Photo sizes

[Ray Bell]

There has been a policy adopted that pictures be no larger than the size allowed by the secondary method. I personally don't favour the posting of URLs because it necessarily means you have more windows open on your screen. These tend to clog up things and you might close one or two, then read something and need to open it up again...

With the vagaries of the computer at play, you then reach saturation point, the computer tells you it hasn't memory enough to open any more windows, you then start shutting things down, lose something you wanted... it just goes on...

It's not that you have to ask permission. But it's a case of what I do being scrutinised. I have been the subject of several attacks on this forum, for some reason some people around here don't like me. One tells me that many people are complaining about the photos I post. Like the ones I posted for sat, and many others I posted of my own for the interest of forum members.

Nobody else has been challenged in this way. But the main problem I have with it all is that I am publicly humiliated because I use my own name on here. Leif does too, and a few others, but most are hiding behind veils.

Under this same name I try to make a living as a motor racing journalist. Sure, this is in Australia, but to have a bunch of essentially English members humiliating me publicly does my reputation no good at all. And I am worth more than them.

So how about asking if it's all right for me to post them. They won't be all that big, but bigger than the guidelines allow? They are fresh pics, and as I said, direct from the Auto Union PR machine pre-war, locked away for all these years in a personal photo album.

I am amazed that this attitude prevails here, for at Atlas there are (as most are well aware) threads upon threads with photos posted to them by the dozen.

I've yet to see a complaint there. To my way of thinking, threads like this are a perfect place for such posting. But I'm not in charge here, just someone trying to contribute.

[Michael M]

Ray, you see me surprised! I also are registered only under part of my true name, because such registration happened already long ago, and I followed the behaviour of others. I changed my registration policy later, in in other fora I post under my full name. Was only too lazy to change it here, also because I don't want to start from post no. 001. However, most of regular members know my full name nevertheless.

About the pictures, based on the curcumstances I propose to send them to my by e-mail to michael@axos.nl, if possible also the other ones mentioned by you earlier, because I cannot find them back.
In order to avoid any troubles, for the future I will not post any pictures here.

[Ray Bell]

I think you misunderstand me, Michael... I want everyone to have the freedom to post pictures of reasonable size. You, me, anyone who has pictures. Stefan's pics are a perfect example of what there is around, and they're unpublished too.

So why can't they be put into the threads?

I may be digging in my heels, but I believe I am right and I stand by my word. That an undercurrent of whisperers has led to this situation is absurd, and if you heard the stated reasons some of them have given you would laugh!

Whether I e.mail photographs to you or not, Michael, is nothing whatever to do with this forum. What I want is to be able to post them here, and to not cop flak for so doing.

[Maisie]

Oh, for crying out loud, Ray, spare us the violins, broken "Everyone hates me" record and contant harping on. If you continually introduce yourself by reciting the same sob story, you have only yourself to blame if people don't take a shine to you.

Nobody ever told you you weren't allowed to post pictures or that you had to ask permission. We're not even that bothered about numbers of pictures, within reason - strad's managed to post pictures of a reasonable size, although the sheer numbers are starting to perhaps get to near the limit of feasibility for decent thread loading times. In fact, there wouldn't even ever have been a debate about picture posting had you had the common sense in the first place to realise that posting a thread made up entirely of pictures wider than a screen at 1024 x 768 resolution was inconsiderate to those posters on less than ideal bandwidth. Not to mention the fact that posting strings of your own messages is blowing your own trumpet just a little.

I don't want to start this all over again, and I'd be more than happy for the situation to stay as it stands, where pictures are posted in moderate numbers and of a moderate size. I, and I'm sure the other members of this forum who have the dubious pleasure of moderating the historic section, would appreciate it if you'd quit harping on about the matter again and again and again. There's no need to act all bitter and twisted and give new guests a misleading view of this forum. I notice the new members have behaved with impeccable courtesy and thoughtfulness in theis posts, and so are unlikely to receive any official attention unless they deviate from this.

[paulzinho]

Could I ask that you please take your discussion of photo sizes to a more suitable place (ie Questions , Answers and Feedback).

I'll leave your posts for now but I don't like to see this sort of discussion distrcting us from the real reasons that we are here.

[Ray Bell]

I'm happy to leave it at that... and the issue's been dealt with among the heirarchy... anyone who wants to see good pics will find them if they look hard enough.

[strad]

HMmmmmmmmm, seems I've dropped myself in the middle of an ongoing debate about posting pictures.
I think I'll refrain, I think I've commited a faux pas. Sorry.

[djb]

Strad, there is no reason for an apology, and definately not a faux pas.

djb

[Vitesse]

Originally posted by djb
Strad, there is no reason for an apology, and definately not a faux pas.

djb

Seconded ...

[Michael M]

One - hopefully - last word about posting pictures. I checked the Brno and the AGP thread for Ray's pictures, and realized that they had been presented in BMP format, with the result that their size is abt. 1 MB (Brno) resp. 2 MB (AGP). I agree that such file sizes are unsuitable for a forum, and that it would have been much better to convert the pics to JPG format, meaning less than 10 % of BMP size. However, I'm convinced that Ray was not aware about this fact, and if nobody told him the background (which I did in the meantime, btw), I can understand that he is confused. We should keep in mind that not all of us are fully experienced computer users, and a friendly and informative explanation at the right time and place can avoid quarrels at a very early stage.

So, a friendly hint for all potential picture posters - avoid BMP format, convert always to JPG, and your pictures - hopefully - will be appreciated by all readers.

[djb]

A very thoughtful response Michael.

My work involves more and more digitalization of photos, with all the ins and outs of formats, file sizes and sending/viewing problems and it has taken a number of years of dealing with all these problems to have gotten it sorted out--with much help from tech friends in the same profession! (and there are ALWAYS new problems and gremlins that come up) Hell, I work in the field, and the last bunch of years have been no end of headaches from struggling to getting my head around getting all this stuff straight.

JPEG is generally the best format for saving photos for a forum , for size and depending on the program one has, the options you have for quality, again, leading to size. For screen use only, such as in this forum, very small jpeg files in the range of 10-20k or less can look reasonably good, and serve the purpose of getting the idea across, which is the whole reason for this forum, right? To share ideas and to learn about racing history.

djb

[paulzinho]

OK i've split the thread, I think this is perhaps a more appropriate place to continue the discussion.

[Ax Slinger]

Well, I post a lot of photos on message boards, and this is what I do.

1) I always host my own photos on an offsite (non-forum) server, and never use the upload feature. (In my opinion, that feature needs to be turned off, as it eats the forum's server hard drive space and bandwidth, therefore costing our kind host more money to provide this forum for us.)

2) I never post a photo larger than will fit in a standard sized screen in 800x600 resolution. If the photo creates a left to right (bottom) scrollbar, I resize the photo and upload it again, until the scrollbar goes away. I use the [img] vB code to do this as typed out below. (Minus the *'s... the [code] vB code gives me BS everytime I try to use it with [img] tags. It isn't supposed to do that, but it does.)

[*img]http://PATH/PHOTO.jpg[/img*]

3) If that messes up the photo as resizing a photo sometimes does, then I post a 100x??? thumbnail which links to the original larger photo. I do this with a combination of the [url] and [img] vB codes.

[*url=http://PATH/PHOTO.jpg][*img]http://PATH/THUMBNAIL PHOTO.jpg[/img*][/url*]

I use Paint Shop Pro (v5 and v7.02) to edit and resize photos (there is a 30 day trial version of v7.0? available from JASC), an FTP program such as WS_FTP LE to upload them, (available from Ipswitch, free to students, government employees, and non-commercial home users), and a free host such as Netfirms (a free website host with 25 mb of server space with advertising, that allows offsite image linking, even though they say they don't) to store the photos on.

Hope this helps, and that I'm not telling anyone something they already know.

[djb]

Tim B, all I can say is, thank god I work with Macs and do not have to learn all those backslash thingees and vb codes (whatever they are)! Not kidding, all that pc gibbledegok has me for a loss and probably explains why some computer stuff can be a headache for some.

ps, I see that you're from Norhern Cal. One of my favorite bike trips was from Portland down the coast to a few days past S.F.(fully loaded bicycle days)
I saw your bio and thought to mention this. A truly beautiful part of the world, travelling down that small coast highway.

[Ax Slinger]

Eh, it's all HTML in a different form... Nothing too spectacular.

A biker eh? Me too. I have taken three major trip in my days. One from Chicago to Denver, out to the coast, up to Canada, and back to Denver. I hit every major National Park along the way. After arriving in Denver the second time, I wimped out on the ride back across the plains to Illinois though. After riding the mountains, it just didn't seem like the flats would be fun any more.

My second one was to ride the entire length of US Route 66. I got all but a few miles of it. From Kingman, Arizona to Needles, California. It was storming pretty bad, so I took I-40 instead.

And the last was from Flagstaff, Arizona to Eureka, California when I moved up here. It was much shorter in comparision, but actually the best in a way. I had the least amount of gear on this one, the most money, and I stayed in hotels once or twice a week. It was about 1500 miles the way I went, from Flagstaff to Page, Az, then to St. George, Utah, down to Barstow, Ca, up past Sequoia\Kings Canyon\Yosemite, then out to the coast and up US Route 101 through Avenue of the Giants. I had a digital camera with two 128 meg and one 64 meg memory cards, and could take somewhere around 3500 pictures... When I got to Avenue of the Giants, I almost had to free up some memory because I was running out of space. But when I arrived, I had space for about 50 pictures left.

But two out of two times I've biked the coast I was going north. When will I ever learn? Going south is much easier...

This is in Flagstaff, in front of the Computer Renaissance store I had been working in, right before I took off on July 4th 1998, and was the first picture I got on my camera.

[Craig]

http://tentenths.com/forum/misc.php?...age=2#pictures

Our guidelines on the size of images are there for all to see. If anyone has any queries on this please let me know.

[Ax Slinger]

You think of everything, don't you, Craig?

[Ray Bell]

Michael has e.mailed me about this BMP issue. I have never ever posted a picture on ten-tenths in BMP format. He was mistaken.

I also agree with Tim B regarding the upload feature. Or at least to a degree... for someone who only posts a very occasional pic, however, it saves them the pain (as expressed by djb) of learning how to do it. For my part, as I grew into the scene at Atlas, I couldn't wait to sort out how to do it... now I find it's easier than falling off a log.

My main concern, and it's never been addressed, is just how much reality there is behind the assertion that a majority of users have problems with decent sized pics downloading.

Many of my pics are around the 30kb mark, so surely they don't take too long? I have a regular phone line connection, way away from the big cities, so why does everyone seem to be troubled by it all?

And nobody has ever complained on Atlas, about mine or anybody else's...

[Craig]

As we have explained countless times to you Ray, a number of people have complained about the size of images in posts. I myself have a problem with it and, as this issue is covered by our forum rules, there is no room for debate on the issue - the limit is there for a reason - I'm not going to get into a discussion about it. I believe that the limit is a fair compromise between picture quality and speedy download time and it will continue to remain in place.

This is a discussion forum. If you are looking for somewhere to display large images, feel free to start your own picture post site.