Jeff (the Fast guy) notes that the (free, naturally) Windows Paintbrush or Paint programs allow you to shrink a photo you intend to publish on the web. It's built in to many versions of Windows under the Accessories group. Select the whole picture (CTL A), then CTL W to shrink. There will be a pop-up that allows you to specific the percentage of shrinkage. Unless you want the photo to look misshapen, make sure you select the same number for horizontal & vertical shrinkage. The program will not tell you the final file size. You will have to check that in "properties" afterward. If you are dealing with reducing same-sized photos, you will quickly know what the end result will be.

FOR EMAILING:You can use Windows (XP & other versions) to shrink pix before emailing them.

It works this way: after you select the photos you wish to email, right-click on them and a pop-up box will...pop-up, of course...and let you select the amount of shrinking. The smallest size is fine for monitor display, but you need to keep the file sizes larger if the recipient is going to print anything larger than 3 x 5 or 4 x 6. The larger files will take longer to s end and be aware that some email programs don't like to either send or receive really big files.

Another option: you can download from Microsoft a "toys" utility that will allow you to shrink photos.

Joe Howard (Marinettejoe) successfully uses Shrink Pic freeware (attn: Jeff) from onthegosoft.com. I haven't used it to post pix here. It comes with a demo that shows it is marvelously simple and automatic to drag and shrink a photo into your email. The original photo is untouched, the copy to be sent is what gets downsized.

This stuff is old hat for those who have programs such as Photoshop to process their photos. I do not suggest for a second that anyone not computer savvy plunk down 50-80 bucks for Photoshop just to downsize photos because it comes with a pretty stiff learning curve. If, however, you enjoy photography and want to learn to improve your pix, buy it and take a course in using it.

Finally, if you Google or Yahoo a little bit you will find freebie image programs that are pretty simple to use (Picassa, Irganview) and if you scratch around a bit, some of your computers come with basic edit programs built-in (which is where this note started, per Jeff).

WHen you post, have you tried clicking on the "attach" button in the upper right of the box. That will send you to navigate to where the file is located which on this board must be a web site. We backgrounded this in another post (In the FORUM folder). That does not mean you have to set up a web site, there are, instead, places where you can post your pix for free such as Photobucket or Flickr. One the picture is posted, it will have its very own address on the World Wide Web and that address is what gets posted here. As if by magic, the picture appears here just as if it was physically pasted in place. But this web site doesn't actually store the photo, just a link to it. Cool stuff. If you are not careful, all of your photos will look like Jeff racing in his dink boat or someone else's messy bilge.

That said, smaller files are much easier to handle.

What I'm not sure about it how we post documents. The picture sites handle only jpg files, not doc or excel, etc., files.
best wishes

Clark & All: 'twas I that added the topdown view of my air conditioner to your post. I attempted to attach it to your post as an experiment to see what the ATTACH button would do. It was easy to attach a jpg properly sized as you see. What happened is that the formatting of your text got messed up and then I was unable to delete the photo. Joe: what is the process??

I suspect, but don't have time at the moment to experiment, that one could copy the URL (web address) of the photo to be posted and then on the posting page click on the image or link buttons (ALL: they are in the upper left among the symbols for BOLD/ITALIC etc - they are # 6 and 7 from the left.

Also..since the formatting on Clark's post got messed up by my inserting the photo into it, does that mean that all subsequent posts in the threat will be messed up? By messed up I mean the text goes way beyond the right hand edge of the page and you must use the lower scroll bar to move across to read everything. Heavens to Murgetroid!
joel

Pretty sure it took about an hour to upload my 1000+ pics through Picasa. That's with the resizing time. I was very impressed.

-J

Hey Sorrydog! How's it going? Got that big diesel installed yet?

Your question got me wondering about this again. I tried to add a photo to the signature area of my profile a while back but couldn't figure it out. This morning I finally got it. After reading some of the other comments on this thread, it finally dawned on me that the photo has to be on the web. Can't paste in a picture or use a link to your PC files. So, if you have a photo on the web that is sized appropriately, you can add it to your signature by pressing the Image button and pasting the web link between the bracketed 'image', '/image' thingies.

John B.

ok here goes: GETTING A REDUCED SIZE PIC POSTED ON THE MARINETTE FORUM. USING WINDOWS XP

1. bring up paint: cl start, programs, accessories, cl on paint. this brings up the paint window. I then clicked on the double boxes in the upper right hand corner of your screen next to the red x, This reduces the paint window on the screen leaving room for your pic file.
2. pull up my pics and select the file and pic I want to send to the marinette post. put the curser on the pic and drag it over to the paint window. ctrl w brings up a resize window showing 100% both up and down and sideways. I changed both percents to 50%. cl on file, cl on save as, select a name for the pic, cl save. this jumps the pic back to the pic file with the new name on it.
3. pull up the marinette post you want to do. cl reply or new topic as you wish. type your message, cl post, cl attach, cl browse
this brings up your pic file, highlight the pic you renamed, cl open, this takes you back to the marinette post, hit upload, it will show you the pic file you have uploaded. hit back, and you should now have your post with the pic.

you can do miltiple pics by hitting attach and go through part of the proceedure again. Oh and by the way, even after you post the new message and pics on the thread, If you need to change something in your text, just click edit and change away. the 50% reduction is not exclusive, you may want to experiment on percentages.