camera questions

[birdman]

I have not been on this site much lately because I have gotten so made trying to put pictures of my finds up. I am not a computer guy so it is even more frustrating not knowing what else to do. My wife is fair with these things but can't figure it out eather. Everytime I download a picture of something I have found it tells me my picture is to big. I have a new Kodak easy share just for this purpose and can't get to work. Our old camera took really bad pictures so I gave it away. I am sure its something simple, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

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[SHERMANVILLE ILLINOIS]

Birdman,

I'm no expert, just started working with pictures a few months ago.

Did you try to right click on the photo? Did a "resize picture" option come up? Pick this and pick a small size.

You may want to download (free) "Picasa2", what I have been using.

Sure you will be getting better information from others with more experience.

you and yours have a good un...
SHERMANVILLE ILLINOIS

 

[BADDOG]

Maybe this will help you.
I'm no expert at writing tutorials but I thought I would give it a shot.
Click the link below.
If you have any questions PM me and I will try to help

http://www.paradisespringers.com/Metal Detecting/output.pdf

Good Luck and HH

Baddog1

 

[gldhntr]

birdman, the best advice i can give you, after about 2000 tries through a couple different programs with no luck, is to just give up,,,,,,,i did ........ .......... gldhntr

 

[birdman]

I will try to get the pictures up, I gave up for awhile but I know I have been doing something wrong. Hopefully with all the help I will be able to get some picks up .Thanks for the good information I am sure I will figure it out now.well I hope so anyway.

 

[wmas1960]

I will try a basic tutorial here. This is bound to get long but here goes.

There are a few things at play with the size of an image file. There is "FILE SIZE" and "IMAGE SIZE".

Some things that make up these sizes is Compression or quality of the image, and the size of the image and the file type.

First, lets address type. You want to save your images as .jpg or JPEG images. Those are compressed images and are one of the most universally readable files you can post for most people to view. Probably 99% of the images you see on these sites are .jpg.

Next, Lets address "IMAGE SIZE". image Size is the number of pixels that it takes up to make an image. Your camera might be taking pictures at 3 megapixels or larger. That would be a huge image size. Much bigger than your, or most computer screens. Lets look at some basic image or screen sizes. Yours might not be represtented but it would, probably, be between some of the listed ones.

3000x2000 6mpxls
2048x1536 3mpxls
1024x768 medium size computer display, Common on Notebooks
800x600 Small Computer Display
640x480
320x240


My screen is 1024x768 in dimensions. Some newer computers use a larger display, I don't recall what that is, and some still use smaller, like 800x600. Using the above standard image sizes, It is, basicallly common that images should be less than 640 in width so that they will display fully on a persons screen without necessity to pan back and forth to view the image.

The above image is 640x426. Your image could be a little different in dimensions. For example, your camera could produce 4:3 aspect ratio images wheras the one above was produced by a camera that was 3:2 aspect ratio. Aspect really doesn't matter here but the important dimension is the width of the image. More below.


640 width is most practical because, most forums, like this, have a column along the left side of the screen. That is where, on this site, they give info about the group member who posted the reply, their screen name, avitar, etc., That leaves a smaller portion of the screen for the body of your message. Since many people are still using displays of about 800 pixels wide, it is best to keep inside that width. That way, you know your website is going to be somewhat universal among all viewers. So, keeping your image inside 640 will help assure that the width of a page doesn't exceed the dimensions of most computer screens.

My old camera (Nikon Coolpix 990) which is 3.1 megapixel produces 4:3 aspect images that are 2048 x 1536 in size. Those numbers are the number of pixels of width x height of your image. To find megapixels, or image size, you simply multiply the height by the width. 2048x1536=3,145,728 or 3.145728 megapixels. 3.1 for short. My newer camera (Nikon D100) is 6 megapixels and delivers a picture of 3008x2000. 3008x2000=6,016,000 or 6.016 megapixels, 6.0 for short.

Those cameras deliver images with file sizes of upwards of >2.0 meg for the 6mpxl images. The 3mpxl images come in around 1meg. It would be a certainty that, if you are trying to upload an image of that size to the Trearurenet server, you have a file that is too large. So, first thing you should do is reduce the size of your image to 640 wide by whatever matches the ratio of your camera. Anything larger is a nuissance to users with older systems, dialup, limited memory resources... Also, they are larger than the viewers screen anyways so downsizing would be a tremendous start to minimizing your file size.

Another thing to consider. While you can use a 640 wide image, if you want to display a Portrait or Vertical oriented image, your 640 wide image would be larger because in portrait, an image is taller than it is wide. Compared to the landscape or horizontal image above that is wider than it is tall. If you run into problems there, you might want to drop the width another size to 320x240. to reduce more size. Of course, with more experience over time, you can customize your sizes to whatever will get into the paramiters of the Treasurenet File Size Limit. Keeping in mind you don't ever want to exceed 640, unless you have to push it a little. I would point out how adequate the above image is for viewing. At only 640 wide, I don't know why one would need to wider.

2 ways to reduce the physical size of your image. Cropping, which is cutting out unnecessary information and centering in on one part of an image. You can, possibly, take the larger images and crop them down to 640 images by cutting out empty space and just including the important subject. I do this a lot. Or, you can resize the image by reducing its size completely. Or, a combination of both. To do these things, you will need to have a Photo Editing software program. I use Photoshop but there are programs that come with HP products like paper and printers. Somtimes they are bundled inside your package of paper. Kodak has some programs that come with cameras or, again, inside packages of paper. My Nikon cameras came with NikonView.... Windows may have even had some programs bundled with it. There are also some editing programs available through freeware or shareware. I don't know of them personally but I do read about them from time to time. Perhaps somone else might have some good recommendations there. Look at your software for instructions on "Resizing" and "Cropping" of images. One place where aspect comes to play is during resizing. If given the option to lock the dimensions of your image or "Maintain Aspect" as photoshop calls it. Select that. That way, if you change one dimension, it will automatically change the opposing dimension to maintain clarity and eliminate distortions that occour from stretching or scrunching an image. Once you have your images reduced in size to a 640 x image or smaller, then save it to a NEW File. I have a folder on my computer called Edited Photos. In there is another folder called Metal Detecting. I save all my photos that I post here, into that folder. Never save over your original photos. I keep all my originals untouched in a separate file. In case I ever want to refer back to them again and re-edit one.

The next part of minimizing "FILE SIZE" is throuugh quality or compression. When saving a .jpg image, you will often be asked what quality you want to save as. With Photoshop, that is a scale of 1-12. I usually use 5 or 6. Or, it could be Excellent, Good, Fair. Or, Good, Better, Best.... Whatever you are prompted, save a copy of your image as a medium quality image. In the end, you should have images less than, or around 100k in size. The above image is 107k. Most of my images are under 100. Some are as small as 30k and the largest is about 115. Most are around 40 to 80k.

Another option that you have is to investigate using FTP space. I actually host all my own photos. There are a lot of advantages to that. Including having more control over my photos and when they are purged. If I want or need to take one down. I can do that at any time. If I think one is important to a message that I posted, I can leave it there longer. Otherwise, groups like this, have to purge frequently to free up space for new posts and uploads. Thus dumping your photos when you might still want them attached to a post. Someone clicks on that post and gets a dead link. I use AOL and they give me a few meg of storage space on their servers. Many other ISPs do the same. FTP works much like your hard drive. You upload stuff to it and store it in files that you organize and maintain. It is, however, on the ISPs servers so people looking to access your photos don't have to go to your computer to get them. Allowing access to them at any time, even when your computer is off. You store the photo and note the URL address to where the file is stored. On AOL that is often an address like http: //hometown.aol.com/username/.... Or, you can find a 3rd party photo hosting site to upload your photos to. Get the similar URL link to the photo and insert it in your post by clicking the camera icon above the message composition window and inserting the URL between the codes. Click on the camera and notice what the codes look like. They are in brackets and consist of img, at the beginning and /img at the end.

I hope this is of some help in answering your questions and wasn't too long or involved for people to follow. Maybe, if you are having some difficulty understanding how to resize in a specific program, you might post what program you are using so others, using the same software, might provide some more specific instructions.

 

[birdman]

Wow! Lots of great info! I should have this camera thing beat shortly. Thanks!