automatically provides the full text for links to be included in forum posts (i.e.


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## Chris Knight (23 Apr 2006)

New kid on the block! Makes it dead easy to post not only pictures but a complete website. Once registered, you can have a web page up and running in 60 seconds.

http://pages.google.com/


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## Gerome (21 Nov 2006)

I use Imageshack and find its great and really easy to use(my PC skills are just ahead of those of my three and a half year old daughter!!) :lol:


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## Pete Hughes (29 Jul 2009)

Hello,
What I cannot get to understand is that if I send an e mail, I can attach a Pic without all this added need to go to another website?? and clog my PC up, all my pictures and anything relating to them or what I may wish to do with them is all here on my "Windows2 pc

Pete


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## TrimTheKing (29 Jul 2009)

Pete Hughes":19n8jrh3 said:


> Hello,
> What I cannot get to understand is that if I send an e mail, I can attach a Pic without all this added need to go to another website?? and clog my PC up, all my pictures and anything relating to them or what I may wish to do with them is all here on my "Windows2 pc
> 
> Pete


The need is, if you attach a pic to the forum then someone needs to 'host' that pic so that it can be seen by anyone at any time. If that is the forum then that responsibility goes to the forum host, in this case, Charley.

Now storage costs money, and who's going to pay for that storage, on a non profit making forum, that would again be Charley. Why should he do that when he is already probably losing money, just to entertain us lot?

It's not that difficult to understand, and you have already posted into the full description of how to do it, so what's the problem?

HTH


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