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Posting images and conventions

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:04 am
by Justin
Instead of answering hundreds of questions like "how do I post an image" etc, etc; I'm going to post and stick a series of guidelines and how-to's to get images onto this forum (and without annoying the masses in the process).

Here we go.

Image formats
The Internet is littered with hundreds of image formats, right from photo quality file formats (.jpeg, .jpg) to animated image formats (.gif) and 24-bit transparency supporting image formats (.png). Each has been designed for a specific purpose, and to gain the best "performance" it's recommended that you stick to a format that was intended to hold the information your going to stick into it.
In terms of "web friendly" formats, you should always avoid bitmap (.bmp) files for photos because they are uncompressed, so they can become quite large. Use a lossy format (removes insignificant information to reduce a files size) like the standard JPEG format (.jpg, .jpeg).

Image editors
There are several free (and some open source) photo manipulation applications around, and it's up to personal preference but each have their own specialised area.

Arguably the most well known image editor around is called The GIMP which is considered to be the open source competitor to Adobe Photoshop, but it does take a bit of getting used to (especially if your a Photoshop veteran like myself). It's multi-platform (Windows and most flavours of *nix) and supports a wide variety of formats. There is also a 'portable' version that can be installed onto one's flash disk and run (without installing) any where you need it.

The next would have to be Paint.NET which is an open source take on the traditional Microsoft Paint application but with much much more features. The GUI is more biased towards the 'standard' Windows look and feel (much like Photoshop) and should be pretty easy to use.

And last but not least (thanks Adam), would be IrfanView.
It's a great, free, general purpose image viewer and file converter (with plugins for additional format support) and is biased to the Windows look and feel. Very easy to use (though may get a little confusing). IrfanView is not your "roots image editor" (like The GIMP and Paint.NET), as it can apply some effects but not much more.

Tools like Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition are more for image collection and organisation, rather than taking on a sole editing role; so they may or may not have the facilities to change or save into another image format.

Getting images onto the Internet
Despite what you might think, you simply can't copy and paste an image into the stock phpBB forum application, there simply aren't any facilities to do so.
In order for people to "see" your images you wish to post on a forum, you must stick them on some sort of publicly accessible web server; and the easiest way to "get" a web server is to use a dedicated image hosting service like Photobucket.
Photobucket (in a nutshell) will host your images for free, and won't hot-link back to itself (unless it can't find an image you link elsewhere).
All you do is sign up for an account, sign in and start uploading images from your computer by telling your web browser where to get the files from. Once uploaded, each image will be displayed in a main window, and each image will encapsulate several text boxes which contain various link formats.

In order to link your image to the forums: You need to copy and paste the text in the box labelled IMG Code. HTML will NOT work!
If you do not have access to IMG Code, copy the URL (address) of the image that your image hosting service gives you, then follow the instructions below.

Linking images
To post images on these forums (or any phpBB based forum) you need to use the 'image tags' to be able to display an image on here.
These image tags consist of the following:

Code: Select all

[img]<image link>[/img]
Where <image link> is the direct link to the image.

Examples
  • To create an image link:

    Code: Select all

    [img]http://airraidsirens.com/forums/images/avatars/46207033947a5ac5087895.gif[/img]
    This creates:
    Image
  • To create a direct link:

    Code: Select all

    [url=http://airraidsirens.com/forums/images/avatars/46207033947a5ac5087895.gif][u]Avatar[/u][/url]
    This creates:
    Avatar

    Note that the usage of the "underline" BBCode tags is optional, but generally a good idea to use them as it helps differentiate between text and hyperlinks; especially on templates where it can be difficult to tell between the two. The "URL" BBCode tags can be used with conventional links as well as links to images.
Guidelines
These aren't rules as such, but you mightn't be very popular if you break most of these.
  • Be mindful of file size
    Not everyone has your blisteringly fast uber-l33t internet connection and they might have a limit to how much they can download (or it costs them (like me :evil:)), so please make sure you can bring the file size down as much as possible; don't go overboard (and completely destroy the image) but just keep it in mind.
  • Be mindful of image size.
    There is a difference, trust me. I'm an Australian moderator. :P
    There are some people that have their computers set on a lower resolution (for whatever reason) and because of this, the forum's template adjusts accordingly to nicely fit all of the text onto their screens. Overly huge images break this, and it forces people to read one-bloody-big-long-line-of-text. Link it directly if for some reason you can't resize it. Look at the example above to see how it's done.
  • Quoting
    When you quote a previous post, please also try not to quote all the image files associated with the previous post. It just clutters things up and can contribute to one's download quota. In short: edit the quote and cut the images out.
    It is acceptable to quote one image, however, but only if your reply is referencing information in that quoted image. Comments about a certain image (for example: "Cool picture!") by themselves are usually frowned upon.
  • Formatting
    Do not insert an "image link" on the same line as some text, or it will throw the forum formatting off. Most people (including myself) find this extremely irritating. Don't do it!
Common retangular resolutions (Width by height)
  • 320x240
    Best for thumbnails.
  • 640x480
    Best for displaying in-line on the forum.
  • 800x600
  • 1024x768
    Maximum recommended for displaying in-line.
    Any resolution above this should be hyperlinked, not image linked.
I'll periodically update this and post a reply when I do.
Hope that helps.

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:13 am
by Adam Pollak
I also want to add that IrfanView is a very useful, yet simple program that can be downloaded for free here:
http://www.irfanview.com/

When you quote a previous post, please also try not to quote all the image files associated with the previous post.

Great post though, Justin.

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:16 am
by Justin
Yep, forgot about IrfanView. Excellent program.
Added some recommended resolutions. :)

:: Edit ::
Promoted your tip to my thread.

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:06 am
by Justin
Original thread updated.

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 11:46 am
by Justin
Original thread updated.

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:46 am
by Justin
Original thread updated.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:34 pm
by Daniel
Here's a suggestion for those who are posting siren videos on YouTube: Use the word "siren" somewhere in your title. If you have a title like "3T22 test," nobody will find it unless they are looking for 3T22's. If you call it "3T22 siren test," anyone searching for siren videos will see it.

Another suggestion: please list the city and state (or country) where the video was shot, so we don't have to waste the time to ask you.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 7:17 pm
by ver tum
Another suggestion. If you can't put the word "siren" in your title because of YouTube's character limit, you can always put it in the tags. I currently don't have the word siren in most of the titles for my videos, but I always put it in the tags, and my videos have always shown up in searches I've done for siren videos. I may still go in and put the word "siren" in all of the titles I can though.

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:46 am
by Charlie Davidson
ver tum wrote:Another suggestion. If you can't put the word "siren" in your title because of YouTube's character limit, you can always put it in the tags. I currently don't have the word siren in most of the titles for my videos, but I always put it in the tags, and my videos have always shown up in searches I've done for siren videos. I may still go in and put the word "siren" in all of the titles I can though.
Kudos. I have noticed that by adding more tags that are relevant to the video will also get you more hits on your video, as well as be more likely to show up in most searches.

Trust me, I do that and it works.

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 9:55 pm
by mrboojay
I would like to add for those who use Flickr, that they have a system that works differently than posting the URL that you see when viewing the image.
Image
How to Share with Flickr by mrboojay, on Flickr

This is the way to be able to share them from Flickr to a BBCode like this one, and there is a drop down to select the size.