Picture Posting Guide.

[CHJ]

You can upload images to the UKW Forum server directly from your computer as long as the file size is reasonable, images in JPG or PNG format in the region of 1024 pixels will be suitable.

(if this is new to you, see second post for brief explanation and two methods of 'how too'.)

Use the Supplementary "Add File" facility below the editing box.

If you want the image to appear within the text click the "place in line" button to anchor the image at the cursor position.

Off site URL's to file hosting sites can be linked after you have made three forum posts.
For the images to display you need the url to be included in img tags. E.G.

 [img]http://i883.photobucket.com/albums/******.jpg[/img]

 

[CHJ]

There are two things that affect file size:
1. Pixel resolution, the better your camera sensor and the better the file format chosen the bigger the initial file.
2. Image compression, file format chosen and compression ratio (image quality)

If you compress a file to reduce the file size you are doing one of two things or both.
1. Reducing the pixel count by removing some picture detail by taking out duplicate or similar adjacent pixels but maintaining as good a quality as possible. {You select the size you want and a high quality (90-100%)}
2. Reducing the pixel count by keeping the same size but deliberately reducing the image quality. {You select the quality you want (70-80%)}
3. Reducing the Required Image Size and selecting a Lower Quality (70-80%)

Unless you have a high end camera all the images will be stored in some form of compressed format such as JPG.
This means that the software that has saved them has made some assumptions on which detail it needs to record and which it can save file space by noting that the information (pixel) is just the same colour as those surrounding it.

Reducing an image and/or file size adds to the compression, taking out more of these 'similar pixels'
Every time you Re-Save a compressed image it will deteriorate in quality because the software keeps taking out what it sees as expendable pixels.

For best quality of a reduced file size image, you need to go from the original straight down to the final required size, that way you get a one time dumping of pixel information, retaining as much as possible of the original detail.

For instance, the camera I currently use is set to 3648 X 2736 pixels and JPG format, giving files in the order of 2MB each.
To save space on my server and to meet the UKW requirement of less than 256KB I reduce them to 1024 X 768 pixels with a quality setting of 80% and they normally end up anywhere between 60 and 180 KB dependant on detail. They are more than good enough quality for normal computer screen display.


Using GIMP:--

Alternately using Windows Image Resizer

Edit: In the latest versions of GIMP the preferred application file format is .XCF and a normal save will be in this format.
To save as .JPG or .PNG you need to Export in the first instance rather than Save.

A great little program pointed to by bobham is Picture Resizer 6.0 which does it all for you. Simply edit the EXE file name to control the image size.

One that gives you a host of other options as well as resizing is FastStone Photo Resizer as recommended by Random Orbital Bob

Another very useful image manipulation and editing program is IrfanView

Avatars:- If you are looking to create a personalised Avatar for the Forum you can use This Shrink Pictures site for a quick and easy solution.

All the above mentioned software is Free for home use.

Edit: FastStone Resizer is useful if you have batches of multiple pictures to shrink as it will do them all in one operation and rename them simultaneously.

 

[nev]

[youtube]BCtiFjHHQec[/youtube]

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

One addition to the above....to post a pic you need to choose the Full Editor in the reply to a post box and not the more normally used quick reply which I tend to use for just a text response. The options for adding a photo don't appear unless you select the full editor.

 

[nev]

A quick way to resize a batch of pictures without any other software apart from Windows and outlook. There are also plenty of free online programs too, just search for 'Batch resize images'

[youtube]19GbI6oFrW0[/youtube]

 

[nev]

Adding Images from an iPad.

Long winded but do-able without any extra apps.

If the picture is already in Photos on your iPad it will be too large to attach to a UKW post, HOWEVER...

If you go to Photos , select the pic and hit the “Share” button and choose email.

BEFORE you hit send press the “ image size” ( right hand end of the “send to” line) you can choose what size file to send. Choose small or medium (as long as its smaller than 256kb) and send the picture to yourself.

Open the email, select the pic (with a long press) and select “save file” it will save it to your Photos.

You can then select and add that one as an attachment to your post because it has been resized.

 

[nev]

If you link to an image hosted on your Dropbox page you may find that the image does not display - instead you get the little missing image icon like this

This is due to the appendage Dropbox puts on the end of the file name - the bit after .jpg

To correctly display the image choose the 'insert image' icon above the paragraph

paste your link from Dropbox between the IMG tags and edit/change the end of the link
from ....jpg?dl=0 to ....jpg?raw=1

for example

gets changed to

Your image will then display correctly without having to adhere to the file size rules.

 

[nev]

When sharing pics from your Flickr account choose the BBCode option from the sharing menu , copy the link and then simply paste that into your post without the need of the forums (IMG) or (URL) tags.
That actually pastes two lines of code into your post.
You can leave it like that or edit the links.
If you leave it as is it inserts the picture and provides a link to your Flickr page.
If you'd prefer just to have the pic with no external links just delete everything apart from the bit between (but including) the IMG brackets.
so just keep the part highlighted in bold

{url=https://flic.kr/p/xyz]{img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/randomlink.jpg[/img}[/url}
{url=https://flic.kr/p/xyz]IMG_2000[/url} by {url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/randomlink[/url}, on Flickr

becomes

{img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/randomlink.jpg[/img}

 

[nev]

Its effectively the same as the old format ...

(Remember you can only add the pictures one at a time.)

[youtube]pNYB85uf8vI[/youtube]

 

[nev]

SHARING AN IMAGE FROM GOOGLE PHOTOS

[youtube]2K0P_NTurUc[/youtube]