How do you add pics to a thread?

There will be multiple answers to this question but I will answer it the way I do it and a lot of others too. If you don't have a Photobucket account, now is the time to create it. After you create your account, simply upload your pictures to Photobucket and copy the IMG code and paste it into your thread. It really is simple! Hope this helps.
 
Don't use photobucket, use the Autogeekonline photo album.

Mike Phillips explains why in this thread:

How to insert an image from your photo gallery into your message

I completely agree with this statement:

Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
The problem with Photobucket and freebie photo hosting companies like it is that most people only have the freebie account and when they use up all their free space they start deleting older photos to make room for new photos and then EVERYWHERE they posted the now deleted photos there will be red x's. Kind of takes the fun out of reading a thread only to never see the pictures.
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It happens so often over on Club Lexus and it's a real PITA when you're trying to look at a DIY or there is a thread where everyone is to show their cars, and half of the pictures are red x's with a message from photobucket that the picture has been moved - it really breaks the flow!

I personally host all my AutoGeekOnline pictures here in the forum photo gallery.
 
Matt said:
It happens so often over on Club Lexus and it's a real PITA when you're trying to look at a DIY or there is a thread where everyone is to show their cars, and half of the pictures are red x's with a message from Photobucket that the picture has been moved - it really breaks the flow!
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Thank you for backing me up on this subject.

All the really GREAT pictures of cars and before and after shots don't make a hill of beans when they show up as red x's because the person that owns them deletes them off their free hosting account to make room for new pictures. It ruins every thread the pictures are cross-posted to all over the Internet.

In a nutshell, the biggest problem for most people working with their photos is

Cropping out the fluff
Resizing them to a "normal" viewing size

Modern digital cameras take excellent pictures but unless the camera as a setting for a small photo size it's all to easy to take pictures that are thousands of pixels wide and tall. But the fact is, the best average size for a photo on a "Discussion Forum" is approximately 800 pixels wide. If you picture is any wider then you FORCE your view to "HORIZONTAL SCROLL" and this means they never really see the entire picture because as they scroll to one side to see the hidden portion of a too large picture, the other side scrolls off the screen. Thus the reader can never see the entire picture.

Kind of defeats the purpose of sharing a picture.

So the problem is software, that is software that will enable a person to crop out the fluff and software to resize the photo without distorting it.

I don't know of any "easy to use" free software that enables you to crop out the fluff, I got lucky in that the Canon Digital Rebel came with Photoshop Elements 7, which is what I use to crop out the fluff.

For resizing I use Easy Thumbnails which is free and works great. In fact, ANY picture you see on this forum posted by me has had the fluff cropped out using Elements and then resized using Easy Thumbnails.

Then the photo is uploaded into the Autogeek Photogallery and the "Inserted" into a message, not "attached".

I always post this multiple times throughout the year and here I go again...

If you're going to be posting to forums for the foreseeable future, whether it car detailing pictures or Knitting pictures or fill in the blank, then learn how to

  1. Crop out the fluff
  2. Resize your pictures to 800 pixels wide (Height doesn't really matter it's the width)
  3. Upload them to a "stable" gallery
  4. Insert them into a thread
I wrote how-to articles for all of these things on MOL and will try to find the time to create updated versions for Autogeek. Here's what I've added so far...


How-to work with pictures on discussion forums


How to upload a photo into your Autogeek Photo Gallery


How to insert an image from your photo gallery into your message


Here's the link to Easy Thumbnails, works great for resizing humongous photos down to smaller sizes, including cool Avatars. My how-to article is still accurate on MOL for this software.

Easy Thumbnails

:)
 
Here is a link to Paint.NET, a free photo editing program. It is pretty powerful, get creative! It's more than necessary for the purposes of this discussion.

Easy thumbnails is great because you can resize many pics at once. A couple things to know:

1- Files tab- Find the folder with your pics and highlight each one you intend to resize.

2- Settings tab- Choose a width/height (view the preview window). As Mike say's 800 width is good.

3- Save in- Be sure you remember where the pics are going. If you don't define a new place to save them they will save in the original folder with a "tn_" prefix to whatever the pic was previously named (you can change this in the settings tab).

4- Click "MAKE" to resize all the pics you had highlighted, do not click "Make all" as this will resize every pic in the folder (unless that is what you want to do, of course)

5- Upload and share! :)
 
get photobucket and copy and paste the
 
A4 1.8tqm said:
2- Settings tab- Choose a width/height (view the preview window). As Mike say's 800 width is good.
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Great information!

One comment, in the "Settings Tab", set the width to whatever you want the width to be but you want to set the hight so that it "Floats", this means the the software will automatically adjust the hight in perspective to the width so there's no distortion. IF you set the width AND the Height, then you will force the software to take your image and contort it to the dimensions you set.


Here's a screen shot of the Easy Thumbnail Software at 1151 pixels wide in it's full sizes as loaded up to the server. While I normally resize to 800 pixels wide I wanted to capture the entire screen shot of the full size window when the software is open so you could see the complete picture of the software without shrinking the text in the picture down. (if that makes sense)

FloatingNumber.jpg




Here's a 600 pixel wide cropped out section of the above to clearly show the width and height settings.



If you look at the Height Setting, I have it set for a ridiculous 10000000 setting for height, by setting this number to a very high setting it allows the software to only force the width of the picture to the number you set and the height will be adjusted automatically by the software without distorting the picture. In this case I have the width set at 800 pixels wide.

FloatingNumberc.jpg




sullysdetailing said:
get Photobucket and copy and paste the code[/B]
[/quote]

:dunno:

Photobucket is the problem, not the solution. That is unless you upgrade and $ pay for a Pro Account.

Here's what it costs


[IMG]http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/719/PhotobucketLimits.jpg



If you click on the "Next" button it shows you what it costs to have a Pro account.



PhotobucketLimits01.jpg






The problem is most people don't upgrade to the Pro Account so as they run out of room with the FREE account they simply delete old photos to make room for new photos and everywhere they posted the old photos will now turn into a RED X.


So unless you're going to pay for a Pro account, Photobucket is a poor solution to the problem.

Autogeek offers all their members a FREE gallery with your membership to the forum, and it's no more difficult to learn how to upload a photo to the Autogeek Gallery than it is to the Photobucket Gallery.

I can't even count how many red x's I've seen in my life that has just ruined an otherwise good and helpful thread.


P.S.

The above photos were all just now taken as screen shots using Lview Pro, (the shareware version), and then resized using Easy Thumbnails, and then Uploaded into the Autogeek Photo Gallery and then Inserted into this message... on the fly....

It's not that hard folks...


:)
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