Posting Photographs
Posted: Tue Aug 06, 2024 2:13 pm
Having trouble posting photographs? Please read this.
We have got used to taking photographs with our mobile phones and then uploading them straight, as they are, to social media. What we don't see is the complicated conversion that these social media companies do to photos to make them suitable for posting. Mainly, this is reducing them down in digital size, stripping the metadata and reducing colour gamuts.
Photos taken with a mobile phone are way too large! for posting on websites.
Our Forum is run by volunteers and does not have the multi-billion dollar, multi-national, multi-thousand staff, facilities that social media companies have. The BCSS pays a rather large amount of money for server space, and space is tight; the Forum currently uses up half of all the space available, and we still have to accommodate 70+ websites, 200+ email accounts, several databases, storage space, and software.
In order not to eat up all the remaining space super-fast, there is currently a restriction on posting photographs on the Forum: photos must be below 2Mb each in size. Actually, there is no need to have them that big either! Photos can be 100Kb - 200Kb for detailed full-screen viewing on a computer screen. Also, if you try to post too many photos in the same post, it is likely to fail. If you have a number of photos to post, split them up into groups of 3 or 4 in separate posts.
There are a few free websites that can reduce your photos for you. Here are a couple:
https://tinypng.com
https://www.freeconvert.com/image-compressor
Alternatively, you can do it yourself using image software such as Adobe Photoshop. In Photoshop, first go to Image / Image Size..., and set the Resolution to 72, and the width or height to 1024. Click ok. Then go to File / Export / Save for Web, ensure that "Quality" in the top right of screen is set to 30, and save. Job done.
We have got used to taking photographs with our mobile phones and then uploading them straight, as they are, to social media. What we don't see is the complicated conversion that these social media companies do to photos to make them suitable for posting. Mainly, this is reducing them down in digital size, stripping the metadata and reducing colour gamuts.
Photos taken with a mobile phone are way too large! for posting on websites.
Our Forum is run by volunteers and does not have the multi-billion dollar, multi-national, multi-thousand staff, facilities that social media companies have. The BCSS pays a rather large amount of money for server space, and space is tight; the Forum currently uses up half of all the space available, and we still have to accommodate 70+ websites, 200+ email accounts, several databases, storage space, and software.
In order not to eat up all the remaining space super-fast, there is currently a restriction on posting photographs on the Forum: photos must be below 2Mb each in size. Actually, there is no need to have them that big either! Photos can be 100Kb - 200Kb for detailed full-screen viewing on a computer screen. Also, if you try to post too many photos in the same post, it is likely to fail. If you have a number of photos to post, split them up into groups of 3 or 4 in separate posts.
There are a few free websites that can reduce your photos for you. Here are a couple:
https://tinypng.com
https://www.freeconvert.com/image-compressor
Alternatively, you can do it yourself using image software such as Adobe Photoshop. In Photoshop, first go to Image / Image Size..., and set the Resolution to 72, and the width or height to 1024. Click ok. Then go to File / Export / Save for Web, ensure that "Quality" in the top right of screen is set to 30, and save. Job done.