Photo Help & Instructions Please read this, it's here to assist you. I have included information, help, and links to free and cheap utilities that can help you like image resizers, image optimizers and photo hosting. Let me first tell you that I dislike setting limits and rules with your photos but please understand that it is highly necessary. I pay monthly for my own server so that I can offer more and yet now it's full! This is insane, 80 GB is alot of space! I can't afford to upgrade to a larger harddrive so I have to limit file upload sizes. I am also going to apply changes to other areas of my site, I'm not picking on the personals alone. It seems there is some confusion about image sizes. I know that most photos uploaded here are from digital cameras. Most digital cameras have settings. You should consider setting your image sizes to 640 pixels. You will be able to store more photos and upload them faster in email and in other applications. This is my preferred size for this site. Below is a line that is 640 px in width. It is quite large enough for photos to be viewed on the internet.
640 px in width is usually an acceptable photo size, however, some digital camera settings are at maximum quality that makes for unreal file sizes in kilobytes (k or kb). These images should be optimized. I understand that you want great quality photos but I'm afraid that this is at my expense and I ask that you not only keep your photo's pixel sizes at a maximum of 640 px but also your file sizes to a maximum of 100 k (which is still quite large, I prefer even smaller). You will be able to see little difference after an image is optimized. I have spents days resizing and optimizing overlarge photos for users on this site but I can't keep doing it. I hate to delete your photos but if you won't read and follow the limits I have no choice. Please take the time to resize your image and optimize it before uploading it to this site or it will be removed with no warning. As for my one photo limit there are ways around that! Your profile includes an area to post your website URL. If you don't have a website with more photos you can always join one of the many free photo hosting sites out there. You can add the url to your photo album they give you! Then refer to it in your profile text, let people know there are more photos of you available. I've placed a few links to some in the links area below.
There are many inexpensive image software tools on the internet and several free online tools. Please check some out. If you don't want to purchase software at least make use of the free online ones. I've also added some links to free photo hosting sites. You can find many more by doing a search on Google. Image Resize Utilities ClickPic lets you quickly resize, rotate and flip images, and convert them from one format to another. It has an incredibly handy batch image file renaming function, so you can quickly give meaningful names to all those horribly-named files that you get from your digital camera. And, if your camera records orientation/rotation information, ClickPic can automatically rotate the image to the correct orientation. And it does all of this from Windows Explorer. ClickPic has a 14 day trial period. During those 14 days, you can use ClickPic as much as you like. After 14 days, you'll need to register ClickPic. Once you register the program, you'll be able to use ClickPic for as long as you like. The cost is a mere $15. Online Image Resizer - A FREE online resize, shrink and crop website utility. IT Image Resizer is used to resize pictures in most popular graphic formats (jpeg, gif, tiff, png, bmp). It resizes them in batch mode, which means that the user can select hundreds of images, select desired size and just click the Resize button. The program does everything else. The images will keep the original aspect ratio or will resize images exactly to specified size. Price: $12.95. Trial Version available. Image Resizer allows you to resize/scale multiple images by percentage or by a fixed width/height. You can also apply a greyscale filter on-the-fly to scaled images. Drag and Drop enabled. Sports an extremely easy GUI interface. Free!
Dynamic Drive's Online Image Optimizer - A FREE online utilty. Image Optimizer lets you easily optimize your gifs, animated gifs, jpgs, and pngs, so they load as fast as possible on your site. Furthermore, you can easily convert from one image type to another. Upload Size limit: 300 kB JPEG Wizard Optimizer - The free JPEG Wizard Online Optimizer provides highly optimized JPEG compression. A few seconds after you submit your JPEG image, you will be e-mailed a link to a temporary web page with several optimized and/or "transformed" images including comparison data about size and download time for that image. IT Image Optimizer is used to optimize pictures in most popular graphic formats (jpeg, gif, tiff, png, bmp). It process them in batch mode, which means that the user can select hundreds of images, select desired options and just click the ‘Process' button. The program does everything else. IT Image Optimizer can change the brightness and the contrast of the image. Brightness can be changed only for selected color channels or for all channels at once. This program can automatically equalize colors histogram of the image. More than 20 graphic filters (blur, sharpness, etc.) can be applied to the image. The image can be resized and rotated. JpegSizer is a versatile resizing utility for shrinking batches of photos and other image files, ready for use as email attachments or on web pages. Image files from digital cameras and scanners are far too large to send over the Internet. With JpegSizer, you can reduce image files easily, and greatly reduce upload and download times. JpegSizer includes a built-in emailer and web gallery builder to put your resized images to work right away. Price: $15. 15 day free trial.
Free Image Editors - Links to free image editing software.
Bravenet - Bravenet is a site I've used for over 8 years. When I first started my website I used several of their free website utilities. Over the years they have added a ton of new utilities, including Free Image Hosting. PicPile is the premiere free image host. All images are hosted on our network of linux dedicated servers. Registration is required to use our service, however registering will allow you to create photo albums, upload many pictures at once, share pictures with friends and win prizes in our contests. PicFury.com - Free Image Hosting PicHotel - PicHotel is a free image hosting company for ebay, online auctions, classifieds, message boards, blogs, live journals, and online photo albums. You can easily upload, categorize, add titles and delete images as needed. Direct hotlinking is allowed. Fotothing - Photo gallery hosting, sharing and blogging. The Upload - This is free file hosting. You click the browse button, select a picture or file on your computer, and click upload. We'll store your file online, on our dedicated linux server network, give you an URL where you can access it at, share it with friends, and post it on forums. Yes, it's 100% free. |
