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The Dummies Guide to Posting Pics – by Tropi ( aided and abeted by Swiss’ )
This guide assumes that you are using a PC with an MS Windows operating system and are posting to Slotforum.com
Guidelines:
The best Photo format to use for the Web is *.JPG. The other most common being *.BMP, a format that uses more physical size than a comparative *.JPG. A lot of Photo editing programs can convert easily.
There are alot of these Photo editing and graphic programs around, many are shareware ( you are requested to make a small donation payment ) or freeware ( free! ) or ‘lite’ versions of larger programs ( usually free because they hope to interest you in buying the full package ). A search on the Web will find you many of these and all are adequate for the task in hand.
Please make your pics preferably no wider than 500 Pixels.
Less is fine!
600 pixels is the absolute maximum width.
Reasons:
- Pics of a standard width look so much nicer on the page.
- Speeds up loading times, particularly for those members with 56k dialup net connections.
- Avoids having to horizontally scroll in order to see the whole pic.
- In addition, the whole of the accompanying post becomes as wide as the pic and this means the screen has to be scrolled right and left on every line of the text too. This is THE most annoying factor of the four!
Limiting the pic width eliminates all these problems.
How to check the Pic Width
Find the pic using Windows Explorer or My Computer.
Right Click the file name and select Properties from the drop menu.
Different versions of Windows work a little differently here.
In WinXP, you now select SUMMARY TAB
And hit Advanced Button
You will see something like this
Other versions of Windows will do something similar but show less pic info.
Alternatively, you can check your pic details from within the Photo Editing program.
How to change pic width.
All Photo Editing programs have a facility to alter the size of the picture.
If you don’t have a specific photo editing program, most PCs are already supplied with Microsoft Photo Editor, which is free, fast and VERY simple to use.
Here is a brief run-down on how to resize, using MS Photo Editor.
Fire up MS Photo Editor!
If you are not sure where to find MS Photo Ed, try
Start/Programs/Microsoft Office/Microsoft Photo Editor
Open your picture by double clicking it or Select it and hit the Open Button.
Your first step is to decide whether you wish to CROP or ROTATE the pic and do both those actions first, which will immediately reduce its size somewhat. You can see an example of the difference this can make in the two right-hand pics above. (You can also see the results of some colour corrections etc)
When you have arrived at your preferred state of pic, then from the Photo Editor menus, select Image/Resize as in the screenshot below.
You will then see something like this
Remember I said you could check the width from within Photo Editor?
That’s how it’s done.
Now UNtick Allow Distortion (to maintain proportions during resize).
Tick Smooth.
Make sure Units are in Pixels, as shown.
Change the width to (say) 550 pixels, as below.
Note that the Height has been adjusted automatically to maintain the proportions.
Hit the OK button and the job is done – easy!
You might want the full size pic again at some time, so use File/Save As . . to save the adjusted pic, with a new name, so that your original is not replaced by the new version. It’s a good idea to rename by appending the new width to the old name so that both pics are kept together on your drive and you will also be able to see which is which for future reference.
Example:
OLD name “My Circuit.jpg”
NEW name “My Circuit 550 wide.jpg”
This way, you can have a range of different versions of the same pic for whatever purpose or preference you choose.
There are other things you can do to additionally reduce the file size of the pic without actually altering its displayed size. But I will leave that for another day.
Next…
You need a Photo Host
Unfortunately you can’t post a photo directly here in the forum, straight from your own PC.
Your photo needs to be copied to a Host with a server that is online 24/7.
Your photo will be stored on that host’s hard drive.
What you will post in the forum is a LINK to that photograph stored on the host’s server.
Unfortunately there are very few of these photo hosts still left who will do it for no charge.
But one that is still available, free, is StarPhoto at http://photo.starblvd.net/
It is financed by Taitung, a Korean company, but don’t worry, as this particular branch is presented in English! There may well be other free photo hosting services and, if you know of any, we would all appreciate a link.
First of all, go to StarPhoto and open an account.
Don’t worry - this ‘account’ really is totally free (at the time of writing).
I am going to leave you to it to register your account and get your pics uploaded to StarPhoto. It’s a little bit unintuitive but everyone figures it out in time!
Tip
Make sure you have cropped, straightened and sized your photos BEFORE uploading them to StarPhoto.
How StarPhoto stores your pics.
After playing around in StarPhoto, you will soon discover that it allows you a small personal photo album consisting of six pages.
Each page holds five rows and each row holds five ‘thumbnails’ of your photographs.
That’s a very generous 6 x 5 x 5 = 150 pics in total.
A ‘thumbnail’ is simply a small, thumbnail-sized copy of your photo that StarPhoto sets up automatically when you upload your main photo to their site.
The pages of thumbnails enable you to find individual photos fairly quickly.
StarPhoto numbers these thumbnails but, unfortunately, does NOT display the number on or near the thumbnails.
Their numbering system is ‘x-y-z’
Where
x = Page Number
y = Row Number
z = Position in the row.
So 6-3-4 would be
Page 6, Row 3, Position 4
This very same number also identifies your main photograph.
How to select your Photo and its Host’s address
In the screenshot below, I want to post the photo of the cars heading into the Goodwood Chicane on my club track.
We can see that we are on page 2 of the album and that the required photo is in row 4, position 1. In StarPhoto parlance, it is 2-4-1.
But, usually, we do not want to post the thumbnail - we want to post the main photograph.
To see the main photo, click its thumbnail and the main photo is displayed as below.
Now, right click on the full size photo and, from the dropdown menu, select Properties.
This is what you will see, below.
In the new popup, next to Address (URL), highlight from the ‘h’ of ‘http’ ONLY as far as the ‘g’ of ‘jpg’, as shown below. If you have difficulty doing this accurately with the mouse, you can click at one end of the text and then, holding down the SHIFT key, use your cursor/arrow keys to highlight the part you want, letter perfect.
SCREENSHOT OF HIGHLIT URL SELECTION
It’s very common to accidentally pick up the ‘?’ after ‘jpg’ – try not to!
(But, if you can’t avoid it, you can edit it out later when posting in the forum - so don’t panic!)
Now, right click the highlighted part of the address and select Copy from the dropdown menu that appears.
This copies your photo’s address into your PC’s invisible clipboard, enabling you to right click anywhere in a document and Paste the address into it.
Tip
It’s actually quite a good idea to paste this address into a Word or Excel document for safekeeping, together with a descriptive title. In this way, you can very conveniently keep track of the addresses and descriptions of any number of photos for subsequent use whenever you may want them.
Posting in the Forum (at last!)
Within your forum reply, first position the cursor where you want the photo to be positioned (you can move it later if need be) and then click the Forum’s IMG button.
You will now see this popup at the top left of your screen.
Right click the highlighted http:// and select Paste from the dropdown menu.
Your photo’s address will be pasted into the address box as shown below.
Hit the OK button and you will see your photo’s address appear in your post, surrounded by the codes [IMG] and [/IMG] as shown in the next screenshot.
Tip
If you have several photos to post, you can save a lot of time and effort running back and forth to StarPhoto by COPYing (only once) that exact same piece of code, and then PASTEing it into your post (as many times as you have photos). Then you only need to alter the index numbers of the photos to suit. If you do forget to alter the index numbers, you will of course post the same photo several times! But, if you hit the forum’s Preview Post button, you can check that you have everything the way you want it before making the post final with the Add Reply button.
Even after that, if you still find a mistake after you have finally posted, you can Edit your post again.
Some words of warning.
StarPhoto is occasionally unavailable and, during those times, your photos will not show in the forum. It actually happened while I was preparing this article with screenshots – stopped me in my tracks! Don’t worry - they will reappear when StarPhoto recovers itself.
Also, be aware that, if you move your thumbnails around on their StarPhoto pages, their index numbers will obviously change. If that happens, the photos’ addresses in your post will obviously be incorrect and will show either the wrong photo or no photo at all. Again, it’s quite easy to re-edit only the photos’ index numbers in your post. Similarly, if you delete the photo from StarPhoto, it will disappear from the forum altogether.
A final caution!
Nothing lasts forever and, if StarPhoto closes down for good, your hosted photo is dead. So, if it’s important to you, be sure to keep a copy of it on your own PC or elsewhere, on a floppy, CD etc.
I know most of you old hands know all this better than I do, but there are always new people coming along and this was for their benefit, not yours!
I hope it helps to get you started.
Regards
Tropi.
Text - ©2003 Tropi - All rights reserved
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 24th May 2013 - 04:18 |