FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

sorry for the caps, i used it to make the thread stand out a little more as it seems to be something people are struggling with at the moment.

theres various software out there for making your photo's a better size to share online, but theres also FREE software you can use on the web, via a web page.

for this tuturial i will be using WWW.PICNIK.COM as its free, simple to use, but also has a lot of great features which makes it versatile.

you dont have to register to use it, but if you do register (free) you can do more files at once.
i'll assume your just editing a few files to post on the forum, and so doing it one file at a time (unregistered) will take you no more than a minute per file.

I'll some step by step pictures showing you how to do a very simple picture resize.

so lets get started !!
find a large picture (anything over ~500kb is generally considered a large pic on the net)
the first few steps are very easy, so i wont provide a photo.

if you cant do steps 1-->3, id suggest taking a chainsaw to your PC and taking up nitting instead

1) open WWW.PICNIK.COM in a new window.
2) click "Get Started" - its i the middle of the main page, and let it load - im sure you can find that button easy enough
3) click "Upload Photo" - its also in the middle of the page.

4) click the "Resize" button. (bottom right corner shows the original picture size)


5) set it to 800x600. or 1024x768 is probably the biggest you'd want to use. (bottom right corner now also shows new pic size)


6) click "save n Share"


7) make sure you save it as a JPG file (bmp is a big no no !!)


and there you have it.
a phot thats now 800x600, and is about 250kb instead of 3mb+

Why do i need to resize my files? several reasons

1) not everyone lives in the big city with gigawatt bandwidth.
some people are surfing from 56k country areas, or from a laptop with wireless while travelling, or on a mobile phone with net capability.

im sure these people would love to view your pictures too, but they cant or dont want to download 10mb of pictures when viewing your thread as some get charged by the amount of data they download.
it also takes a very long time on a slow net connection to load a thread that's been bombed with massive photo's

2) if your hosting your pics here at FTC, your using their very generous offer of storing on their server space which they pay for and is limited. courtesy goes a long way.

3) if your hosting pics on FTC, and they are big files, then everyone who views that picture is using FTC's bandwidth which also costs money.
if 50 people view ONE SINGLE 2.5mb file, thats 125mb their server has sent out.
now if 50 people viewed your 214kb file they are only using about 10mb of FTC's bandwidth.

thats a saving of 115mb of data storage space on the FTC server and a massive saving on their bandwidth.

-------------
HERE is the full unedited file. its 2.5mb

compare that, with the file below @ 800x600, 214kb.
thats a 90% reduction in file size !!

theres also a whole swag of other great tools on there.

another great one is the crop tool.

take your large (2.5mb+) unedited photo.
use the crop tool to zoom in on something. resize it if needed using instructions i posted above, then post it.

heres one i prepared earlier

the same photo as above, just cropped down + resized.

Mr Chomp (left, fang variety) and Low Giant (right) having an alpha male battle of who's got the bigger trap during dormancy

you can also see theres a drosera spatulata in the pot too!

thanks heaps!

Can I also add, for samsung phone users (Eg the newer ones.) you can upload your pictures to photobucket. Your samsung phone should have macro, mine does. If you press the communities button you can permanently log in to the account. Its pretty much the same set up as what oblivion showed you once uploaded. You can post it as an image code, using up none of the forums space.

The only downside to samsung uploads, is that it leaves a short black line at the top of every photo. Thats why ive always got one at the top of mine

if you have a windows computer, right click the picture and hit Edit.
Hit save as, then save it like this: IMG 8777 turns into IMG 8777,a.
Hit resize then under percent type whatever percent you'd like.
hit save and look at the bottom of the screen.
It should have the picture size in MB or KB.
I aim for 125 kb or so.
With a 12 megapixel camera, you resize it about 25%.

I just resize all mine 25%.

A friendly "bump"...

There's new ways of reducing image size, technology has changed and it's now even easier to reduce image sizes. A little Googling will reveal several options. Hi-resolution images are nice, but 90% of the people are viewing photos on their phones and don't need a multi-meg sized image. Even on the large screen of a computer a 1-meg image looks great...a 500KB looks pretty darn good, too! And the smaller files download *so* much faster!!! This might not matter to the person who's got a 100Mbps Internet download speed, but for someone who lives rural and the "promised" high-speed-internet was a lie, it matters a lot.

My normal "tested" download speed is less than 3Mbps. You might think that a 3Mbps speed will download a 3-meg file in one second...not so on a LOW SPEED DSL connection with mockingbirds apparently sitting every hundred feet on the telephone lines. I have sat and waited over a minute for a simple 2-meg file to download. Those big 5mb files just sit there and the wheels spins and spins and spins. If the image is hosted off-site, then the download time normally increases. What I find myself doing is scrolling on past these large files/photos...and not commenting on them. I mean, if you can't see them you can't talk about it. It's not your fault or mine that mine and other's Internet speeds are so slow, but it sure would be nice if you'd consider downsizing that great image of the squirrel stuck headfirst in a big pitcher plant so us slow-speeders can see it. Just sayin'....

You can resize them here on upload. Don’t see a need for any other method regarding the forum.

If you are using an Android phone, I use the app ImgSiz.

wcrosman wrote:You can resize them here on upload. Don’t see a need for any other method regarding the forum.

I don't see how to do that. Can you attach a screen shot?

Starting from the bottom after choosing to add a photo. Its not a true resize of dimension. Resizes the amount of detail/resolution.
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I can resize images in my (ancient) iPhone 6 before uploading. Most of the time, though, I upload the images to my computer and post from it. I also shoot some photos with a DSLR which I also upload to my computer before uploading to the Internet. On my old Windows7 computer I use an app called "Image Resizer For Windows". I pretty much limit all my uploaded photos to under 1-meg and most of the time below 500KB. Here are two copies of a severely cropped image...one before and one after resizing with the "Image Resizer For Windows" app.

wcrosman wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:33 pm Starting from the bottom after choosing to add a photo. Its not a true resize of dimension. Resizes the amount of detail/resolution.
[D0258571-CB01-4B07-B8D1-127D5601E197.jpegF4A369C0-27AD-49ED-A6D1-05E11F324C73.jpeg
FC109479-256F-456F-A1FC-B4A752C9CDD7.jpeg

I might be wrong, but I think that that is a utility within your cell phone and not a forum utility. Pretend to text someone an image and see if you can downsize it with the same app.

You may be correct. Sample was from my ipad. My android phone doesn’t have that option.

I think that’s right…I have that utility on my iPhone. There’s probably an app for it for the android.