[I tried to post this in the "LESSON: Inserting Images" thread but I couldn't because I made the title of the thread bold face which renders the thread closed! Although there is one response to that thread, I posted it before I added the bold codes to the title.]

Regarding iamges that have been uploaded to http://www.photo.net using the image upload feature there (and some other image hosting sites), unless I am mistaken, they need to be referenced as a "Clickable Link" (explained in detail in this thread) instead of as an "image" because the reference is to a "web page" and not to an actual image file.

The insructions given in the "Inserting Images" thread refer only to when you are referring to the image file itself, and NOT the web page on which the image appears.

You can refer to just about anything using a "Clickable Link," e.g. the <a href=""> HTML construct, but you have to use the <img src=""> construct when you want the image to just be there for your viewers.

I hope I haven't confused anyone. There certainly ought to be a better way.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@alaska.net), February 05, 2001

Answers

This is a question as response; I have a scaner and prints, what do I do to post images into responses here?

-- R. Watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), February 05, 2001.

You need to upload them to a web site. Unfortunately, many of the free sites block attempts to redisplay elsewhere, but I think you can upload them to photo.net. Then you put in the code that Tony references, allowing you to pull them from that web site into the thread you are posting in.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), February 05, 2001.

Jeff is absolutely correct.

To prepare an image for upload to the web, you must use your scanning software, e.g. Deskscan for many HP scanners, and/or photo editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photopaint to convert the image from its scanned form (probably .TIF or .TIFF format) to a jpeg (.JPG or .JPEG).

When you retrieve your .TIF file into your photo editing software, there are several important considerations concerning image quality and size that center around a basic conundrum: The higher the image quality - the larger the image file - the longer it takes for your viewers to view - the less likely your viewers will wait to view it!

Anyway, I'm not expert at this, but what follows is a list of the few practices that I have learned:

1. Your image shouldn't be too big from a "file size" standpoint. Most of the best images I've ever seen on the web are larger than 100K and smaller than 200K. A few go over or under this range, but not very many. The more small details in an image of a given pixel dimension, the larger the file will be. Black and white images will be somewhat smaller than their color equivalents.
2. Your image shouldn't be too large from a pixel x pixel dimension. I think many of my own images have a long dimension of 600 - 700 pixels and that is probably too large still for some poeple with smaller monitors, or with medium sized monitors with an image resolution with a "less than normal" resolution so that icons and text appear larger. Rule of thumb: If you have a 21" monitor with a pixel resolution setting of 1280 x 1024 and Photoshop, you need to remember that your images set at 200 x 600 will show up pretty small, but will look normal for most of the other folks out there who want to view your images.
3. An image retrieved into Photoshop et al will probably need at least a tad bit of "sharpening" or maybe an "unsharp mask" filter applied. This is required not because of an originally unsharp image, but because the appearance of image sharpness degrades slightly when it is scanned.
4. You should make a note of image pixel size, e.g. width=254 and height=634, and when you make an image posting, you should include these figures (whatever they happen to be) in your img tag. The benefit is huge: text that shows up further down the thread will appear before your image finishes loading. Without the size parameters, the thread will stop and wait for your image to finish loading. The reason for this is probably due to the primitiveness of today's browers: Netscape doesn't know the dimensions of your image unless it is told what they are. If the size params are indicated in an image post, the browser will draw a box that is equal to the image space and load the image into the box while at the same time loading the rest of the faster loading text in the thread.
5. Using Photoshop to "spot" an image is much more controllable and precise than doing it by hand, and it's much quicker, too. (The Rubber Stamp tool is used.)
6. Saving a file into the .JPG format should only be done from the original .TIF (or other) file format. You should NEVER resave a .JPG file again as a .JPG file because image material is actually lost. That's why they call the jpeg format "lossy."
7. I had something else, but I forgot. Perhaps and hopefully others will add some suggestions or corrections...

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), February 05, 2001.

I have made my references to photos on the Photo.net database clickable links, but contrary to Tony's statement above, there's no reason why they can't also be used as normal embedded JPEG images (with the URL pointing to the address of the JPEG file on photo.net).

In fact, the images that I've posted to this forum point directly to the .jpg files on the photo.net server. It just so happens that I also created a link, so that when you click on the image, you are taken to the photo.net html page. This provides additional information, and the option to view the image at various resonlutions. It isn't necessary, just a nice option to have.

When posting an photo, an issue worth considering is the long-term viability of the image. If you don't think this is important, take a look at the "15mm Heliar Gallery" thread on this forum, to see the wreckage after only a short amount of time. Its similar to the Y2K problem, in that its easy to fool yourself into thinking that the future will never come. It would be discourteous to Tony to expect him to clean up this kind of mess on a continuing basis.

This is the main reason that I use the photo.net image database. The images are on the same greenspun.com server as this forum. There's no guarantee that my photos will never disappear, but if they do, then its likely that the "Leica Photography" forum will also have ceased to exist at the same time.

-- Joe Buechler (jbuechler@toad.net), February 12, 2001.