Photos on the forum

[saphena]

I shall in the next few days be posting comprehensive guidance on how to load photos onto the forum but in the meantime

briefly, the forum does not handle large individual images.

The image you captured on your phone will usually be too large to be loaded as is, you will need to resize it so that it's small enough to load. Whenever I've loaded images recently I have used Windows Paint [winkey+R] pbrush [ok] to resize to 25%. That works reliably. You should be able to post up to three such images in an individual post.

 

[saphena]

The software on which this forum runs sets limits on the size of images which may be loaded. If you are experiencing difficulties posting photos it's almost always because your images are too large. The current limit is approximately 1MB (1024kb) per image.

If you try to post an image that's too large, on a phone the normal response is for the image load to simply stop. On a desktop or laptop you'll get

You need to reduce the image size so that the file on disk is less than 1MB. How do you do that???

On my Android phone I have an app "Photo & picture resizer" which gives me a simple menu of options. There are many such apps. Some free with or without annoying ads, others paid for pretty trivial amounts.

On Windows, I use Windows Paint [winkey+R] pbrush [ok] or [Start][Windows Accessories][Paint] to resize. If you use the truly appalling [Photos] app on Windows you can right-click an image and choose an option


on Apple kit, similar facilities exist.

Note that the size limit is per image and is the physical file size, not the dimensions of the image. Discovering the actual file size is a bit of a nerdy thing to do these days so I recommend a bit of trial and error with your own setup. Start by resizing to 50% or "M" using the horrible [Photos] app. If that works, stick with it otherwise try 40% and so on until your images load successfully as below


Alternatively, open an account with a photo-hosting site such as flickr.com or photobucket.com then post links to the images here instead.

 

[saphena]

If you're emailing images you can encounter similar problems. The attachment size limits for emails depend on a number of variables including things like your carrier and the email's destination. Emails up to around 5MB in size should be good everywhere so usually you'll want to attach only one or two images to your emails.

 

[Firstpeke]

Interesting posts and I do understand why you have done this, so kudos for trying to encourage others on how to use their "camera" and software to adjust the image sizes.

As an addition to your excellent posts I would say that folks can often over complicate their own attempts by looking for free software or putting the images online with access to others and so on...

Your suggestion to use the basic "Paint" programme in Windows (not Paint 3D) is by far the best as it is the easiest way to get the images down to size.
Using jpeg format is the default and folks should check they are actually using this, if not, again use "Paint" and "save as" in the "File" menu to check they are using the jpeg format which uses smaller file sizes than other formats.
Incidentally jpg or . jpeg stands for "Joint Photographic Experts Group", which is the name of the group who created the JPEG standard....
Others are bmp, tif, or tff and png.

Of course one can also check ones camera, or mobile camera, as there is often an opportunity change a setting to take pictures in a smaller format, as low as the good old fashioned 640x480 which was the default for years..... before HD came around!

This can often only be seen on digital cameras as image size in Megabytes (Mb) and some experimentation is needed to find the optimum smaller image size for use on web site related uploads.
Using this option can remove the need to manipulate image files before uploading.... but remember if you want to take pictures to later print them off for framing, then higher resolution is better so more Mb's in the camera setup are required.
This will obviously mean more work as previously mentioned to reduce them for upload to the forum.
Using 4:3 format or "square" format, can reduce sizes more quickly. The 16:9, or widescreen style image will always use more Mb, much more!

I am not trying to teach those who know all this to suck eggs, but having had a very early digital camera bought in Hong Kong and having been in I.T. I do know that a lot of folks do struggle with technology!
This I am painfully aware of for two main reasons, firstly, my wife is an absolute technophobe, secondly my son has a Masters degree in Network Security, making me feel like the gopher grade IT assistant......

It would be interesting to hear what issues others have in relation to this topic!

 

[Stephen!]

For years I have used this program for handling images. It has many useful features:

1. FREE
2. Very "light" footprint and reasonablt fast
3. Will handle/convert almost every image format out there
4. Will do batch processing

The interface is a little clunky and it is possible to accidentally overwrite your original files if you are not careful, but none-the-less, I really enjoy it a lot.

https://www.irfanview.com/

 

[~Martin~]

I find the simplest and quickest way is to open the photo on your phone, take a screen shot and upload that.

 

[~Martin~]

Happy to demonstrate at the Lakeland RTE in exchange for coffee