How to Post Images

How to Post Images

Including an image in a post appears technical, but actually it involves just a few basic steps. You need to obtain a suitable image and then “upload” it to a “host”. Learning how to post images will enhance your use of the Internet.

Obtaining a Digital Image

You first must have the image in electronic form. Most images are obtained from digital cameras, but scanners sometimes are used. Images also can be found on the Internet, although one must be careful to respect their copyright before using those images.

Electronic images can be in several formats. To use them on the Internet, they usually should be only in either “jpg” or “gif” formats. An image saved in one of those formats will have the extension “.jpg” or “.gif” at the end of the image’s title, such as “myphoto.jpg”.

Most images obtained from digital cameras and scanners are too large to use easily on the Internet. They need to be both resized and compressed. Image editing software, such as Photoshop Elements, will allow you to do both. I particularly like the editing and viewing program Irfranview, which is excellent freeware. You can locate Irfanview at www.irfanview.com

Re-sizing. With the editing software, try to resize the image to approximately 800 x 600 pixels. While no one size works for all images, in general you want your image to be narrower than the width of a page, which will depend on the viewer’s monitor settings.

Compressing. Large images take too long to load on the Internet. Unlike printed photographic images, where size allows greater detail, monitors have limited resolution. Internet images do not need fine detail. As a suggestion, try to compress an image to about 50 kb. Depending on your editing software, compression sometimes can be set when you click on “save as” for an image.

Finding a Host

Once you have an Internet-ready digital image, you need to transfer it from your computer’s hard drive to the World Wide Web. To do that, you need to locate a suitable “host” or “server” for the image.

Many hosts are available. Frequently, without additional charge your own Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) includes some “webspace” for your own “webpage”. Rather than using all of the space for your own page, you can use some of the space for storing images.

There also are commercial photo hosts on the Internet. Typical ones are Ofoto and Sony’s Image Station. Some photo hosts do not charge for you to keep an “album” because they hope to obtain your print business. Others have nominal charges. One caution: to limit use, some photo hosts have software programming which limits or stops viewing of the images from outside of their own site. These will not work generally on the Internet, or only will work with modifications to the image title.

Finally, there are many companies which sell webspace. You can frequently find them through advertisements in computer magazines or through searches on the Internet. Purchasing webspace for a small monthly fee may be slightly more expensive, but offers flexibility.

One way to see what might work as a web-host is to see what others have used, If you right-click on an image, with most browser software you can view the image’s “properties”, which includes the title. Assuming the person is not using his or her own proprietary webspace, you will see the name of the commercial host that person has successfully used.

Transferring your Image to a Host

Having located a suitable host, you next need to “upload” the resized and compressed image from your computer (the “client”) to the host (or “server”). Some hosts offer their own transfer software. You simply need to follow their directions to upload your image from your computer’s hard drive, or other storage media, to the server. Most ISPs have a “managing your webspace” link. Most photo hosts have a “click here” or a “drag and drop” way to upload images.

If you have your own webspace, you may need additional software to transfer images. Such software is called “file transfer protocol” or “FTP” software. A popular free-standing one is CuteFTP. Most web-design software, such as Microsoft’s Front Page, also has built-in FTP features.

Showing the Image

Once you have uploaded the image to the host, you need to obtain the web-page address of the image. Usually this can be done by opening the image in a new window or by right-clicking on the image or the image title. You then will see a name like:

http://www.myhost/myimage.jpg

This is the “URL” (“uniform resource locator”) of the image. Please note that it should end in "jpg" or ".gif" . A common error is to use instead the ".html" page extension, which will not work when trying to show an image. Another common error is to omit the .jpg or .gif extension.

Once you have the image's URL, try copying the name and then pasting it in address box of your browser. If connected to the Internet, your image then should be separately seen on a new webpage. If so, congratulations! Your image is now on the World Wide Web, and available for viewing by anyone who knows the URL.

To display your image as part of a post on the forum, you need to include the URL in the “image” line as part of the posting form. After you add your text in the main box, you will see several lines immediately below the box. Skip the link and title lines, and you will find two image lines. Type or paste your image’s URL in the first image space (be sure not to repeat “http://”, so those characters only appear once). If you have a second image to add to the post, you can add the second image’s URL in the second line.

After completing your post with the image's URL included in the appropriate box, try everything out by clicking on "preview". If it works, click on "post". You did it!

Feel free to post questions --we're all here to help.

Good luck.

Michael Friedberg
November 26, 2004