Posting Pictures Tutorial

[Fenway]

Would anyone care to post a tutorial for those who can't figure out how to post pictures. This is a problem in the classifieds. If you care to come up with something please post it here. Thanks

[VN Vet]

I inserted a picture for the first time today and all I did was copy and paste. I had no problems.

[rcuhljr]

Instructions For Posting a Picture

Step 1: Save The Picture

If you received the picture in an e-mail, most e-mail programs have an option where you can download, or 'save file as' to save a copy on your hard drive. You can see what this looks like in Gmail in the following picture, make sure to save the photo somewhere you'll be able to find it later!



If this doesn't work for you, you can also just open the picture in your browser, and right click on the image, a menu should appear and you can select 'Save image as' and it will work the same as above.

Step 2: Host The Picture

The picture now needs to be put up on a site on the internet where others can view it. TinyPic is one of the easiest ones, and I'll discuss some other options at the end of this lesson.



When you go to TinyPic there will be a button in the center called 'Browse' Click this button to open up an explorer window, navigate to where you saved the file (I told you to remember!) and click on it's name, then click open. Once you click open the explorer window will be gone and now you can press the 'Upload' button on the website.

Step 3: Get the Address

Once it finishes uploading you want to get the address of your picture, so you can give it to others.



The two choices that will be most useful for you on this screen are "IMG Code for forums and message boards" and "Direct Link for Layouts."


Step 4: Share the Photos

Now we want to post these pictures on your friendly message board!

If you selected the Direct Link, you can send this link to anyone in an email, i-m or a post on these forums, and they can copy it into their browser address bar to go see it. To make it a Hyperlink so that they just need to click on it, or to make it appear as a picture in your post, use one of the options at the top of post to "Insert Link" or "Insert Picture" and put in the link you copied earlier like so...



Now if you selected "IMG Code for Forums and Messageboards" you have another choice, selecting the "Switch Editor Mode" button in the upper right will allow you to put in the code you copied, and the image will appear when you make the post. You can switch back and forth between editor modes at any time, and switching modes can help you learn what's going on behind the scenes and I prefer it for making posts because I don't have big pictures getting in the way. Here is what it looks like...



Other Options

Now, a word about TinyPic It's fast, it's easy, and there's no overhead, however there are a few downsides. One, anyone can see the image, so if it's something you don't want everyone to potentially find, this may not be the way to go, the other issue is it's not as permanent, the picture may not be there a few months down the road, however for most topics this isn't that serious of an issue.

The other major choice is Photobucket (which I used to host the pictures for this tutorial because I want it to last). It requires you to set up an account, much like this forum, however it gives you some more powerful options, your photo's won't ever disappear, you can set privacy controls on them, and you can organize them into albums and just give someone access to a specific album at a time instead of linking 10-20 photos. (For example, linking to all my photos of my AR at once). Other then having to register and log in, it works almost the same way as tinypic, so when you need to host an image, depending on what you want you can pick the website that is right for the job.

[Fenway]

Thank you very much! Give this man some rep folks!

[joshuamckee]

HOW TO POST PICTURES using PHOTOBUCKET

First you must register to use photobucket. http://photobucket.com/ Once you are REGISTERED and LOGGED IN, you do the following:

Go up to your BROWSE BUTTON to retrieve the picture off your hard drive (Look below):

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 800x565 and weights 75KB.

Once you click the BROWSE BUTTON you will get a CHOOSE FILE prompt, highlight the picture you want to upload and click the OPEN button (Look Below):

Next Click the SUBMIT button (look below). This will upload the picture into photobucket. Scroll down to see the picture.

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 731x592 and weights 89KB.

Once the picture is uploaded into photobucket,


You must highlight and copy the IMG string.


NOTE: You CAN NOT Copy and paste from the picture itself


YOU MUST COPY THE GREEN HIGHLIGHTED AREA YOU SEE BELOW. (Look Below):

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 863x624 and weights 98KB.

Come over to the thread you would like to post the picture and PASTE the IMG string. (Look Below for example):

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 863x624 and weights 72KB.

Click SUBMIT REPLY and VOILA!

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 863x624 and weights 85KB.

Understand, that you can upload as many pictures as you like into photobucket. You can copy as many different IMG strings as you like over.

EDITING PICTURE SIZE


Note: This is important if your camera takes big pictures. You don't want to post pictures that are way too big. People with dial up will get bogged down by big pictures when opening a thread.


Before you post the pics make sure they are proper size. Simply click on the picture to look at it first. If it is too large, go to BACK and click the EDIT above the picture button. Under RESIZE PICTURE click the "75% of original" button then click the RESIZE button. Once this is done, click on picture to open it and check out the size. Once they are acceptable, simply copy your Img string over at that point.