I've noticed lately that whether it's submitted trip-logs or posted forum messages .. photos are being used in very large file sizes. This can unduly "bloat" trip-log sizes and slowdown message downloads.

If one simply "inserts" camera-size image files into a MSWord document and only resizes their "portrayal" sizes by way of their "framing-lines", the actual image file sizes remain unaltered and very large. This results in MSWord files that are many megabytes in file size. Trying to compress these into PDF files, still results in excessively large PDF files.

The proper way to deal with these photo image files is to use a graphics program to physically resize their "pixel-width by pixel-height" to the very end size that you intent to portray them as in the document .. and to then compress them by 20% to 30%. The end result is the same .. at a fraction of the file size. In effect, you should be resizing the image files to "internet quality", rather than leaving them at "quality-print quality".

When one simply uploads a camera image file to a "photo-service" website and then incorporates them into a forum posting with reduced-size-posting pixel dimensions, the actual file having to be downloaded remains just as high as those originally uploaded. The only difference id that one's web-browser has to "squeeze" it into the reduced border-sizes. The entire over-sized image files still have to be downloaded first!

So, if everyone can just take the extra step of actually "downsizing" their photo image file sizes before inserting into MSWord documents, PDF's or forum postings .. we'll all have a much more enjoyable time of handling and viewing them. Admittedly, it's an extra step at your end .. but it makes for a better time of it at everyone-else's end.

Sure wish I knew how to understand and post photos.

Note to self......talk to Markus at Kingscote....and get step by step
instructions or book called "posting photos on website for dummies"????


Bo

I always resize photos to somewhere around 600 x 460. Up to 800 x 500 is still usually small enough that they don't blow the width of forum columns out of proportion.

Thanks for mentioning it, Barry. Gigantic photos have always been a pet peeve of mine, but I gave up mentioning it a while ago. LOL





Barbara

If any of you need photos re-sized and optimized for the web, feel free to email them to me (jamie@stoty.com), and I will gladly re-size and optimize them for you.

I'm like you Bo, I have a hard time with this high tech stuff, luckily I have a 12 year old daughther who can help me with this.

http://www.digital.mississippi-photo-gallery.com/resizing-2/

or

http://www.tucows.com/article/2129

Here's a round-up of a few that I have used :

Picasa - A free download from Google, Picasa is great for all-around photo correction and editing and includes ample tools for resizing and cropping.

IrfanView - One of the oldest and most popular free image editing tools, IrfanView includes batch processing for editing many images at once.

Picnik - A relatively new and completely web-based tool, Picnik lets you edit your photos from within your web browser and then send them directly to photo-sharing and social networking sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook and MySpac


HTH
Rac n

One thing that you have to be really careful about is whether the photo-hosting site you choose allows hot-linking. That is, if you wish to have your images appear in a post. It can take some intense reading and searching on some sites to discover this limitation.


If you just want to give a link to where you have your photos stored, then you need to be sure that you have the gallery set as "public", such as for Facebook.



Another thing to remember when posting to AA is that you generally will not need to put the img tags around the photo(s).



The other biggie: select "Preview" to see how the photos in your post will appear. If things aren't quite what you want, then select "Edit". Once you're happy with everything, and your text and photos are perfect, then click "Respond!".

In addition to checking the size of your photos, and the text that goes with them, this becomes important when you're copying and pasting the same text / photos to different forums. Different forums have different coding, so while you might need an <img> tag in one place might need an [img] somewhere else.



This all sounds way more complicated than it really is....honestly. Once you do it for a couple of photos, you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.


Oh, yeah...we use Paintshop to resize our photos. Well, once it's re-installed on the computer we will....yesssss, we had another computer "malfunction".


Barbara

Oh, yeah...we use Paintshop to resize our photos. Well, once it's re-installed on the computer we will....yesssss, we had another computer "malfunction".

smirk

Markus
Etobicoke, Onterry-airy-airy-Ohhh!

Oh, be quiet, Mark. LOL


I'm pretty sure it was the result of an insidious spam email.

So...I'm more ticked at my lovely Rogers/Yahoo email provider than I am at MS/Windoze, etc.


Grrrr.




Barbara

yeah you and me and everyone else Barbara, Rogers just keeps getting crappier, and more expensive.
That brings up another issue pertaining to Barry's original post; using more bandwidth to download oversized images, can cost some consumers more these days..so that's another reason to keep the file sizes down.

Cheers

Markus
Etobicoke, Onterry-airy-airy-Ohhh!