How To Post Pics to The Grumble - Step 1

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RonEggers

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First, a disclaimer. I know only as much about this as I absolutely have to. My 13 year old, The Digital Diva, is way better at getting photos on line than I am. But she couldn't explain it to you if her life depended on it. A couple months ago, I was asking how to do this. Bogframe and Framer, among others, tried to help me and now it's payback time. I hope some of you that are actually good at this will jump in and make corrections and suggestions as needed.

The price of admission is this: You have to listen to a story. Several years ago, my daughter had a basketball coach for a rec department league. He was possibly the most inept coach ever and many of the girls, my daughter included, complained bitterly. "How come he has to be our coach! He doesn't even understand the game! (This from 3rd-graders.)" My response was this, "He's the one that volunteered when you needed a coach. Nobody else had the time or the inclination." Think of me as your inept picture-coach.

There are three steps involved in posting your pictures:

  1. <LI>Getting your picture into a digital file (the topic of this first post) and getting it into a format suitable for web-posting
    <LI>Uploading your file to some online storage site, preferably a free one
    <LI>Inserting a link into your Grumble message so that other users can view your masterpiece

There are several ways to get a digital picture file.
<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>If you have a paper print and a scanner (or a friend with a scanner) you can scan your photo and save it. For web-posting, you don't need or want a large, high-resolution file. It will take forever to upload and download and will annoy everyone. I believe a resolution of 72dpi is about right for email and web use. If you have a higher resolution file, you can convert it with a graphics program. (More about that in a bit.) I use a scanner that will handle small prints, negatives or slides and I love it, but you don't need a high-end scanner to make web files.
<LI>If you have a digital camera (or a friend with one), you can save a few steps. Again, you can shoot the image at a lower resolution or you can convert a larger file later. I use a Sony Mavica that saves the files on a floppy. Then I don't need to worry about cables to get the images onto my hard drive.
<LI>If you shoot film, most, if not all, labs offer the option of providing digital images, on a floppy or a CD, when you get you processing done, in addition to making your paper prints. You won't need the high-resolution images you get on a CD, and the floppy will be much cheaper. I'm not sure if you can take negatives in later and get the images placed on a floppy, but I'll bet somebody knows.
<LI>There are several online services that will process your film, send you your prints and store the images online to share with others of your choosing. I haven't tried any of these, but I get email ads from Snapfish about once-a-week.
[/list]

After you have your digital files saved somewhere on your hard drive (somewhere where you can find them)you can use a graphics program to get the file ready for posting. There are dozens of simple progams suitable for this purpose. If you have a scanner or digital camera, you probably got a useable gaphics program with the package. I like Photoshop for most graphics work, but it's serious overkill for what we need to do here. For this kind of work, I use Photoshop's little cousin, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, now in version 4.0 of the Home Edition. Often, this is packaged with scanners or digital cameras. Suggestions are welcome for other programs you like for this.

I open PhotoDeluxe and then open the file I want to work on. (You can find that file, can't you?) This is a good time to do any cropping, color correction or density adjustments needed. You can also adjust the resolution to reduce the file size to something workable, if it's needed. In PhotoDeluxe, you use the menu command for photo size to lower the resolution to 72 dpi. PhotoDeluxe also has a quick-fix button that will make an educated guess about contrast and density and will often improve a marginal photo.

Save your photo (in PhotoDeluxe you'll be exporting rather than saving) into a GIF or JPG file, again to a folder you can find later. I prefer JPG, 'cause it will give you a smaller, more compressed file size, but I'm open to other opinions.

Next up in Step 2, how to set up some online storage space and upload your photos. (This was the real bugaboo for me.)

If you need me to fill in any of the many blanks so far, please let me know.
 
Please don't keep us hanging. Inquiring minds want to to know!
 
Duuhhhh! (double post)


[This message has been edited by Lance E (edited October 11, 2001).]
 
72dpi is fine, but don't forget to check the dimensions of the image also, a pixel rating is the most accurate way of defining sizes for posting. <600x400 is about right.

Great post Ron.
 
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