UK Benz

May 4 2005, 04:40 PM

OK, quite a bit to take in but is real simple once you get going.

First off - when you take a picture using your digital camera, chances are that the pixels are HUGE... meaning that the picture is going to be BIG. (Depending on your camera, it should be something like 2048x1536 or thereabouts)

When posting a pic like this straight off the camera it is going to mean that the picture will not fit the screen (as it will be too big) and will probably take about an hour to appear for those without high speed internet connections.

SO, the first thing to do is to resize the pics. The best place to source such programs legally if you dont want to pay for them is a place called Download.Com where you can usually download 30-day trials of some decent software. I personally use Arcsoft's PhotoImpression (which you can get from this site) but browse the site under their "image editing" section and see what takes your fancy. 

Then all you have to do is resize the pics in the software which should be easy enough to do. The best dimensions to go for are around the 800x600 mark. By the way, these figures determine the height and width of the photo. I.e. 800 being the height and 600 being the width of the photo.

These should fit perfectly on anyone's screen without comprising photo quality and shouldn't take long for those without broadband - so they're still good quality and 56k friendly - done! 

Now, once you have resized the pics save them onto your hard drive and you are now ready to host your pics.

REMEMBERwhich direcotry/folder you have saved your photo onto. Choose something simple that you will remember like simple the "C:/" drive or in "My Pictures"... you get the idea. ALSO - when saving the file, the software may give you the option of daving the file type. Save it as a .JPG or .GIF file as these will tend to be of a smaller size compared to a .BMP file and will, therefore, not take up as much memory space. The picture on your camera should already be of a .JPG format though.

One of the best and user-friendly softwares is the infamous "Photo Bucket" which is an online software in which you can host pictures onto the internet. This can be found at Photobucket.Com. I believe you can resize pics here aswell, but i've not tried it. I've seen that you can reduce picture size upto half of their original size... however, I like to choose my dimensions, hence the reason I use PhotoImpression.  B) 

Anyway, Photo Bucket is one of the simplest online softwares available. All you have to do is sign up (for free) and away you go.

It will give you the options of uploading the photos from your hard drive, so all you have to do is click on the "browse" button and select the photo you will want to post.

Once you have done this, the image should appear as a thumbnail (a small preview of what the picture is) towards the bottom of the page. Underneath this, you will already be given the URL of the photo and the IMG code. The URL is basically a "webpage" which allows you or others to view this picture on its own in a separate window.

Now, coming to an end - all you have to do is come back onto Mercedes190.com, go to post a new thread as normal and in the text box enter the IMG code from Photo Bucket's website.

The easiest way to do this is by clicking once (using the left mouse button) on the long IMG code on Photo Bucket's site (this should then highlight the whole code) then click on it using the right-hand button on the mouse and select the "copy" option.

Now, go back to Mercedes190.com and in the text box click the right-hand button on the mouse again and select the "paste" option. You should now find that the IMG code has transferred from Photo Bucket's site onto here.

(All this IMG code is, is the image URL. I.e. where the picture is located through Photo Bucket's site and your storage space on the site. So basically, its just the web address of where the picture is located, really.)

Repeat the process for the remainder of the pics you want to post and then submit your post as normal.

REMEMBER, you can also add text to the post as normal or in between the codes if you want to add a small title either above the picture or beneath it.

Best thing is, have a play around with it and you'll soon figure it out. It really is very easy.

I hope this all makes sense.

Any problems, let me know & i'll help out any issues you may have.

-V-  B) 

P.S For those confused about the dimensions, here's an example.
When I originally took this photo, it had height and width dimensions of 2048x1536 and have been resized so that the height is 650 and the width is 488. Quality is still good, photo size is fine, it fits on the screen and shouldn't take too long to appear if you are using a 56k modem.

dave_irl

May 4 2005, 07:59 PM

good work V 

Can i just add that on many cameras you can also adjust the image size from the digital camera itself, i.e. before it takes the picture, and they often have a smaller resolution such as 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600 labelled as "email" or "pc" photo or similar.

This is useful if you are taking pictures to post on the internet like of your car or whatever but image resizing software is always handy too if you like your high quality pictures.

Dave 

UK Benz

May 4 2005, 09:26 PM

Yes Dave, you're absolutely right - some cameras do that have option of 'e-mail mode' which automatically takes pictires at a resolution which is ideal for sending in e-mails and for posting images. Strongly recommend this option if anyone has it, as it will save time having to download the relevant software and resize the pics.