How To Post Photos

[Pedr]

To explain "Aspect Ratio" to those whom don't understand. Aspect Ratio is the relationship between height and width on a photo / picture.

Forgetting to check this box will mean that you are able to change the height of a picture and the computer will not automatically calculate the correct width ( infact it will not change at all ). This means that you will get a picture that is stretched or shrunk and your subject ( especially if its people ) will look really tall and thin, or really short and squat......SO......remember to check the "aspect ratio" box.

The value that is displayed in the adjoining box is the calculation for the ratio to height and width. Its automatically generated by the computer and you don't need to remember or change it. This would be done by someone using the computer for more advanced or artistic work with pictures.


To understand "Resolution". Resolution relates to the number of coloured dots in a row that make up the picture. The higher the value, the sharper the image. That is the more dots ( called pixels ) the finer / more focused / sharper the picture, and on the other side the less pixels the less focused or blurrier the image.

Usually the section that asks the user to set resolution relates to printing. Printers all use different print resolutions. The average home computer printer uses resolutions around 180 dpi ( dots per inch ) to somewhere like 360 dpi. There are better quality or commercial printers that are able to print resolutions like 1200 dpi or even higher. So it is likely that it is not necessary to set these values when resizing your picture as it relates to printing.


"Image format". David explains to us that we must choose JPEG or JPG ( same format )....so what is Jpeg or Jpg and what is format?

When computers became the way that we were all going to head, large companies and corporations ( like Kodak for example ) set out to design programs that would display pictures in a world that had been text driven and upto that time on monochromatic screens ( as in one colour display ) mostly green or orange.

Kodak programmers developed the Jpeg method of displaying pictures, which also happens to be the most popular in use today. Some others are: Gif designed by a company called Compuserve, quite often GIF images are small animations that play continuously and are small file sizes. That is they are only small compared to a movie file or music.

Another popularly used "format" is BMP, this isn't a Russian personnel carrier but is an abreviation for BITMAP. I'm not sure whom developed this system to save pictures, however this system makes large file sizes and is therefore not as good as saving your picture as a Jpeg.

All of these different programs that save the information relating to pictures so that it can be understood and displayed by your computer, we call "formats", that is the "language" used by the computer.


Hints in "Saving a new picture".

There is one common mistake that is made after resizing an image to use in a document or to be displayed on MLU or similar, and that is oversaving the original.

A picture taken with you new 5 megapixel digital camera is most likely 1200 x 900 pixels or even 2500 x 1900 pixels ( Remember that is the number of dots multiplied by the number of dots that make up the picture displayed ). So now you have a picture of Aunty Mabel sitting in your newly restored Carrier but its WAY to big to post to MLU, so you follow the hints displayed in this thread and resize your image.

The program that you have used resizes the image then when you are going through the process of saving the image, the window appears to save your newly created ( resized ) picture. It is usual that the program will open the file that it got the image from before you changed it's size, and it will already have named the picture with the original name that the camera gave the picture. ( ie MVC0022f.jpg or Pb510035.jpeg )

If you hit save now the original picture will be lost forever and you will only have a smaller version. It is important that you don't save the new image over the top of the old image if you want to print a photo out to send to Aunt Mabel whom may not have a computer or internet. Photo's taken directly from your camera can these days be taken into your local mall to the old film developer who will now probably have a computer and printer to get an old fashioned photo print to show your family and friends, or many of us now have a photo realistic printer connected to our computers to print them ourselves.

It is therefore necessary to rename the new image so that you do not loose your original picture. This can be done as simply as adding a letter or number to the original name, or renaming it with a name that may have some relevance to your new image like "Aunt Mabel and Carrier for MLU post". This will mean that you will still have the original if you wish to print it and a version for MLU for us all to see.

Hope this explains some things to you and is of some help.

Sorry its a bit long winded.

Pedr

This picture is a Gif animation ( source unknown )