How to post pictures

[davidc]

There few different ways of posting photos on the forums, some better than others, and some sites have quirks that need working around to get the picture. I'll list some of the common ways here and add more if needed.

In summary there are guides to the different options. Click on one to jump to the relevant method.

Link to photos on Pbase
Link to photos on Flickr
Link to photos on other websites (e.g. Croydon Camera Club)
Upload and link to photos directly

If you have any questions feel free to ask. I've reserved a couple of posts after these example in case we want to create more guides for other image linking examples, just ignore those for now.

[davidc]

www.pbase.com

Another great photo sharing site, this one is a little easier to link to each image but you need to choose the size of image yourself.

First of all, find a page on Pbase that has a picture you like. For example -

http://www.pbase.com/ninaludwig/image/133892911

On that page you can see, towards the bottom, there's an option to "view other sizes". In this case, we have Small, Medium, Original. For this example I want to link to the small version, but remember 1024x768 is a limit when linking! I select "small" and the picture changes to smaller version. Now, right click on the picture you want to link to and you will see an option such as "Copy Image URL", "Copy Picture URL", "Copy URL" etc. Select this - you now have the link to the picture on Pbase.

Come back here to the Croydon forum and in the post you want to use the picture in, when you are writing your message, you'll see a series of buttons. The one you want is "Img". Click it and you'll see this appear

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[img][/img]

You need to the paste the link to the picture between the [img] boxes like this

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[img]http://i.pbase.com/t4/06/522406/4/133892911.FImrNV40.jpg[/img]

And when you hit Submit it will look like this

[davidc]

Linking to photos on Flickr
Flickr is a huge, massively popular photo storage/sharing site but it doesn't like people directly linking to images - it tries to exert a bit of control but we can get around that

Linking to a photo when you are a Flickr member
This is the best way to do it. Login to Flickr, find the photo you want and - assuming the owner has allowed it - hit the "Share" button above the photo. This gives a few more options and the one we want is "Grab the HTML/BB Code" one. This will give a small box to "grab the code below" - highlight all the text with your mouse, then right click on it and Copy. Or press CTRL+C, they do the same thing. You now have the link to the photo in a format the forum will recognise and it'll look something like this

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[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedarsphoto/6743860603/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7011/6743860603_02d865db2b_m.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedarsphoto/6743860603/]Miniature Golf[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/cedarsphoto/]cedarsphoto[/url], on Flickr

Looks complex, but you can just paste it directly into a forum posting here and it'll do this -


Miniature Golf by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

So you get the picture, title and owner - clicking on any of them takes you to Flickr.

Note - when you are getting the BB code to paste into the forum, there is an option below that lets you choose the size of image - here I chose the smallest to keep it discreet. You will need to make sure the image doesn't exceed 1024x768 or the forum won't display it. Posting a smaller one is OK, other members can click through, view it on flickr, then post comments here.

If you are a Flickr user yourself, and logged in, you can follow this process to get ANY image - provided the owner hasn't disabled the sharing option. Sadly you cannot link to the picture if you are NOT a logged in Flickr user - all you get in this case is a link to the page link this http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedarsphoto/6743860603/

[davidc]

This one is similar to Pbase but requires that YOU take extra care when linking to an image to make sure it's the correct size!

Start with the picture you want to use. In this case, I've picked Roy King's galleries from the CCC website at random.

http://www.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/Clu ... oyKing.htm

I'll go for the very first image, top left. Clicking on it it opens up on the site for a larger, higher resolution version (try it).

Again, like PBase, I right click on the image and select "Copy Image URL" which is added to the clipboard.

Come back to the forum, select the [img] icon just above the box you are typing your post and you'll see this -

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[img][/img]

Paste the link between the [img] blocks and you get

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[img]http://www.croydoncameraclub.org.uk/ClubMembersGallery/RoyKing/royking_lichen_std.jpg[/img]

Which when you submit your post will look like this -



The complication here is that you often don't get an option to find a correctly sized image to display on the forum. Flickr, PBase and dedicated photosites often give the option for smaller photos that WILL fit and in that respect are more reliable. But you can do it, provided you know it won't break the limit of 1024x768.

[davidc]

Another option is to upload an image directly to the club server then link to it that way. The benefit of this method is you don't need your picture to be online already, you can have it on your home PC, but the drawback is space on our club server is not unlimited and not free. For now, we have ample room, but over time this might mine we need to "prune" usage!

First of all, find the picture you want to upload on your computer. I like to drag mine to an easy to find location, like the desktop.

Next, while entering your post on the forum, there is a small tab underneath with "Options" on, and beside it "Upload Attachment". Click upload attachment and you will see it change to two new fields, Filename and File Comment.

Beside Filename you will see a "Choose File" button - click this and it opens a box that lets you browse your PC. In this example, my photo is on the desktop so I select "Desktop", choose the image and hit "Open". You'll now see the name of the file, in my case wheel.jpg, shown below too. Click "Add the file" and the view will change again.

Now you see the name of your image, wheel.jpg in my example, in blue text. Click the "Place Inline" button and you'll see

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[attachment=0]wheel.jpg[/attachment]

Which when you submit your post will look like the image below. Remember, try to keep your images relatively small so we don't run out of space. Don't reduce the quality too much, particularly when asking for feedback, but a good rule of thumb is a few MB is fine, double digit MB is a bit large!

wheel.jpg (76.75 KiB) Viewed 11713 times

[davidc]

Reserved for future use, ignore for now