Cold Smoke--- About uploading pictures

[Oldman]

Cold Smoke,

First this start out as a short posting...then I thought it over and figured I would just dump a lot of info on you. Next, your pictures have to be upload to a web server in order to post them. If you don't have a place I can host some for you. Just let me know.

Now once your pictures are uploaded then just follow the example below. Piece-O-Cake!



Now Cold Smoke seeing how you have not posted pictures before there are a couple of items I will point out to you.

1.) View size
2.) KB size

Without a doubt most folks <b>including myself</b> when we first start posting pictures never give consideration to the KB and what that means to  dial up folks.

More than likely you will be posting pictures using a JPG (jpg) format. If I shoot in large JPG with my 6.3 then each shot is 3.5 megs in size! What I have to do to adjust this so it is do-able for the net is reduce the visual size and reduce the quality from 100% down to as low as 50%. You really are not going to see a whole lot of differance between 100% and 50%. However, the differance in KB is unbelieveable. The only time you want to leave something a 100% of quality is when you are going to print it out. It is then that the extra information will come into play.
<font color="red"><b>Correction:</font id="red">
gif files; The 'Graphic Interchange Format' is more appropriate for line drawing and hand drawn graphics and produces smaller files because it can handle only a maximum of 256 colours and the grey scale;
*.jpg files; The 'Joint Photographic Expert Group' file is more faithful to both black and white and coloured photographs because it can handle up to 16.7 Million colours and therefore produces much larger files.
</b><font color="blue">Sorry all I must have been brain dead before.</font id="blue">
Next you need to look at the overall visual size. The example above is 750 pixels wide. Large enough to be seen but at the standard today of 1024 X 768 monitor resolution 750 pixels does not cause scrolling.

Now if you lack the editing software to do this, there should be some that came with your camera or you don't like what was supplied then I strongly suggest you get IrfanView. It is free. It is the best I've seen to date with the exception to the upper end $500.00--&750.00 vector programs.  

Unless you are into creating graphics--special effects I cannot image anyone needing anything other than IrfanView for managing your photo editing needs.

As I said it is free and it does an outstanding job. Get it here: http://www.irfanview.com/

There are a few other tricks that can be used to lower KB. For example the above how-to example is NOT in a JPG format. While it might be a screen shot it is not a picture. It is more like a limited drawing.  As such I saved it in a PNG format @ 16 colors only! Two reason why--first when you add text to a picture/ drawning unless you just have the latest--greatest software the letters will go ragged when using JPG fomat. Next it is only 18KB. If I was to reduce it in a JPG format to 18KB you would have a hard time reading it.

One more item and that is cropping the picture. Generally there is only one item you want to show folks in the picture. So crop out the rest. For example: You have a roast on the center of your stove top so crop out the burners!

If you crop out before you reduce the visual size then when you do reduce the visual size your item will be larger.


Below is a good example of quality reduction, and how it really does not take that much away. This picture is of one of my flowers. It is at 50% of total quality and is only 32KB. Now one word about GIF format. In a GIF format this picture is 174KB. Now many folks think that GIF is a small format. What GIF is good for are small animation. Don't get caught up in the GIF noise.  Now with the event of Flash, and the 3rd party software that is evolving I personally don't see GIF being around for animations much longer.  A good example is <b>The Warning</b> on my business site. By using Flash we reduced the download size from almost 400KB to about 100KB.

If you have not see the warning, have Love ones, Cell phones, and depend upon 911 you owe it to your family to at least look at the first part of this: http://www.rminor.com/kim/Warning

Again this picture is at 50% amd and only 32KB.


Now at this link below is the same picture @100% of JPG quality, and it is 205KB. Talk about a dial up killer! Open it up and do a side by side comparison. Yes the 100% of quality has some stronger coloring. However, what little you can see does not justify 205KB.

http://www.dow-mgc.org/Rayeimages/finished.jpg

Now if your memory on your camera is large then I cannot suggest strongly enough to shoot in the largest format you can. It will give you details that small i.e. medium, and small JPG shot will not. Just take a minute and look at the details of this flower. It is for this reason I used this flower as my example. If I had used a smaller KB picture to work with--while I do have some small talent in this area--I can say that the end result would have been less.

Also by shooting in large JPG when I needed to go to 1000% of normal viewing for a cut out I had no pixelation! This flower is made up of over 40 layers all from the original photo, each with its own special effect and about 3 hours of my life.

Now what is ment when something becoming pixelated? Pixelated is when you blow up the picture so much you see the squares the make up the picture. Below are three pictures. All from the original large JPG. The first one is my dog Skyway. The second one is his left eye at <b>2000%</b> enlargement of normal viewing. There is no pixelation even at 2000%!! (I must note that even using a 6.3 and at large JPG non-pixelation will require at least an entry level vector program . Programs like Paint Shop Pro (PSP) will pixelate.  PSP might change and not pixelate as Coral has just purchased them.  We will just have to wait and see what Coral does or does not do to PSP. I use Xara X as my vector program. But if you get it be forwarned--the learning curve goes why past the moon. Took me months to get it down, and truthfully I still don't know all that it can do...let alone do it.)

Note the camera flash in the left eye.


This picture has also been reduced to 50% of full quality. Note the light flash in this picture.


Now this will get ya! This is the light flash in his left eye @ 20,000 times of normal viewing. It is also @ 50%. You can almost see the start of the squares that make up most monitor screens.



When I printed  out the flower on my photo printer it just about jumped off of the page. This is all possible because of the mass data (picture information)that goes along with a 3.5 meg picture to work with.  

Now that you got a digital you are more than likly to be looking at a printer. IMO the Cannon PIXMA iP 8500 it the best going. It will print boardless on a full size sheet. It has 7 different inks/ and heads. The only one Cannon offers at the moment that cost more does not print any better. What it does that this one cannot do is print out at 13" x 19". If I need anything larger than a standard 8" X 11" I just take it to the printers.

<b>One last but to very important item about JPG.</b> If you take a picture that is important to you then save it only ONE time, and that is when you move it from your camera to your Hard Drive. If you go to edit it then save it using another name. The reason for this is JPG is a compression format. Everytime you edit and then save it to the original name it compresses more. Do that a few time and your quality is gone. Now you can copy / paste the original to another folder without loss.  

It is for this reason when I'm shooting something that is work related I only shoot in RAW format (9 megs per photo--a lot of information.) Then I process it in my digital darkroom and save it in llarge non-compressed TIFF format (30-35 megs.) Also if the photo is really important to me, when I print it I convert it from TIFF to a PNG format--maximum settings. The flower above in a PNG format is 555KB which gives a quality printer something to work with. If you are going to be using a professional print company they generally like TIFF format.  I did a 2 foot x 3 foot picture for my mother on canvas. In the TIFF format it was over 70 megs. With the special effect I did it not only looks outstanding, it looked like it was hand painted--not water colors, but like it was painted with oil.

As I said  this started out as a small posting~~ LOL! Hopefully the information I have given you will help you start upon a Digital good time. While getting into photography can be a lot of fun...which my wife does well...it is turning a picture into the WOW factor that I enjoy.

Good Luck, and I hope you enjoy your wife's new toy! Let me know if you need an upload area for your pictures.
Olds

EDIT: Just for chits and giggles this is the original flower photo:


http://rminor.com

[Kummok]

Chez:
This one deserves to be "sticky'd" to the top of "New Topics".....gives great direction to the always present question about posting photos and hopefully inquiring minds will look here first if it's at the top [?][^]

Kummok @ Homer, AK USA

[Oldman]

I'm going to create a section in the recipe collection with How to do stuff.
Olds

http://rminor.com

[Chez Bubba]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Kummok</i>
<br />Chez:
This one deserves to be "sticky'd" to the top of "New Topics".....gives great direction to the always present question about posting photos and hopefully inquiring minds will look here first if it's at the top [?][^]

Kummok @ Homer, AK USA
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Agreed![8D]

http://www.chezbubba.com
Ya think next time I check into a hotel & they ask "Smoking or Non?" they would mind?

[Cold Smoke]

<font size="6">Wow, Olds !!!!</font id="size6">[:0][:D]

I really do appreciate the help considering it likely took you the better part of the day to put that together. I'm glad CB also stickied it- I hope that others will now post up pictures of their masterpieces. If I stick around the house this weekend I might just try to post a picture of a recent smoke.

Hope to repay the favor some way/some day!!

THANKS!

Cold Smoke

[Phone Guy]

Thanks for that link to the hosting site. I sent that to myself at home and will try it tonight.