Trouble inserting image in my post

[daniel coyle]

I am trying to insert an important image into one of my posts. Its a jpg and each time I try to upload it I get the following message

Sawmill Creek says: upload of file failed

I have uploaded other images in the past and I tried, successfully, to insert another image into the same post. Any ideas? I took the image with my phone and then sent it to myself in an email attachment, downloaded it to my PC and then tried to upload it to the post.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Is it within the allowed size? Having images too large is the most common reason for image upload failure.

[daniel coyle]

2.35 MB. Is that too big? Is there a way to reduce the size of the image so I can make it work?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

When you go to upload, there is a table just below that tells what the image MAXIMUM size that is allowed. Slightly over that size (a few kbytes) the uploader will resize it but too large, it will just fail the upload. For jpg, filles IIRC, it's 219.7 kb maximum.

There are few free image resizers out there. I use Photoshop Essentials which isn't free.

Do Google search on image resizing software.

[Frederick Skelly]

2.35 MB. Is that too big? Is there a way to reduce the size of the image so I can make it work?

You could retake the picture at a lower res, too. I frequently do that if it's something I can easily re-shoot.

[daniel coyle]

okay. Thanks Ken.

[Larry Frank]

You did not say if you are using Windows or Apple or a phone. Knowing this would help getting advice.

I take pictures with my phone and email them to my PC. I can manipulate them there and then decide what to save long term. In Windows there is an option called Resized which lets you reduce the size very easily.

[daniel coyle]

I took the pictures with an Android phone and then emailed them to my Windows PC. I did not know about resizing. Where do I find that option on Windows? And, thanks a lot!

[John Hannon]

You can use paint which is included with Windows to resize photos.


Open the file in Paint.

Select Resize at the top of the menu and then click on the Pixels button. Make sure Maintain aspect ratio box is checked.

Step3.JPG

Adjust the value of Vertical or horizontal value that appears in the boxes shown (whichever is larger) to about 800.

step4.JPG



Step5.JPG



Click OK and it will show the photo at its new size. 270K in the example.
Use "SAVE AS" and use a different filename so your original photo does not get resized.

[Larry Frank]

With Windows Resizer, you do not have to go into Paint and can do it from a folder view by right clicking on a file name and choosing the Resizer.

Google Windows Resizer and you can find out how to download it.

[Barry McFadden]

I regularly upload photo's to the forum that are anywhere from 1.6 meg to 8 meg and it always resizes them to under the 219k limit with no input required from me....

[daniel coyle]

Thanks! I used the Windows Paint resize app and it worked well. Barry, I guess you are just lucky! Wish I had the same thing going for me!

[John K Jordan]

I took the pictures with an Android phone and then emailed them to my Windows PC. I did not know about resizing. Where do I find that option on Windows? And, thanks a lot!

Daniel,

There are two things that control the file size. One, as mentioned, is resizing to change the number of pixels in the image (the resolution). For example, you might resize a 2240x1680 photo to 640x480 pixels. When you save the picture the file size will be smaller.

The other, more important parameter for forum posting, is the image compression, sometimes called JPG compresson with common JPG files or Image Quality. By changing the compression/quality you can keep the picture larger while making the file smaller!

Some software programs will let you pick the amount of compression/Quality you want when you save the image. A higher compression = lower quality = smaller file size. Adjusting the compression makes it easy to make a files small enough to post without having to resize the picture to where it is too small to see the details easily. I always use Photoshop for image work (expensive) but there are many good programs and some are free.

As an example, I resized a photo to 1000x750 pixels, plenty large for a forum. I looked at the file sizes from different compression values that Photoshop offered in the image save dialog. Photoshop calls these numbers "Quality", from 0 to 12 where 12 is the best quality.

Quality 12: over 900K
Quality 10: 497K
Quality 8: 309K
Quality 5: 204K
Quality 2: 114K
Quality 1: 92K

I saved these two images at Quality 5 and Quality 1.
A photo purist would choke at using such severe compression since the image quality suffers. But for forum use it really doesn't matter that much. It is hard to see the difference in these two photos:

204K
P9054280_temp1.jpg

92K
P9054280_temp1.jpg

Note that when compressing the file size depends on the picture itself, how "busy" it is, now much fine detail is in the photo. Without increasing the compression level (reducing the quality number), you might have to continue to resize some photos to a very small size to get them to upload!

BTW, consider it fortunate this forum allows even this size of upload. Another forum I frequent has an upload limit of 100K. Fortunately Photoshop has an easy way to specify the maximum file size which does whatever compression it takes to get the file size small enough.

JKJ

[John Hannon]

I am glad it worked Daniel.