Posting images

[Libraraptor]

I'll try to paste something here as a test.

It worked.

[Fembrogon]

Imgur recently changed its image upload process in a manner I'm finding very annoying, so I'd be curious if anyone has recommendations for another hosting website that A: has limitless hosting, B: has album organization, and C: has sharing/linking capability at different sizes.
I know there are plenty of hosting sites out there, but I don't know if any have this particular set of traits.

[Halichoeres]

Hmm, that does seem like a big ask. I use Flickr, but I pay for the privilege of storing over 1,000 photos. I know a lot of people use postimg; does it not have an album function?

[Crackington]

Yes Postimage has an album function and you can have multiple ones.

It would meet at least two of the @Fembrogon criteria, but not so sure about sizing. It's free though, so easy to try out.

[DinoToyForum]

@Fembrogon Have you considered self-hosting? Obviously there's a cost to that, but it gives you complete control, and you have more than enough reason to have a website. It's easier than you might think to set up a website and upload images to it. I notice heweyscritters.com is available

When I share an image on the forum I usually don't even use a content management system (e.g. Wordpress), I just upload it directly to the server and copy the url.

[DinoToyForum]

As an experiment I'm activating image attachments directly to the blog. Once you've attached an image, there's a blue arrow button next to the thumbnail, which you have to click to insert it into the body of the post. I've set the max image size to 1000kb per  image, and 5000kb per post, which should be fine for web images. It means images larger than that will have to be resized prior to upload.

Let's see how it goes. Let me know if you have any trouble. Here's a test:


Edit, there's an annoying download link that I'm trying to remove from below the posts.

And as a visitor I see the error:

"You cannot view this attachment"

Hopefully all logged in members can at least see the image.

This might involve some playing around with the settings to get right.

[BlueKrono]

@DinoToyForum A few minutes ago I could only see the "cannot view attachment" error but now I can see your stupendous mug.

[DinoToyForum]

@DinoToyForum A few minutes ago I could only see the "cannot view attachment" error but now I can see your stupendous mug.

Yeah, I realised the default permissions were set so only I could see attachments. Everyone, even guests, should now be able to see them and admire this wonderful mug, a brilliant gift from the co-author of my book The Plesiosaur's Neck.

[BlueKrono]

@DinoToyForum A few minutes ago I could only see the "cannot view attachment" error but now I can see your stupendous mug.

Yeah, I realised the default permissions were set so only I could see attachments. Everyone, even guests, should now be able to see them and admire this wonderful mug, a brilliant gift from the co-author of my book The Plesiosaur's Neck.

This is an exciting prospect. I would use the forum a lot more if I could easily post my collections and acquisitions. However the memory limitations would prohibit anything so far. Most of my photos are 2-8 MB. Is there a way to resize them so they're not as high a resolution?

[DinoToyForum]

@DinoToyForum A few minutes ago I could only see the "cannot view attachment" error but now I can see your stupendous mug.

Yeah, I realised the default permissions were set so only I could see attachments. Everyone, even guests, should now be able to see them and admire this wonderful mug, a brilliant gift from the co-author of my book The Plesiosaur's Neck.

This is an exciting prospect. I would use the forum a lot more if I could easily post my collections and acquisitions. However the memory limitations would prohibit anything so far. Most of my photos are 2-8 MB. Is there a way to resize them so they're not as high a resolution?

I believe you mainly use a mobile phone? I'm sure there must be a way for you to resize them with an app of some kind, but I've always found phones clunky and counterintuitive, so I always use a laptop to do anything technical and I'm not a good person to advise you. If you're on a computer it is extremely easy.

Modern phones take photos at much higher file sizes than is required for the web. 8MB is massive. The photo of me I shared above, which you'll agree is more than large enough to appreciate in a forum post, is only 199KB (0.2 of an MB), 900 x 1200 pixels. And I could have easily gotten away with making it smaller than that. The original taken on my phone was 4MB.

I could look at installing this mod to automatically resize images as they are uploaded to the forum, but I'd need to make sure it doesn't keep the original on file as well, which would be defeating the point (i.e. to stop unnecessarily large attachments clogging up server space): https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?mod=4087

I definitely want to make it easier for members to upload images to their posts. I'm just cautious not to overload the server.

[BlueKrono]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

[DinoToyForum]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

I can allow other image file types as required, but .img files would be unusual to use on the web. The images you post to postimg appear to be .jpg files, so I guess that website converts them during the upload process. For example, is this one of yours from  a recent post? https://i.postimg.cc/LhNFsC8t/IMG-8387.jpg

Big social media platforms and image hosts automatically resize, rename, and reformat photos as they get uploaded, but this forum just doesn't have such infrastructure built in. I can try out the mod I linked to above which might work for our needs, but I'm always reluctant to install third party mods that significantly change the forum's functionality because on more than one occasion I've broken the forum doing this. So, it's the sort of thing I'd do on a day when I know I have time to fix it if it goes terribly wrong. Leave it with me.

[BlueKrono]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

I can allow other image file types as required, but .img files would be unusual to use on the web. The images you post to postimg appear to be .jpg files, so I guess that website converts them during the upload process. For example, is this one of yours from  a recent post? https://i.postimg.cc/LhNFsC8t/IMG-8387.jpg

Big social media platforms and image hosts automatically resize, rename, and reformat photos as they get uploaded, but this forum just doesn't have such infrastructure built in. I can try out the mod I linked to above which might work for our needs, but I'm always reluctant to install third party mods that significantly change the forum's functionality because on more than one occasion I've broken the forum doing this. So, it's the sort of thing I'd do on a day when I know I have time to fix it if it goes terribly wrong. Leave it with me.

It seems odd that that's a jpg since it says right on there "IMG_8387". You must be right about it converting them. No rush on modifications. We don't want to break the site. I'm still in the process of putting together my collections room in my new house, so it'll be a while before I have a bunch to post.

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

I like to use imgbb, it's free, there doesn't seem to be a limit, and it has an option to automatically generate bbcode links that I can just paste into my message.

[DinoToyForum]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

I can allow other image file types as required, but .img files would be unusual to use on the web. The images you post to postimg appear to be .jpg files, so I guess that website converts them during the upload process. For example, is this one of yours from  a recent post? https://i.postimg.cc/LhNFsC8t/IMG-8387.jpg

Big social media platforms and image hosts automatically resize, rename, and reformat photos as they get uploaded, but this forum just doesn't have such infrastructure built in. I can try out the mod I linked to above which might work for our needs, but I'm always reluctant to install third party mods that significantly change the forum's functionality because on more than one occasion I've broken the forum doing this. So, it's the sort of thing I'd do on a day when I know I have time to fix it if it goes terribly wrong. Leave it with me.

It seems odd that that's a jpg since it says right on there "IMG_8387". You must be right about it converting them. No rush on modifications. We don't want to break the site. I'm still in the process of putting together my collections room in my new house, so it'll be a while before I have a bunch to post.

"IMG_8387" is just a default image name, not the file type, so the IMG part of it is essentially meaningless. The file type is always preceded by a dot, so in this case, it's probably saved on your phone as "IMG_8387.jpg" or something similar. You can set what format you want your images to be on your phone.

[BlueKrono]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

I can allow other image file types as required, but .img files would be unusual to use on the web. The images you post to postimg appear to be .jpg files, so I guess that website converts them during the upload process. For example, is this one of yours from  a recent post? https://i.postimg.cc/LhNFsC8t/IMG-8387.jpg

Big social media platforms and image hosts automatically resize, rename, and reformat photos as they get uploaded, but this forum just doesn't have such infrastructure built in. I can try out the mod I linked to above which might work for our needs, but I'm always reluctant to install third party mods that significantly change the forum's functionality because on more than one occasion I've broken the forum doing this. So, it's the sort of thing I'd do on a day when I know I have time to fix it if it goes terribly wrong. Leave it with me.

It seems odd that that's a jpg since it says right on there "IMG_8387". You must be right about it converting them. No rush on modifications. We don't want to break the site. I'm still in the process of putting together my collections room in my new house, so it'll be a while before I have a bunch to post.

"IMG_8387" is just a default image name, not the file type, so the IMG part of it is essentially meaningless. The file type is always preceded by a dot, so in this case, it's probably saved on your phone as "IMG_8387.jpg" or something similar. You can set what format you want your images to be on your phone.

Ah, that makes sense. I clicked through all the options on one of my pics and I didn't see a way to change the file type (it's an iPhone btw). But then, I am a bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to technology.

[DinoToyForum]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

I can allow other image file types as required, but .img files would be unusual to use on the web. The images you post to postimg appear to be .jpg files, so I guess that website converts them during the upload process. For example, is this one of yours from  a recent post? https://i.postimg.cc/LhNFsC8t/IMG-8387.jpg

Big social media platforms and image hosts automatically resize, rename, and reformat photos as they get uploaded, but this forum just doesn't have such infrastructure built in. I can try out the mod I linked to above which might work for our needs, but I'm always reluctant to install third party mods that significantly change the forum's functionality because on more than one occasion I've broken the forum doing this. So, it's the sort of thing I'd do on a day when I know I have time to fix it if it goes terribly wrong. Leave it with me.

It seems odd that that's a jpg since it says right on there "IMG_8387". You must be right about it converting them. No rush on modifications. We don't want to break the site. I'm still in the process of putting together my collections room in my new house, so it'll be a while before I have a bunch to post.

"IMG_8387" is just a default image name, not the file type, so the IMG part of it is essentially meaningless. The file type is always preceded by a dot, so in this case, it's probably saved on your phone as "IMG_8387.jpg" or something similar. You can set what format you want your images to be on your phone.

Ah, that makes sense. I clicked through all the options on one of my pics and I didn't see a way to change the file type (it's an iPhone btw). But then, I am a bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to technology.

There's probably a section of the phone's camera settings to set how the photos are taken in the first place (rather than trying to convert them after), but I'm not very good with phones myself. If you have an iphone (as I do) then go to Settings > Camera > Formats > and select 'Most Compatible' (that = .JPG). That's what I did because my phone was taking photos in a 'High Efficiency' (.HEIF) format that I was always having to convert them later.

[BlueKrono]

I gave this a try, but it says the only file types supported are gif, jpg, and png, and the photos my phone takes are img. In addition, I have a pretty modern camera with resolution of 3 MB or higher per photo, so for these two things I would need to put all my photos through some kind of conversion app or something which would make the process no less tedious than using postimage. I hope someday I'll be able to post pics directly from my phone like on social media.

I can allow other image file types as required, but .img files would be unusual to use on the web. The images you post to postimg appear to be .jpg files, so I guess that website converts them during the upload process. For example, is this one of yours from  a recent post? https://i.postimg.cc/LhNFsC8t/IMG-8387.jpg

Big social media platforms and image hosts automatically resize, rename, and reformat photos as they get uploaded, but this forum just doesn't have such infrastructure built in. I can try out the mod I linked to above which might work for our needs, but I'm always reluctant to install third party mods that significantly change the forum's functionality because on more than one occasion I've broken the forum doing this. So, it's the sort of thing I'd do on a day when I know I have time to fix it if it goes terribly wrong. Leave it with me.

It seems odd that that's a jpg since it says right on there "IMG_8387". You must be right about it converting them. No rush on modifications. We don't want to break the site. I'm still in the process of putting together my collections room in my new house, so it'll be a while before I have a bunch to post.

"IMG_8387" is just a default image name, not the file type, so the IMG part of it is essentially meaningless. The file type is always preceded by a dot, so in this case, it's probably saved on your phone as "IMG_8387.jpg" or something similar. You can set what format you want your images to be on your phone.

Ah, that makes sense. I clicked through all the options on one of my pics and I didn't see a way to change the file type (it's an iPhone btw). But then, I am a bit of a Neanderthal when it comes to technology.

There's probably a section of the phone's camera settings to set how the photos are taken in the first place (rather than trying to convert them after), but I'm not very good with phones myself. If you have an iphone (as I do) then go to Settings > Camera > Formats > and select 'Most Compatible' (that = .JPG). That's what I did because my phone was taking photos in a 'High Efficiency' (.HEIF) format that I was always having to convert them later.

I did so, and now it's taking photos of about 2 MB resolution. Better, but still double the current limit. They might be in jpg format too, but I'm not sure how to check that. My phone still titles them img_### but that might be irrelevant, as you said above. I continue this thread publicly only in hopes that it might prove useful to other forum members too.

[Jiminy350]

DinoToyForum,

I believe I was able to directly upload my pictures on the modifying figures thread based on your advice (Thank you!). But since I've done that instead of pictures there are picture holders saying "waiting for approval".
 
When I directly attached the images I followed your advice about the arrows, and all 4 pictures appeared in my preview mode. When I saved, I briefly saw the pictures posted and thought all had gone well, but when I checked back the next day to see if anyone saw my post, I noticed the pictures were replaced with the "Waiting for approval" statements.

I didn't see any message from you indicating that posted pictures would need approvals before allowing them to go live, so I'm wondering whether something didn't go right with my posting? If you're approving photos before they go live, can you tell us about how long it should take for the approvals to occur? If there's something wrong with my post would you please take a look at it and provide some advice to me if there's something I need to do?

[DinoToyForum]

DinoToyForum,

I believe I was able to directly upload my pictures on the modifying figures thread based on your advice (Thank you!). But since I've done that instead of pictures there are picture holders saying "waiting for approval".
 
When I directly attached the images I followed your advice about the arrows, and all 4 pictures appeared in my preview mode. When I saved, I briefly saw the pictures posted and thought all had gone well, but when I checked back the next day to see if anyone saw my post, I noticed the pictures were replaced with the "Waiting for approval" statements.

I didn't see any message from you indicating that posted pictures would need approvals before allowing them to go live, so I'm wondering whether something didn't go right with my posting? If you're approving photos before they go live, can you tell us about how long it should take for the approvals to occur? If there's something wrong with my post would you please take a look at it and provide some advice to me if there's something I need to do?

It worked! The reason they were not showing up was because I had to 'approve' them first, which I've just done. It's the first time I've done this, and I didn't receive a notification, so this is a learning process for me too! Anyway, the images should appear for all now, and I'll see if there's a setting to make sure I get notified of new images when they are uploaded so I can approve them in a timely manner.