Adding your picture to the GTA thread

[zul32]

For those of you not so computer savvy, there are a few ways that you can get that picture you just took of the dead rat down to a more manageable size. If you're like me, you probably have a nicer digital camera, and thus the thing takes pictures of at least 8MegaPixels or larger (mine is 15). So, what happens is your actual picture-size is quite large (even larger than this monitor you're looking at in most cases) - so reducing the size of the picture so that it meets the 200k picture size is most important!

My personal method is by using MSPaint. For you PC users, this comes standard with all Windows software, and that's why I like to show you about this. So, here we go:
1. Launch MS Paint.
2. Select Open and from the new window that pops up, choose your particular folder (or sub-folder where the picture is kept) and select the picture then click the 'open' button at the bottom.
3. One of the preferred ways to help reduce the size of your picture is by 'cropping'. Often we take a lot of the background with the main subject taking up only about 1/2 of your picture, so by trimming around the picture you can reduce a lot of the extra on it. If you like the way your picture looks just skip this step. So, you probably need to reduce the view of the picture..
a) First just below the 'home' tab and to the right of that is the select button click that once.
b) Next click the 'view' tab just right of the 'home' tab.
c) Next continue to click the 'zoom out' button until you can see the whole picture and know where you want to begin your cropping.
d) Next click the 'home' tab one more time.
e) to select the area you want cropped, move your mouse to the upper left corner of the area, then press-and hold your left mouse then drag that down to the lower-right of the picture to where you want the image to be inside that dashed-line. Then if you're happy with your selection press the 'crop' button and that cuts it out for you! NOTE: If you make a mistake on the selection, you can always just undo it by pressing cntl-z and start over again.
4. See how it looks now - by cropping it, you'll see the size of the file along the bottom of the status bar (near the middle of your screen). It won't adjust to the new size until you save your file (or do a save-as). Go ahead and do that now. NOTE: Again, you can also undo your changes with a cntl-z.
5. Resizing. This is the final part. If cropping didn't reduce the image size enough, and most of the time it won't you need to reduce the total image. Press cntl-w and a new box appears. Typically you can just tab to the one called Horizontal and the number you enter in should automatically adjust the vertical at the same time your changing the Horizontal value. I typically keep to percentage instead of pixels, but feel free to play with that as you wish. For those large pictures, try reducing it to 50% then press the OK button. NOTE: The file size at the bottom will not automatically update for you until you save it again! So, save it (or press cntl-s) then it updates.
**NOTE: This however isn't final - because once again if you don't like the final file size, you can undo the change with cntl-z and then resize it with cntl-w and put in different values. Continue to do this (my recommendation is in 10% values each time) until it gets to 200k, or just under that. Then you have your picture!

 

In this example attached.. it was 218k, and I had to reduce it to 90% and that put it down to 195k as you see it here.

[lizzie]

THanks so much for the information!

[ezman604]

Thanks...
There is also a picture resizer on our Library page. As well as detailed instructions on ways of posting pictures as stickies in the Announcement Gate.

[Norm_m]

It would be nice to be able to post pictures in PMs

Norm

[ezman604]

Norm, you can. A pm (at least on my screen) gives you the exact same options as the toolbar in a post. You can link to a picture posted in your GTA library or a web hosted link like photobucket. You don't have the lower options, like attaching a file. That WOULD be nice.

[Funnyrunner]

Thanks!!!  That'll come in handy when my TX200 gets here this week and I get some pics of it.

[Frank in Fairfield]

I use photobucket

[Norm_m]

Dave you are 100% correct! I have never used the Insert Image Button in the Tool Bar as I have always used the Attachments and Other Options at the bottom of the Reply Page.

Something is telling me the Insert Imagine Button will come in handy

Thanks
Norm