Putting pics online, and avatars.

[Troy T. Moore]

OK, this will sound very basic to some of you.... I have no idea how to put pics on line or to make an avatar for my posts here. My wife bought a digital camera (Sony Cybershot 5.1) so I am ready to enter the 21st century. Any pointers will be greatly appreciated. I signed up for a BS account and will try to put some stuff up later today, progress on my current castle and possibly a windmill (post mill) I made after seeing Anthony's. My current castle project is a bit of a mess, but it will be several weeks before I will be done (BL order been in the mail over a week from the US, abnormal) *sigh* Anyways, I'm eager to share because I have been inspired by so much I have seen here. Thank you.

[TwoTonic Knight]

OK, this will sound very basic to some of you.... I have no idea how to put pics on line or to make an avatar for my posts here. My wife bought a digital camera (Sony Cybershot 5.1) so I am ready to enter the 21st century. Any pointers will be greatly appreciated. I signed up for a BS account and will try to put some stuff up later today, progress on my current castle and possibly a windmill (post mill) I made after seeing Anthony's. My current castle project is a bit of a mess, but it will be several weeks before I will be done (BL order been in the mail over a week from the US, abnormal) *sigh* Anyways, I'm eager to share because I have been inspired by so much I have seen here. Thank you.

Brickshelf is fairly easy - just make sure your file names meet their conventions (no spaces or funky characters, I believe). 'Shelf allows you to browse your computer, select the file name, and it uploads automatically. Setting up folders for your brickshelf account is also easily - you just want to do it before you upload your pics, because you really can't move pics from folder to folder without deleting and re-uploading.

What you really need is a photo-editor/digital darkroom. Photoshop is the most widely used. I actually use Photoshop Elements rather than the full program - it was cheaper and had all the features I needed.

Trying to learn all the features of Photoshop all at once can be a bit intimidating, but the parts you really need to know to get going aren't that many. I won't list them here because others may suggest other programs and you may make a different choice - it depends on how demanding a photographer you are. Some things that will be universal: you will probably not want to upload the full five megapixel version of the picture. It will be huge, take a long time to download for viewers and upload for you, and not display fully on anyone's monitor without slider bars for scrolling. 800x600 is probably fine. I usually just use 400x300 to meet C-C standards for displaying an actual pic without a link (the full four megapixels of my camera only come into play when I do my usual 8.5x11 full-bleed six-color printouts, though it means I have a lot of discretion in cropping and still can maintain clarity).

Once you actually start doing this, just post specific questions and someone will not doubt give you a hand. Good luck and let's see some pics!

[Duke_Dave]

I have a similar question if you dont mind me asking this on your post Troy I have photos on my computer but I can not put them in my posts without using Brickself. Can anybody help


Dave

[TwoTonic Knight]

I have a similar question if you dont mind me asking this on your post Troy I have photos on my computer but I can not put them in my posts without using Brickself. Can anybody help


Dave

I can answer your question, but I can't actually help you to do what you want.

The pictures have to be stored someplace that the C-C server can access continuously, or be stored on the actual server. The second option is not an option since C-C doesn't provide that service for a variety of reasons which the Admins will explain more accurately than me.

Which means you have to store the images on your own web space/server or store them on a third party server such as Brickshelf.

So to answer your question: no. Can't help. Primarily because you can't store the images directly on C-C as it stands.

[Jojo]

Hello!

I have photos on my computer but I can not put them in my posts without using Brickself. Can anybody help :?:

Every picture/data-file that is to be linked to any place in the World Wide Web has also to be stored somewhere in the World Wide Web. It's not possible to link anything from your own hard drive (in your computer at home), because as soon as you shut down your computer there would not be any connection between the place where the pic/data-file is supposed to show up and the place where this pic/data-file is stored (your computer in this case).

Furthermore most (if not all) places where you possibly would like to see any pics or data-files (like this forum) are not even able to access your own hard drive in your computer at home which very fact makes linking to folders and files on your own hard drive simply impossible.

Well, BrickShelf is able to access your hard drive, but only for "downloading" pics from your hard drive to its own "hard drive" in the World Wide Web. So now those pics can be linked to any place in the World Wide Web.

If you have some own storage space in the World Wide Web (your own homepage or something like that) you can also upload pics to this storage space by using an FTP-server. In this case you need to put in a pass word (that you will get when applying for your webspace) to allow this FTP-server programm to access your hard drive. When you have uploaded pics to your webspace you are also able to link those to this forum, it serves the same purpose as BrickShelf then.


Bye
Jojo