Posting images to the website.

[moon puppy]

Now we have another new home we have put in place a limit (which I thought I had in the past) of the size of the file being uploaded. That limit is 2048Kb or 2 mgs. I thought it would be a good idea to share how we all get our images compressed or reduced in size to get loaded on the website. And no as your humble administrator I do not have an exemption for myself.

2 mgs is plenty big enough for any image we're sharing.

Let me start by saying there's multiple ways of doing this depending on the technologies you use. Apple and iPhone could be different from what I'm sharing with you. You might have the old school digital camera where you have to take the card out and put it in a card reader or even a USB cable that hooks up to the PC. I can not tell you all the different ways of doing this, I can only share what works for me. Having said that, if you'd like to share you're technique please do so. Hell I might learn something myself.

So...
I take my photos using my Android phone camera and it's stored on my Google Photos cloud thing. I go to that website to view my images.

For the record I'm just using Snippit tool to grab these screenshots, just cut and paste them to the post. Actually another trick to getting images into the forum.

First trick is just cut and paste from browser pages.
I find the image I'm wanting to post from my Google Photos albums. Here the original size is 4032 × 3024 and about 12 mgs in size, far too big for our filters no.

If I click on the photo in my Google Photo albums I get zoomed in but "fit to screen" size

I can click the image and zoom in on the original image size 4032 × 3024

but I don't want that big image so what do I do?

I go back to the fit to screen sized image, right click on the image itself and click copy image

Then I come back to the post here on our friendly forum and simply type Clt P for paste or right click on the forum post and click paste. It's that simple and I hope I'm explaining this correctly. You're only cutting the visible image that's on the screen, not the original file. To demonstrate what I'm talking about here I got this screen shot.

To show the difference in size between the original image and what I copy, you will find two file names almost the same, we've all done this, copy a file twice right? The one file with the (1) is 3 mgs, the other is only 201k.
What's the difference? The smaller one resolution is only 1156 x 868, that's about the resolution of my laptop display because that image is what I copied from my browser view and saved it to my hard drive. The larger file is the actual download of that image in the resolution that the camera took the image.


Another way, I just cut and paste from Photos into the forum.

Just like this.

Now this is how I do it, because I use Android and I back up my photos to google this is my method. I do not know how Apple handles this if you have an iPhone, I suspect it's the same general principle.

There's also the download and compress way to do this using a utility called Irfanview.

Please feel free to post how you do it so others may learn. I'm not saying the way I do it is the correct way. If anyone has ever talked to me about IT work there's 5 different ways to get the same result. It's what works for you that counts.

hope this helps some of y'all.

 

[moon puppy]

BTW, back in the early days I had a customer call me up the day after I sold her a brand new computer. She said that she and her girlfriends got together to share what they know about getting on internet while they shared a couple of bottles of wine. She called me the next morning and said she had one question "What the hell is a "click"! I got notes click here and click there and I don't know what that damn click is!"

 

[Tim A.]

BTW, back in the early days I had a customer call me up the day after I sold her a brand new computer. She said that she and her girlfriends got together to share what they know about getting on internet while they shared a couple of bottles of wine. She called me the next morning and said she had one question "What the hell is a "click"! I got notes click here and click there and I don't know what that damn click is!"

I got that click part down! ...BTW, did you know that both, the Hillbilly that made Ned Beaty squeal like a pig AND Billy Redden, the banjo playing kid from Deliverance grew up not far from here...just say'n

 

[Sharkmouth]

Free download GIMP/GNU has a batch processor, BIMP, that will take ALL your photos in a folder (or you can be selective) and process them in many ways. I use it to autocorrect colors, resize, and add my watermark.

 

[Heavens Eagle]

I use a program called CANVAS. I have used it in variations for about 30 years and it works great for doing layouts, working with photos, making scale dimensional drawings and all the things you have seen in my threads. Yeah it isn't cheap, but I have it and it works for me.
The items I use the most with the photos is the resolutions or DPI (dots per inch) Most phone cameras these days take photos in the size of 4320x3240 or larger which makes file sizes about 3+mb. My Nikon SLR takes photos in the 6000x4000 size and they end up in the 10mb size. That is great for getting details and decent photos to start with, but can take a lot of storage if not careful. It also gives the ability to use small parts of a photo without loosing detail.

As to the DPI, you computer imports these into a program and it can end up being so big you can only see a small piece. When I import my photos they come in at 96DPI and I can only see a bit. After a lot of trial and error I found I can shrink that by changing the DPI to 745 which makes the photo fit in my preset page layout. I can then manipulate it bigger, smaller, and position it. When set I change the resolution to 320DPI without changing the display size, crop it, finish my details and then render the final piece at 160DPI which then gives a decent photo slightly bigger than 1024x768 and in the 300k range.

The main tools I use for photo manipulation are crop, resize, brightness, and contrast. There are other nuances that add to the finished output, but those turn the 10 megabyte photos into the 300 kilobyte files that are much friendlier for site storage and downloading. The largest file I have loaded is my Signature gif file, and it is 1.2 megabytes.
In the past I have used a program called Picture Publisher, and for quick items I have an ANCIENT 16 bit program called Firehand Ember that has the basic tools I stated above to edit photos. I use it mainly for photo organization and keeping track of photos.

 

[razordws]

Back in the day I used Photoshop for all my image editing and had a real camera but I've kind of let go of all the technology these days.

I think I mentioned this before but I simply post my phone photos to my wife on facebook messenger (which automatically downsize the photos) and then download from there back to my phone. A simple hack for now until I get around to setting up a computer again.

 

[moon puppy]

I think I mentioned this before but I simply post my phone photos to my wife on facebook messenger (which automatically downsize the photos) and then download from there back to my phone. A simple hack for now until I get around to setting up a computer again.

Like I said, there's all kinds of ways to do this stuff. Whatever works for ya keep on workin' it.

 

[moon puppy]

@AndyFettes
Read over this and see if this helps.

 

[Rhino]

Do you mean to tell me, after I have cropped and monkeyed with 228 pictures to post, I have to dick with each one of them 2 more times?
NOT bloody likely, Mate.

 

[moon puppy]

https://modelersalliance.org/galleries/categories/shows-and-meetings.7/add

Add them to Media, you can do batches. What I posted here was just one way.

What are the sizes of your images? They can't be that big.

 

[Heavens Eagle]

I just open the thread where I want to post them in a window on the right of the screen and then open the folder where the photos are on the left side of the screen. I start the thread and then drag the photos over and place them.