Image Preparation for Posts

[Art]

Guys,

Generally speaking, links to images hosted off the forum should be avoided. These linked images are at the mercy of whoever is hosting them and can dissapear leaving broken links within messages. Also, if someone who has posted here with these types of links loses interest in the hobby, the forum, or whatever, chances are the images will be moved or deleted, again leaving holes. Having images on the forum's server means these images will always be available.

What it comes down to is taking the time to learn how to properly prepare your images. You have to learn how to compress your images to make them smaller. I found two freeware ( costs you nothing ) utilites that will do this for you.

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/gmm/fwgcomp.html
http://www.dreamscapesoftware.com/pr.../jpegcompress/

I'm seriously considering disabling linking to outside files for the above reasons, so it would be a good idea for everyone to learn how to do this.

Art

[Christophe]

Art,

Moreover, may I just add that having the image immediately available is more comfortable and friendly for the reader...

Cheers.

Ch.

[Art]

Christophe,

Links will appear instead of images whenever someone posts more than one attachment in a message, regardless of where the image resides. This wouldn't change but at least we would be assured that the image was always available. Sorry for bringing this thread off-topic.

[rboomsma]

Windows XP provides a free photo tool that you just right click on the photos and you can select a resize for the photo.

It is a free download from microsoft very easy to install and use.

Originally Posted by Art

Generally speaking, links to images hosted off the forum should be avoided. These linked images are at the mercy of whoever is hosting them and can dissapear leaving broken links within messages. Also, if someone who has posted here with these types of links loses interest in the hobby, the forum, or whatever, chances are the images will be moved or deleted, again leaving holes. Having images on the forum's server means these images will always be available.

What it comes down to is taking the time to learn how to properly prepare your images. You have to learn how to compress your images to make them smaller. I found two freeware ( costs you nothing ) utilites that will do this for you.

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/gmm/fwgcomp.html
http://www.dreamscapesoftware.com/pr.../jpegcompress/

I'm seriously considering disabling linking to outside files for the above reasons, so it would be a good idea for everyone to learn how to do this.

Art

[HuliganRS]

Ron is correct. The tool is called Image Resizer and can be found HERE!

I love it and it's free!!!

Rusty.

[Art]

Resizing is important, so is cropping. Crop your image so that only the most important information is shown. Crop out anything that doesn't illustrate the point you are trying to convey.

After cropping and resizing, optimizing the image through an image optimizer will let you adjust the picture quality setting so the result will be a small file size with acceptable quality. You'd be amazed how much an image file can be shaved down by resizing, cropping and optimizing.

[dannybou]

Photoshop does it all.

[Art]

Yep, I use photoshop and illustrator for this site as well as at my place of employment. It might be a little expensive for anyone who doesn't use it alot, and you can't beat the price of the freeware utilities!