Here we go.
Image formats
The Internet is littered with hundreds of image formats, right from photo quality file formats (.jpeg, .jpg) to animated image formats (.gif) and 24-bit transparency supporting image formats (.png). Each has been designed for a specific purpose, and to gain the best "performance" it's recommended that you stick to a format that was intended to hold the information your going to stick into it.
In terms of "web friendly" formats, you should always avoid bitmap (.bmp) files for photos because they are uncompressed, so they can become quite large. Use a lossy format (removes insignificant information to reduce a files size) like the standard JPEG format (.jpg, .jpeg).
Image editors
There are several free (and some open source) photo manipulation applications around, and it's up to personal preference but each have their own specialised area.
Arguably the most well known image editor around is called The GIMP which is considered to be the open source competitor to Adobe Photoshop, but it does take a bit of getting used to (especially if your a Photoshop veteran like myself). It's multi-platform (Windows and most flavours of *nix) and supports a wide variety of formats. There is also a 'portable' version that can be installed onto one's flash disk and run (without installing) any where you need it.
The next would have to be Paint.NET which is an open source take on the traditional Microsoft Paint application but with much much more features. The GUI is more biased towards the 'standard' Windows look and feel (much like Photoshop) and should be pretty easy to use.
And last but not least (thanks Adam), would be IrfanView.
It's a great, free, general purpose image viewer and file converter (with plugins for additional format support) and is biased to the Windows look and feel. Very easy to use (though may get a little confusing). IrfanView is not your "roots image editor" (like The GIMP and Paint.NET), as it can apply some effects but not much more.
Tools like Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition are more for image collection and organisation, rather than taking on a sole editing role; so they may or may not have the facilities to change or save into another image format.
Getting images onto the Internet
Despite what you might think, you simply can't copy and paste an image into the stock phpBB forum application, there simply aren't any facilities to do so.
In order for people to "see" your images you wish to post on a forum, you must stick them on some sort of publicly accessible web server; and the easiest way to "get" a web server is to use a dedicated image hosting service like Photobucket.
Photobucket (in a nutshell) will host your images for free, and won't hot-link back to itself (unless it can't find an image you link elsewhere).
All you do is sign up for an account, sign in and start uploading images from your computer by telling your web browser where to get the files from. Once uploaded, each image will be displayed in a main window, and each image will encapsulate several text boxes which contain various link formats.
In order to link your image to the forums: You need to copy and paste the text in the box labelled IMG Code. HTML will NOT work!
If you do not have access to IMG Code, copy the URL (address) of the image that your image hosting service gives you, then follow the instructions below.
Linking images
To post images on these forums (or any phpBB based forum) you need to use the 'image tags' to be able to display an image on here.
These image tags consist of the following:
Code: Select all
[img]<image link>[/img]
Examples
- To create an image link:
This creates:
Code: Select all
[img]http://airraidsirens.com/forums/images/avatars/46207033947a5ac5087895.gif[/img]
- To create a direct link:
This creates:
Code: Select all
[url=http://airraidsirens.com/forums/images/avatars/46207033947a5ac5087895.gif][u]Avatar[/u][/url]
Avatar
Note that the usage of the "underline" BBCode tags is optional, but generally a good idea to use them as it helps differentiate between text and hyperlinks; especially on templates where it can be difficult to tell between the two. The "URL" BBCode tags can be used with conventional links as well as links to images.
These aren't rules as such, but you mightn't be very popular if you break most of these.
- Be mindful of file size
Not everyone has your blisteringly fast uber-l33t internet connection and they might have a limit to how much they can download (or it costs them (like me )), so please make sure you can bring the file size down as much as possible; don't go overboard (and completely destroy the image) but just keep it in mind. - Be mindful of image size.
There is a difference, trust me. I'm an Australian moderator.
There are some people that have their computers set on a lower resolution (for whatever reason) and because of this, the forum's template adjusts accordingly to nicely fit all of the text onto their screens. Overly huge images break this, and it forces people to read one-bloody-big-long-line-of-text. Link it directly if for some reason you can't resize it. Look at the example above to see how it's done. - Quoting
When you quote a previous post, please also try not to quote all the image files associated with the previous post. It just clutters things up and can contribute to one's download quota. In short: edit the quote and cut the images out.
It is acceptable to quote one image, however, but only if your reply is referencing information in that quoted image. Comments about a certain image (for example: "Cool picture!") by themselves are usually frowned upon. - Formatting
Do not insert an "image link" on the same line as some text, or it will throw the forum formatting off. Most people (including myself) find this extremely irritating. Don't do it!
- 320x240
Best for thumbnails. - 640x480
Best for displaying in-line on the forum. - 800x600
- 1024x768
Maximum recommended for displaying in-line.
Any resolution above this should be hyperlinked, not image linked.
Hope that helps.