Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

For the first year of operation of this site posting of photos was done via the regular Forum message boards itself using 2 exclusive message area that were setup up specifically for image posting. They can be seen listed on the main page of the Forum if you are a registered member of the site. In mid December 2006, I introduced a new Gallery section on the Forum, which is now a proper photo gallery system with preview thumbnails and separated into different photo categories based upon image genre. Each section in the Gallery now displays icons to make it easier for viewers to locate and view images, search by subject keyword, and post questions and comments onto images. After launching this new Gallery section to the Forum I disabled the posting of photos to the old image posting sections, however photos that are already posted in this section of the site will always remain online and Forum members can continue to view and add comments to the pictures in that section on an ongoing basis. Please note that there is a picture posting limitation for all Forum members which is a maximum of 2 pictures per 24 hour period. This policy is not based upon server space limitations, but the fact that if someone posts 4-5 pictures all at once, then the photos often don't get seen as much by members as they normally would if the member had posted only 1 or 2 images.

As of 6 June 2011, it is now required that all members have made a minimum of 3 message posts in the Forum itself before the system will allow a member to have photo adding capabilities in the Gallery area. Once you have made 3 posts an option to "Add Picture" will appear on your Gallery menu. Also, all new photo uploads now automatically go into a cue and must be viewed by one of the site Admins before the photo will appear online. This means once you upload a photo it will not appear immediately on the site so please don't upload the photo more than once thinking your photo upload was possibly unsuccessful. Reviews on photo uploads by the site Admins will occur as soon as possible and usually within 24 hours or less. Forum members with more than 250 message posts will have their photos appear online immediately after uploading and will no longer require Admin approval first. You are required by the system to add a few keywords to your images now when posting in order to help make your images more easily searchable by the site and Google in general. Members with less than 25 message posts will not be able to access or add photos to the Art Nude section of the Gallery. The Quick Steps For Posting Photos Are As Follows:

Step 1 - Click on the Gallery Icon on the main site navigation bar as seen here:



Step 2 - Then click on the "Add Picture" link which appears at the top of the Gallery window.



Step 3 - Then select the Category you would like to add your photo to from the drop down menu, fill in photo Title, Description, Keywords, select the photo from your computer that you would like to upload, and then click the Add Picture button to submit your photo.



After your upload is completed, your photo will appear on the Forum web site within 24 hours or less, once it has been viewed by one of the site Administrators.

[Marc Schultz]

Following are a few extra tips on posting your photos for best results and some info about photo file size limits:

TIPS:

1 - When posting photos in the Gallery, or leaving a comment for someone on a picture they posted in the Gallery, both the photos and comments left on a photo will show up immediately. No admin pre-approval is needed.

2 - The Forum's main page contains a section showing a list of links to the 10 most Recent Comments made on photo posts. This can be seen at the very bottom of the Forum’s main page underneath where it lists the 10 most recent Picture Posts.

3 - When you click on the Gallery navigation button on the main navigation bar it takes you to an area showing sections for Recent Pictures, Most Viewed and Most Commented pictures all within separate areas for your quick reference.

4 - Whenever you post an image, and someone leaves a comment on your image, you will automatically receive an e-mail notification from the system informing you that a comment was left on your photo.

5 - When you click on the Gallery button from the main menu navigation bar you will see a tab that appears in the upper right-hand corner entitled "My Gallery". If you click here it will allow you to setup your own personal gallery of photos for free.

SIZE LIMITS ON PICTURE POSTS:

The actual system size limit is 950 pixels tall by 950 pixels wide. The maximum file size is 1MB per image post, so please keep that in mind when posting photos. If you post something beyond that size it is possible the Gallery software will still accept your photo submission, but it may reduce the quality of your picture so that it meets with the photo posting size limits. When that happens, the quality of the picture is no longer as good. So my suggestion is to make sure pictures don't exceed the picture posting limits above in order to avoid leaving the fate of the quality of your photo posting in the hands of the Forum Gallery software.

There seems to be a fair amount of confusion though about ideal sizes for posting photos. Ideally, image posts should not go beyond 800 pixels wide on horizontal image if you would like people to be able to comfortably see your entire photo on the screen without having to scroll in order to see the full width of your image on the screen. This assumes that many people are still using a standard maximum screen resolution of 1024 x 768.

On vertical images it is going to be difficult to actually post a vertical image that will be entirely visible on the screen without have to do a bit of scrolling, but I would say an image height of no more than 700 pixels would be good. If you want to have a better chance of avoiding the viewer from having to scroll at all to see your entire image, then I would say post images with a maximum height of about 600-625 pixels to be sure. Please note though that as you reduce the height, the width and overall size of your image post will become smaller too. So really you don't want to reduce the height of your images much beyond 600 pixels high.

If you have any questions on this please feel free to post them here.

[Marc Schultz]

There is an interesting article here about how to sharpen photos, which will help you to make your pictures look even better when you resize them for posting them in the Gallery:

http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-gamut-almost-everything-you-wanted-know-about-sharpening-photoshop-were-afraid-ask

This useful, short, 2 minute video also teaches you how to first resize your photos in photoshop, which is what you would need to do before sharpening them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-icsO5jK0I