Picture Posting Question

[Raymond Fries]

How does everyone get pictures posted That are so large and keep them under the byte size requirement for posting? I really had a hard time earlier today with this.

[Andrew Williams]

You have to use a picture editor to save them as a .jpg format, use medium quality settings (about 60%) and you can post large pics. All of my pics were done this way using photoshop.

[Jim O'Dell]

I use a freeware program called irfanview. I select the picture, usually from the memory card, select image, click on 600 X 800, make the dpi 72 and I'm finished. Every once in a while, I have to go back and do it a little smaller, but not often. Irfanview is really easy to use. Jim.

[Bob Feeser]

How does everyone get pictures posted That are so large and keep them under the byte size requirement for posting? I really had a hard time earlier today with this.

Ray,
I created a web site called www.PlainFolksGuides.com (http://www.PlainFolksGuides.com) that has 2 helpful guides on it called, "Getting Pictures Ready for the Web" Forgive the mini gloat, but the one for the "Advertising Site Style" made it to the top of the Google rankings, (Ok the number 2 spot) out of over 30 million sites with the words, Getting, Pictures (or Photos), Ready, and Web in them, even beating out Apple.com's version.
I spent a lot of time on it. There is one there that is especially for forums. Although I feel that I need to edit that one, because I have since learned that many sites, and I think that includes this one, would prefer that members do not go all out posting photos on outside picture parking servers, then link to them for the forum. I have heard of horror stories, where the picture parking sites went down, and the net result was a forum full of little red boxes where the pictures used to go. So instead of using the yellow postcard icon on the top of the post or reply input screen, you may want to use the "manage attachments" button lower on the screen. That puts the pictures on SMC's server, that can be depended on, rather than using a link, from an outside source, when using the yellow postcard icon on the top.
Hope the guides are beneficial. Read the "Advertising Site Style" guide to access Microsofts Free Power Toy called "Image Resizer", then apply that to the information in the Forum Stye guide.

I meant for it to be an "Anybody Can Do It, Plain Folks Guide" but when you cover it so much in depth, it may appear to be overwhelming. In reality it is very easy, when you use it step by step while placing a post. I kind of went overboard, with the hand holding, with screen shots of every step, explaining every little thing. I hope you find it useful. Bob

[Luther Oswalt]

I have tried on many occassions to down load "Image Resizer" without success. The download seems to hang up on 5 seconds of the download. I have turned all the PC protection off and it still refuses to download. Any suggestions.
Leo

[Bob Feeser]

I have tried on many occassions to down load "Image Resizer" without success. The download seems to hang up on 5 seconds of the download. I have turned all the PC protection off and it still refuses to download. Any suggestions.
Leo

Try running it instead of downloading then. When you click on the Image Resizer link, up comes a dialogue box, asking you if you would like to 'Run" or "Save" choose "Run" and see if that works. If you have already tried "Run" then try "Save" and save it in "My Documents" "Download" folder. Once it is done downloading, then just open up the download folder, and click on the file to install.
Also keep an eye on the toolbars on the top of the page, and see if a warning message comes up, asking you if you want to allow the application. If it does, click on that message, and follow the yellow brick road. Since it is an executable file, for an application, that is the first thing most blockers want to prevent.
The link for the Microsoft site for Image Resizer is here (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) for those who wish to use it. Once you install it in your computer using Windows XP, all you do is right click on any photo file, jpg for example, in your computer, and then choose which size you want. Small, medium, or large, then it creates an image that size, with its corresponding file size. Even the large has a file size way smaller than the original.
What Image resizer does as a default setting, is to create a copy of the original file, in the same folder, and renames it by adding the words, small, medium, or large to it.
Firewall, and antivirus programs are suspect. You can hold down Cntrl-Alt, then tap Delete then choose "Task Manager" to see if you have any programs running that would get in the way. Normally anti-virus programs do not neccessarily show up in the task manager screen though.
If all else fails, you could download and install a copy of Mozilla Firefox, which is a highly recommended web browser, although it is not as popular as Internet Explorer. I have Firefox installed on my machine, and it does not mess with Explorer. The two can live happily together on the same machine. You just decide which one to open, and I didn't choose Firefox as my default browser, so everything remains the same. If I want to use Firefox, I just click on the icon. Meanwhile, everything opens in Explorer automatically.
Andrew and Jim mentioned the photo editing software route, which is an excellent one. Photoshop, especially their higher end stuff like CS2, or 3 gives you virtually unlimited photo editing possiblities. I have CS2, and I still use Microsofts Photodraw a lot. It has a "Compression" option in the original program, that allows you to keep the pictures full size, while shrinking the file size. So you get huge pictures with tiny file sizes. Microsoft updates, and office updates removes that capability though. Ifanview is a great free program, I used it to create a "Favicon" so that the little icon at the beginning of the address URL has a custom image attached to it. For an example of that, see the forum logo in front of the http on the address bar at the top of the page instead of the usual "E" for Explorer the forum logo shows up instead. Jim, you may want to get together with the forum admin (s) and create a new .GIF for SMC. I know that with Windows Server 03 for the web, it automatically looks for the "favicon.ico" file if it is at the root of the web site folder, on the server, then publishes that at the beginning of the address bar instead. I am sure if you looked for the existing favicon.ico, and replaced it with your own, on the SMC server, it would show up as well. Makes for a nice little touch. That is something that Ifanview does nicely; converts .gif files to favicon.ico
If all of that fails at downloading and using Image Resizer, reply back to me, and we can try a few more things.

[Fred Voorhees]

I've been using this free program for years and love it. No problems at all.....it's easy as pie and works like a charm.

http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

[Jim Becker]

If you don't want free, than Adobe PhotoShop Element is excellent...and has a "novice-friendly" interface for preparing pictures for the web. I process all my photos through it.

[Joseph N. Myers]

I've been using this free program for years and love it. No problems at all.....it's easy as pie and works like a charm.

http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm


Another vote for PIXresizer. One nice feature (which other programs probable have) it that PIXresizer will do either one or all of the pictures in a folder saving time and problems.

Regards, Joe

[Luther Oswalt]

Bob Freeser,
Thanks I will try your suggestions ...
Leo

[Bob Feeser]

I've been using this free program for years and love it. No problems at all.....it's easy as pie and works like a charm.

http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

Fred,
Thanks for the tip. I downloaded the program, and like Joe said, it is great because it has a batch resizing option, instead of having to do them individually. I was using PhotoLightning for that, but it is only a 30 day free trial. With pixresizer it seems to be free period. Nice app.
Jim,
My brother uses Photoshop Elements too, and loves it.
Bob

[Raymond Fries]

I am sure my problem was because I was saving the pictures under maximum quality.

This will help next time I want to post them.

[Kevin French]

I've used PhotoBucket.com for a few years now. You set up a FREE account and it easy to up load pics to it. You can post larger pics and it works all over the net to include people with slow dial-up connections.