How to upload a photo(s) to your post

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Seiko7A38
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How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Seiko7A38 »

There are two ways you can embed a photo (or photos - up to a maximum of 10 permitted) in a post:
By adding it as an attachment (to the forum), or by hot-linking it from a remote image hosting service.

No doubt many will opt for the former, thinking it is more convenient, but it will also require some effort on your part. Most modern digital cameras and smartphones have the (default) capability of taking photos of at least 5 Megapixels, which equates to a .jpg file size of approx. 2.5MB. Even my venerable 10-year old Panasonic Lumix DMC-515, has the maximum capability of 12 Megapixels. That said, the setting I use most regularly is only 3 megapixels, which gives more than adequate resolution for my needs and 4:3 images measuring 2048x1536 pixels with .jpg file sizes around 1.5MB.

That said, not only myself but other site owners, have determined the optimum image dimensions for uploading to forum posts is just half that - 1024x768 pixels. Anything bigger dramatically slows page loading times - and rapidly consumes storage capacity. So before John and I had finished setting up the forum (and were still familiarising ourselves), he suggested a maximum width of 1024 pixels and I agreed. In fact, it transpired that the maximum attachment limit is dictated by image file size, so for the time being at least, we've set a limit of 256KB.

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Seiko7A38 »

Here's a very quick example of how to upload a photo as an attachment.

At the bottom left hand corner you'll see Attachments. Click on it and then the grey button [Add files].

HowtoUploadPhoto-Attach-1.png
HowtoUploadPhoto-Attach-1.png (67.72 KiB) Viewed 7331 times

Click on the thumbnail of the photo in your PC's folder (or other device) and 'Open'.
You'll now see it appear under FILENAME at the bottom of the screen. Note the file size and green status tick. :mrgreen:

HowtoUploadPhoto-Attach-2.png
HowtoUploadPhoto-Attach-2.png (81.51 KiB) Viewed 7331 times

Move your mouse pointer to where you wish the photo to go and click the grey button [Place inline] ....

HowtoUploadPhoto-Attach-3.png
HowtoUploadPhoto-Attach-3.png (86.71 KiB) Viewed 7331 times

Assuming you've finished the wording of your post, hit the [Preview] or [Submit] button. Et Voilà. 8-)

7A38-6000-P1640040-Instagram.jpg
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I took that photo of my 7A38-6000 in September last year and posted it on page 89 of the 'One and Only' WRUW thread on the old forum. The original 4:3 format image measures 2048x1536 and 1.5MB file size. I uploaded it to Webs photo gallery at that size, because I wasn't concerned about storage capacity any more, and linked it into my post. Recently I uploaded it to Instagram as my first post using my new account. Instagram's default image format is 1:1. I've never been happy using their inbuilt cropping tool (because of some earlier dubiously offset results), so I manually pre-cropped it. The image file I uploaded measured 1535x1535 and 729KB. Instagram automatically re-sizes images to a maximum of 1080x1080 pixels. Downloading it from Instagram gave file size of 193KB - well below the attachment limit of 256KB.

Doesn't look so bad, does it ? :D

PS - I'm not in any way implying that you should use Instagram to re-size your photos for uploading as attachments. That was just a 'quick and dirty' example I used. There are many other (and simpler) image re-sizing tools available online.
I guess we're going to need another separate help topic covering that aspect. Eh, John ? ;)

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Johnny_E »

Happy to do a help thread on image resizing using the Fastone Image Resizer tool if you want.
It's brilliant in that you can set it running on a batch of photos and it'll resize them all in a flash.

https://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm

A little demo of Fastone Image Resizer and the concept of image compression.
I've compressed your image above to 65% compression.

fastone.JPG
fastone.JPG (70.79 KiB) Viewed 7299 times

Can you see any noticeable drop in quality? File size is now a lean 89KB!

7A38-6000-P1640040-Instagram.jpg
7A38-6000-P1640040-Instagram.jpg (89.02 KiB) Viewed 7299 times

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Seiko7A38 »

I've actually been using this rather simpler basic tool to re-size my photos for attachments:

https://picresize.com/ which claims to be 'The Internet's Original Picture Resizing Tool'. :D

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Seiko7A38 »

The other option (which doesn't require any prior re-sizing) is to use a remote image hosting service and 'hotlink'. Most of you will have already used this method on other watch forums (including the old Webs forum). Firstly you need to upload your photo(s) to the chosen image host. Some are free, but not all allow hotlinking. Current options include: ImgBB.com, Imgur.com and Postimage.org. Then of course there's Photobucket, which was once, by far and away, the most popular choice (both as free and paid accounts), that I previously used myself to post thousands of photos on the old forum. But since they started their various extortionate money-grabbing exercises, back in June 2017, I wouldn't recommend them to my worst enemy. There's also Flickr (which I've also used) and SmugMug. Both of these are really intended for professional photographers and don't make it particularly easy to hotlink your photos.

To embed it as an image in your post this way, is simplicity itself. As it says in the screenshot below:

Click on the Insert Image icon above the text box (not the link icon) ....

phpBB-InsertImage.png
phpBB-InsertImage.png (25.14 KiB) Viewed 7258 times

That will make the image coding appear in your text box.

phpBB-InsertImage+img.png
phpBB-InsertImage+img.png (34.95 KiB) Viewed 7252 times

Copy the image link from your remotely hosted photo and paste it between the pair of brackets as indicated above.
Assuming you've finished composing your text, hit the [Preview] and [Submit] buttons.
Hopefully, it should come out looking something like this (if maybe not quite as good). :mrgreen:

Image

I was hoping to demonstrate this using one of my 'standard' 2048x1536 (approx. 1.5MB) photos. Unfortunately, the only place that I've uploaded them, as such, is to the Webs Photo Gallery. There's not much point in linking from there. :( Obviously I've still got tens of thousands of photos in my Photobucket account, many of which were indeed uploaded at 2048x1536. However, because I only ever had an 'Intermediate' paid account, they've all been automatically re-sized. :roll:
So for expediency's sake, I picked this old photo of one of my 7A38-7029's, which as hosted and re-sized by Photobucket measures 1440x1080 with a file size of 341KB - much reduced from the original 1.5MB, but still too large for our current 256KB attachment limit. My other purpose in doing this was to check whether it would be automatically further reduced in size to fit the forum page width - which naturally it was. :D

While John and I were in 'testing mode', he went one better and linked a much larger photo, which aptly demonstrates the inbuilt automatic re-sizing. I asked him to re-post it below as an example, which he's since done. Thanks John. ;)

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Johnny_E »

phpBB should load the image in "responsively" i.e. to fit the available space only.

Here's a random 5689px wide image off a Google image search

Image

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Seiko7A38 »

A few words of warning (speaking from experience) ....

If you're using Imgur for your remote hosting, please be careful which link you select, particularly if you've uploaded more than one photo to an album. I don't use it myself, but in the past, I've had to rectify a couple of other members' posts on the old forum. The default link it automatically gives you is to the album - not the individual photo(s). If you use this, your attempt to post a (single) photo will probably fail and possibly just display the link (or a 'spaceball'). :(

Please do NOT hotlink photos direct from FaceBook or Instagram. This may sound like a quick and dirty solution and it can be done, but if you manage to succeed, it is only temporary illusion. I'm not talking about linking a user's post, but their actual photo(s) from within those posts. It's possible, with some judicious right-clicking to grab the image coding. However the lengthy alpha-numeric links are random generated and have a limited lifespan. I'm not sure how long it is - maybe as short as a couple of days. I know this, because I have summarily failed, as demonstrated on the old forum. :oops:

Last year, I eventually relented and signed up to Instagram and soon came across a number of latterly inactive forum members. I recognized them from either their user ID's or actual names. Some of them had been members of the old forum for many years - but had never posted. One such was the bearded Dutch gentleman extraordinaire Lode Roleofs, whose eclectic interests obviously include 7Axx's. We got chatting via DM and I asked him why he'd never posted. I can't remember his answer, but he then made his initial post in a 7A28 thread. It was just a single sentence (without photos). So, I thought I'd help improve his first effort, by editing his post and inserting direct links to two of his Instagram photos (rather than the posts which included them). It most certainly worked at the time. 8-) However, when I happened to go back and look at it a couple of weeks later, the linked photos had been replaced by 'spaceballs'. :x

Lode.Roelofs-Post.png
Lode.Roelofs-Post.png (17.03 KiB) Viewed 7235 times

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Re: How to upload a photo(s) to your post

Post by Seiko7A38 »

In a similar vein, please DO NOT hotlink images from eBay listings (or for that matter from any other auction sites).
This is relatively easy to do and may seem to you like a quick shortcut - but again it is only a temporary solution. :(

From memory, there were a couple of members of the old forum, notably 'Konkordski' (Lawrence):

Konkordski-(Lawrence)-Post-Thumbnails.png
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.... and also possibly 'jair1970' (James) who used this method to good effect at the time. I haven't had time to wade through all their old posts, but the above example of one of Lawrence's posts shows how most of his look today. :(

They're all spaceballs ! :roll: His embedded photos did actually work for many years, principally because Google cached the images. However, presumably in an effort to remedy what must have been a massive storage problem, in August 2019, eBay started deleting all ended listings after 60 days. I documented the fact in this thread on the old forum.

To demonstrate how NOT TO DO IT I'm deliberately going to hotlink this eBay image below:

Image

This is the primary image from an eBay listing for a grossly over-priced 7A38-6000 which sold for $1500 on 30th January.
I've already written about it a few days ago in a thread in the eBay section, where I'd correctly embedded a re-sized version of the same photo (as an attachment) in my post.

If eBay's bots do their stuff, the above hot-linked photo should turn into a spaceball on April 1st (April Fools' Day). :lol: Seems like a good day for it. :P Obviously you'll need to clear your browser cache to make it disappear completely. ;)

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