making photos "small" enough to publish on the site

[YMJ]

Most of the photos I need to put onto the site are over 512kb which is the max size limit. How do I make them "smaller"?

[trevorhp]

Download Photoscape free (its like photoshop but free) then open the picture and resize to 25%

Or open in 'Paint' then resize

[Pete]

Or just right click your original and copy. Simply resize your copy (so you don't lose your higher res original) in Microsoft picture editor.

[surfblue63]

There some instructions on resizing pictures in this thread

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10562&hilit=picture+edit

[timmy201]

I use the Microsoft Office Picture Manager - just right click on the photo in your folder and "open with" the program.

If you change the view to "thumbnail" you can select many photos at once (holding shift and clicking on the photos), then edit pictures and resize. I pick a percentage to resize by (eg 25%) so that way the portrait and landscape photos end up being shrunk the same amount.

OR you can register an account with photobucket, Flickr, etc and upload your photos there and link them back here with the code. I use Flickr and it resizes my photos automatically

[woodypup59]

I use the picture editor bundled with Microdsoft Office.

Under Edit - it has "compress" picture with several options.

Try each of these to get the picture UNDER the number of kB you ae limited to.

[Jono]

I've been using the free version of this for a couple of years now, for professional use in reports where sometimes I have up to 200 images:

http://www.fotosizer.com/

It's great as you can batch re size a few hundred pics at a time and it automatically saves the originals at the 'as taken' size.

Saying that if it's only a single photo I often use MS Picture Manager, using the methods described above.

[Frogeye61]

Sorry, I try to stay from ms, so for almost all that I do, it's IrfanView.

[Jono]

I tried Irfanview, could not get away with it.

I found Fotosizer to be much more intuitive (at least for a tech Luddite such as myself)

[Frogeye61]

ctl-r to resize

[sandman]

Best thing ever; https://imageresizer.codeplex.com/

[snoopy64]

The MCR forum seems to resize automatically ... Is it a forum or profile setting maybe?

[mk1]

The reason there is a maximum file size quota on the images that people can upload as an attachment is that the space these images takes up has to be paid for. The MCR pay hundreds & hundreds of pounds a year to pay for band width, storage and an administrator to run & maintain the MCR forum. Despite this, for most of the time its been in existence it has been utter crap.

I pay for & run the forum myself, I have on occasion had to ask for donations to help, but 99% of the effort & 80% of the money come from me personally.

512k is a MASSIVE image size & there is absolutely NO reason at all why an image larger than 90k or so should ever be needed.

For example the first image attachment below is 900 pixels wide & it takes up 84k

The second attached image is 2500 pixels wide & around 170k (double click on image to see it at its full size)

Can you imagine how huge an image nearly 3 times the size of that one would be? Certainly far to big for anyone to look at on any monitor currently available.

As I have always said, the best way to add pictures to the forum is to use 3rd party free hosting services. As some members were unable or unwilling to do that, I gave forum members the option of uploading images as attachments. EVERY k of every image costs, but I thought it was a worthwhile addition to keep the small number of members who use that option happy.

Now I find moans that people can't upload unedited images! Reducing the size of a given image is ridiculously simple as has been explained by the multiple posters who have suggested many different ways to achieve this.

I attempted a full upgrade of the site earlier this year, this upgrade would have given me all sorts of extra options like auto re sizing of images. The almost universal reaction to this upgrade was horror & it appears that everyone is generally speaking far happier with the existing set up than any potential "upgrade".

I appreciate that this is probably not the reply you wanted or expected, but I know absolutely NOTHING about computers of computing. It's just that some years ago, I decided that it might be nice to run a forum of the back of my web site, so I learned how to do it as I went along. I feel sure that learning how to re size the odd image MUST be easier than running the whole shebang!

Sorry I can't please all the people all the time.

mark F

[ianh1968]

Mark,

You do an excellent job of maintaining the main Mk1 site and this forum,
and long may it continue...

The main problem with image sizes is "bloat".

The gadget manufacturers create higher and higher definitions for their
product as selling points. The reason being that a 20 billion pixels per inch
resolution is obviously far better and more marketable than a competitor's
20 million pixels.

What they, and the suckers that buy this stuff (that's us), fail to realise is
that for most purposes, this is totally un-necessary, but it's "progress"...

I remember back in about 1995, a new operating system came out,
along with new generation of lightening fast 75 Mhz processors. You could
load up a picture in less than a few seconds, and most of the ones around
at that time were about the file-size of the ones you show above.

Only when viewing "special interest" photos and zooming in to see the
gory (sorry, intricate) details would the images get a bit "blocky".

I used to get a bit fed up looking at some of the humungous pictures on
the forum, the ones where you could only actually fit about a quarter of
it on the screen and had to scroll around and try to imagine what the whole
picture would look like if you could see all of it in one hit.

I for one am very glad that there is a size limit - As you have already said,
and others have demonstrated, there are many ways to resize photos and
most of these are easy to get and simple to use, if you can be arsed...

I am a non-Micro$oft merchant and use the GIMP - No, not some kind of
pervy rubber suit, but the GNU-Image-Ma-nippl-ating-Program.

As regards the "Auto-Resize" feature mentioned which is available on
"another" site, yes, the sounds like a reasonable idea BUT:

Even if the server did re-size an image smaller, then discard the original,
the problem of network bandwidth for the upload is still an issue. Many
people don't appreciate that, as well as server disk space, the uploading
of files in terms of bandwidth also costs money. It also slows the traffic
down for other users.

The amount of time/effort I spend re-sizing my own photo's to post here
is minimal and I consider it it be a very small sacrifice to pay to be able to
participate in such a fantastic forum.

(Please) Keep up the good work!

Ian

[mk1]

Thanks Ian,

It was a bit of a bad day on Friday & I was a bit grumpy, sorry if I offended anyone with my comments above.

M