photo posting troubles...

[bj976]

Right, so i've got 5 photos of my knives numbers 4,5,6,7 and 8 but they are so big(1.5-2mb each) that it would be ridiculous to post them until they are downsized a touch. Problem is i'm not that great with computers so if anyone has some advice as to how i might be able to get these bad boys a bit smaller i'd appreciate it.

Thanks, Brenton.

[Ray Rogers]

First of all, let me say 'Thank you' for even asking this question before you posted those monsters. Even if you did post them many of us would never get to see them because of our slow internet access. We would never be able to download them.

There is very little reason why any picture posted on the forums would need to be larger than 100k. I have over 25 megabytes of pictures on my website and few of them exceed 50k. There are some things that can be done to bring your pictures into the proper size range.

Some of the solution to the problem requires some computer skills but some does not. One significant change can be made in your camera. Your camera has a setting for picture quality and the higher the quality setting the larger the picture. Reduce the setting - try them all and compare the picture sizes until you find the most quality you can get in a reasonable sized picture. High quality pictures look great but 'low quality' pictures look almost as good on the internet.

The next thing is to learn to 'crop' your pictures. I see far too many pictures where a knife is photographed on a bed spread and the picture comes out looking like a knife surrounded by a huge amount of cloth. The knife is the subject so cut out most of the stuff around it . This makes a better picture and, more importantly, a lot smaller picture. Also, when trying to make a small picture, use a background of a single color and no pattern. Less 'busy' backgrounds can make smaller pictures.

To crop a picture you will need a program like PaintBrush or PhotoShop. These programs generally have a tool that allows you to describe a rectangular area on the photo, then hit enter, and everything outside the rectangle is cut out of the picture.

Finally, photograph the knife either horizontally or vertically, not diagonally. A diaganally composed picture cannot be cropped nearly as easily. Remember, I'm not talking about making the most artistic picture, I'm talking about making a picture of compact size that still has all the detail you need to clearly see the subject.

When I say small I'm talking about the number of bytes in the picture. The physical size of the picture can still be 5" to 7" wide and a couple of inches tall, more than enough to show a knife clearly. Saved in jpg format, such pictures usually require less than 75k , look good, and load very quickly even on slow connections....

[Jamey Saunders]

Hi Brenton,

An easy program is Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com). Download and install it, and open your image in it. Click on the Image menu, and you'll see an option to Resize/Resample. Use that to resize your pic.

Looking forward to see what you have to show us, and welcome to the forums!

[SharpByCoop]

Thank you Ray! ... and Jamey!

Exactly.

Coop

[6T7L71CPE]

I've been using Irfanview for a couple years, it's GREAT, and it's free. I've got PS Essentials but my old computer takes forever to open it.

[bj976]

thanks chaps. i'll get them on as soon as possible.
brenton.

[bj976]

Irfan view worked great. i've got em down to around 300kb each(think that's as small as they're getting...)

....however, i've now run into the problem of how exactly i post the images. when i click on the 'insert image' icon i get a window asking me to "enter text to be formatted" and a box containing "[IMG]xxx[IMG/]"

..i'm quite confused by this. if i could be set in the right direction i'd be most appreciative. sorry to be a pain in the a*s...it's my first time!

thanks, Brenton

[SharpByCoop]

Hi Brendon,

Sorry to hear of your confusion. I understand it's not quite that easy. LONG ago I wrote a tutorial explaining in-depth all the aspects of this task. We thought it smart enough to make it a 'sticky' post and it is still on the 'Ask a Computer Geek' forum, right here.

The photo hosts that I identify are probably dead links, but there are still a bunch. Jamey Saunders will provide a gallery for you and host your photos for FREE if you send him a note. (He posted above). There are a bunch of photo host sites out there now.

Let us know how that works. 300kb is still too big. Find out how you can reduce the pixel size down to 640 pixels wide and 60% compression. Then you should arrive at about 100kb or less, with no image degradation.

Good luck.

Coop

[Jamey Saunders]

In Irfanview, when you choose to save your file with "Save As", change the file type to JPG, and make sure that the "Show Options Dialog" option is checked. You'll get an options box that will allow you to set the quality. Move the slider to 60, and save. That should up the compression and reduce the file size.

If you want to use my hosting service, send me an email. My automated sign-up script is not working at the moment, and I haven't had time to fix it!

[A T Barr]