Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Advanced posting

Advanced posting

Antwain - 26-10-2007 at 13:22

This may seem like a silly question, but how do I add pictures to posts? I see a bunch of icons at the top here, but no 'explanation' appears after holding the curser on them. Also can i upload (small) pictures here or do I need to get them online first... If I do, then where should I put them.

Unfortunately my 'mad skillz' in relation to using the internet are somewhat below my abilities to use a stand alone computer.

Magpie - 26-10-2007 at 13:47

I'll tell you how I do it but I'm certainly no expert.

I upload my pictures from camera to computer using Paint Shop. Then I resize it using Microsoft's Picture It! to a maximum width of 500 pixels so that it fits the screen. This makes for easier viewing by the readers as no scrolling is then necessary. This is also required by forum rules (ie, no scrolling). Then I save the resized picture to my desktop so I can find it easily.

Then after I have written the text part of my post I push the "Browse..." button at the bottom. This brings up access to my pictures. Then I double-click on the picture I've selected. Its address will appear in the window next to the "Browse..." button. Then press "Preview Post" or "Post Reply" button. (The picture does not show up in the "Preview Post.")

I hope I have this all correct. It's been awhile since I've posted a picture. Good Luck.

Edit: corrected to "Paint Shop."

[Edited on by Magpie]

Antwain - 26-10-2007 at 14:01

Thanks

woelen - 27-10-2007 at 06:48

Another way is to simply use [ img] and [ /img] tags around a URL, where the image is located. In this way, you can include any image from any site in a post over here.

As an example, the image from the top of each sciencemadness page:

In this way you can include as many pictures in a single post as you want. Hope this helps.

[Edited on 27-10-07 by woelen]

solo - 27-10-2007 at 07:13

I recall when I was learning how to post I would just press the quote of a particular post to see how they had formated their post and what they used ........and applied it to my posting also using image shack to host my jpeg's when I had an image and a file I wanted to post since one can do only one attachment on this board .....solo

[Edited on 27-10-2007 by solo]

vulture - 27-10-2007 at 07:24

Quote:

I upload my pictures from camera to computer using PhotoShop. Then I resize it using Microsoft's Picture It! to a maximum width of 500 pixels so that it fits the screen.

Whoa? Importing with photoshop and resizing with some M$ program? That sounds so backward!

If any program is fit for resizing pictures it would certainly be photoshop.

Antwain - 27-10-2007 at 08:01

MicroStupid (or MicroShite, if you prefer) programs are good enough for the simple things. I clicked 'edit' in the right mouse menu and it chose paintbrush. Even that was up to the task of removing 3 out of every 4 pixels

. Now if I had wanted to scale it to non-fractional proportions or scale it up... then paintbrush would probably have made a meal of it.

In the end I just made 3 posts for my 3 pictures. Hey, if the forum rules cause me to artificially inflate my post count, thats not my fault

Magpie - 27-10-2007 at 10:35

Quote:

If any program is fit for resizing pictures it would certainly be photoshop

Sorry Vulture, I meant to say Paint Shop. With Paint Shop I have no resizing capability as I am too cheap to buy their full program. The M$ Picture It came with the computer so I use it for resizing.

woelen - 27-10-2007 at 11:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Antwain
MicroStupid (or MicroShite, if you prefer) programs are good enough for the simple things. I clicked 'edit' in the right mouse menu and it chose paintbrush. Even that was up to the task of removing 3 out of every 4 pixels

Please do not use Microsoft paint for that purpose. Even if integer scaling ratios are used, MS paint is inferior. I use Gimp (but PhotoShop will do equally well), and this program does not simply discard pixels, but computes new pixel values from a weighed average of all covered pixels (the target pixels consist of many original pixels, possibly partially overlapping). Gimp and Photoshop then also do interpolation. The resulting scaled image looks great, for any scaling factor, be it integer or not. I use them all the time for the pictures in my website.

Using MS-paint results in jagged scaled borders at high contrast original borders.

Xenoid - 27-10-2007 at 17:06

One alternative I have discovered to get around the inability to post multiple images, is to use Photoshop to join up say 4 images and then save them as a Web image say, 640x480 pixels and say 20-30 KB. You can also label each image, say 1,2,3,4 and refer to them in your text. I used this method in the permanganate thread. I hate the idea of having images hosted somewhere else, invariably the site goes bust or the links change or dues are not paid and the images are lost. There are plenty of posts in this forum where the images are missing!

BTW when you choose your image file in the attachment section it does not show up in the preview post. I normally write the text, preview it, correct it, preview again and then click (choose file) navigate to your .jpg and select it and then post.

It would be nice if this was better explained in the FAQ.

I have a word processing document with two or three embedded images which I would like to post here but it is just too cumbersome to figure out how to do it!

Regards, Xenoid

franklyn - 27-10-2007 at 18:36

Sometimes I wonder why I bother posting these things at all.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=7568&a...

.

Antwain - 27-10-2007 at 19:57

sorry frankyln, I used the search engine, that never came up.

The_Davster - 27-10-2007 at 20:07

I stupidly should have noticed that the first time it was posted...I have been guilty of resizing my photos with paint for a long time...

Axt - 2-1-2008 at 20:13

So what exactly is the issue with MS paint anyway? Its by far my most used program, and every picture I've ever posted here is edited within it. I've never found any program as user friendly or logical to use! I've tried photoshop/paintshop ect. which make you jump through hoops for even the simplest tasks.

And no, MS paint does not just delete pixels during resize, resize a single pixel square to see this.

Image quality aside (I've never noticed the difference) MS paint is the easiest and fastest program to use correct? I often post multiple images as one which is completely logical in MS paint though I couldnt work out how to do such a simple task in the more "advanced" programs.

Anyways, MS paint rocks in my opinion

not_important - 2-1-2008 at 20:54

For doing correction/adjustment, contrast, brightness, gamma, colour, cropping, sharpening, and using a number of Photoshop type filters, I've found IrfanView the easiest to use. It's rescaling is quite simple, a dialog pane that includes a number of standard image size, the choice of using absolute pixel count or relative percentage resizing, and the choice of method to use in resizing.

It also lets you set the quality - degree of compression - when saving as JPEG or PNG, which is handy.

It's ability to walk through sets of images, do batch rename, format conversion, and so on. The batch rename is handy when going from a motley named pile of camera chosen image names, to a numbered sequence off a base name.

Combining multiple images into one is a weak point. It has a 'panorama' selection that lets you glue images together, but the interface is a little weak. After you've combined the images you can resize the result as needed. In pull blown editors like Gimp or Photoshop, you pick the desired image size, then drop in and place each image, with the ability to resize each one on the fly.