Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Posting images is weird, right? It's almost like the old boards but not quite. This topic could grow long so let's get to it.

Editing Images
You can use any image editing program (or website) you like. I'm not going to try to list them all out here. I personally use Paint.net on Windows 7 64bit. It's free and pretty powerful. These instructions may be vague but that's because I can't write specific instructions for anything except Paint.net right now.

1. Open your image in the editor.
2. Use a selection tool to "frame" what you want to show. If you're making an avatar, you probably want to use a fixed ratio selection set for 5:7 in order to get the most out of the maximum avatar dimensions. If you're editing food porn, you'll want to use a 4:5 ratio for the same reason.
3. Crop the image. This is what gets rid of all the crepe around your picture that you don't want.
4. Resize. For avatars, the maximum size is 100px x 140px. For any other image, the maximum is 800px x 1000px.
5. Save it! You can use any format, but the best (in order) are PNG, JPEG, or GIF. If you're making an avatar and you save it as a PNG but the file size is bigger than 16kb, try JPEG, then GIF.
6. Bask in the glory of your own hard work!

Hosting
Now you have your image ready to post. If it's an avatar, you can go straight to uploading it! If it's food porn or another image, you'll need a place to keep it on the internet so you can post it. This is what's called a host. Anywhere that let's you upload and hotlink an image can be a host, however there are a large number of sites designed solely for this purpose. Here are a couple!

Imgur - This site is easy to use and has a ton of little addon programs to make image creation and uploading easier.
Photobucket - This is what I use. It's easy to upload images and even goes so far as to give you a [IMG] code to cut and paste straight into a post!
Flickr - Flickr is an image host but not really in the same way as Imgur or Photobucket. It's more for showing off your awesome photography skillz and they kind of make it a pain to get a URL for posting your images. But it works. And here's a helpful tip on using Flickr as a an image host!

Posting Your Image
Now you've edited your image, you've found a host, and you want to share it with the rest of us! Here's how!

1. Get the URL. You can either get this from your image host, or you can right-click on an image and go to "Copy Image URL" or something similar.
2. Paste the URL into the message body. If it doesn't end with .png, .jpg or .jpeg, or .gif, it's probably not the right URL! (Thanks Fee!)
3. Wrap the URL in [IMG] tags. You can type this out or you can highlight the URL and click the Img button above the message body text box.
4. Preview, preview, preview!!! Make sure your image shows up!
5. Post!

Bringing it all together
So for example, I want to post my Time Police image. I edit my image down to 800 x 1000. I uploaded my image to Photobucket. It gives me this URL: http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii78 ... police.jpg . I make a new post and in this post I put:

Which gives me this when I preview:


And since my image is smaller than 800 x 1000, hosted somewhere, and written into the post with correct [IMG] tags, you can all enjoy the Time Police with me!

Now you know how to post an image. Use this thread to ask questions about posting images!

When getting the url from flickr - if it doesn't end with .jpg, it's not the right thing.

Fantastic point, added to the OP.

When getting an image from Flickr:

Click on the image you wish to share.
Click on "Share this" right above the image.
Click to expand "Grab the HTML/BBC Code"
Click the "BBC Code" radio button.
Select the appropriate size from the drop down menu.
Copy and paste the code.

You'll get something like this:


I usually delete the code after the first [/url] because I don't want all of the extra text displayed at the bottom. I know you know this, brian, but figured it was a pain in the asparagus to type out, and I'm procrastinating at work.

No, I've probably never done this, but I'll add it to the OP! Thanks DTBK!

From Photoshop, don't just "save" or "save as...", select "save for web and other devices" for size tuning. With the new 15k (instead of 10k) limit, it's less of a problem, but sometimes saving a 100x140 jpg will still be above 15k depending on the color palate and details.

If you're having a hard time and have fireworks in your adobe suite, you can select the desired MB and the program will optimize for you.

I can help people out making animated gifs in fireworks or photoshop if anyone needs it

I've never been able to preview one of my images. Don't know if anyone else is having this problem.

Can you see them when you post?

So is this the thread that says I'm NOT a dumb shiitake because i couldn't figure out how to get my images up from imageshack?

what do people think about quoting pics in long threads like the user image and tattoo threads? i feel like it takes up a TON of eye space when everyone is repeatedly quoting large pics... when you scroll down the page it's all multiples of the same image with one added comment. am i just being a crotchety old lady by finding that annoying?

Nope. Somewhere in the whine subforum I said it was making me feel jumpy.
I thiiiink the discussion is still at the point where it's about thumbnails vs. links.
I liked the links.

That thread is here viewtopic.php?f=16&t=428 This thread is for helping people post their images.

Sure! I haven't used imageshack. Have you tried posting it to one of the other image hosts?

Yep, I see them when I post, so it's not a big deal!

Yeah, i'm now using anything but imageshack; one would think choosing a different site would not be such an entrenched stupid habit! The others work fine, thank you, and thanks for the topic.

I use imageshack for mine, it wasn't as intuitive as some of the other sites, but if you copy the "Direct link" and paste that in between the image tags it works.

On most forums I go to there are rules about not quoting images. It makes threads really cluttered and confusing. Will something like that be implemented here?

Also, there's an add-on for Firefox and allows you upload images to Imageshack with a right click option, which is nice if you want to post a hilarious image of kittens you found on the Internet and get the image conveniently formatted in BBCode.

well, cool. turtle thankee?

Thanks for the tips. I like Imageshack myself.

This is so damn hard for me! I have been on this thing for years and I can never post a pic!! I think I'm picture posting challenged!

i constantly have problems- i bookmarked this and usually it helps me through, but i was trying to post three pics and it kept telling me that it couldn't determine pic dimensions. i use picasa (i know- but my parents and inlaws get all the baby pics from it) and i usually it works, the links have .jpg at the end,the size is small enough, i'm not sure what else to check. any suggestions?

I get the error message "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image." when I try to link to an image... any ideas?

Try a different image host.

I don't know what's happening, but I know I don't like it.
I didn't really believe any of the "images from flickr don't show up" or even "flickr is deleting my images" stories... until today.
When I was in the middle of posting heaps of pics from flickr, I noticed that only one was showing up where I had seen about four or five of my pics just minutes ago. I checked back on flickr, and while I could still see the image titles, there were no thumbnails anymore, and I couldn't click on anything. My pics - the ones I'd just uploaded - were gone!
While I survived that by using a different image hosting site, I just noticed that most of the pics in Food Porn don't show up for me. There's not even "Image" where the image should be (like when it's not loading), just blank space.
What. The. fork. Seriously. I'm worried, and slightly confused.