Posting photos on the forum is quite easy, but to make life a bit easier for those without fast internet, we have limited the size of photos that can be posted.

Photos should preferably not exceed 800 pixels in the longest dimension (i.e. they need to be smaller than 800 X 800 pixels), but photographs larger than 2048 X2048 cannot be uploaded.
Photos need to be smaller than 250kB.

So, for those that are battling with resizing and editing photos. Here's a quickstart guide to resizing photos using Picasa and MS Paint. There are many other ways to do this, but I'm only going to describe the following 2 methods:

In MS Paint (the easiest to just resize):

1) Open the photo you want to resize
2) Click on Picture -> Resize
3) On the right, click on "predefined width x height"
4) Select Web Large (640 X 480)
5) Click File -> Save as and save the photo under a different file name!
6) When you want to post the photo, you simply go to the directory where it is situated, select the resized photo and click ok.

For Picasa (very good for basic editing like cropping, etc. and resizing)

1) Go to http://picasa.google.com/
2) Download and install the program according to the instructions. Picasa is free so it won't cost you a cent...
3) In the top left corner there is a button called Import. Click on that.
4) Then click on Select device -> Folder. Find the photo(s) you want to post on your computer, and then click to open them. Next click either on import all, or on import selected. When prompted for a folder name, type one in, and click ok. This should then open the main library page.
5) From here you can edit your photos to your hearts content... but I'm not going to describe how to do that. Playing around is by far the best way to learn these things!
6) When you have finished tampering with the photo, you can click on File -> Export picture to folder
7) For web purposes, you should make the photo no larger than 800 pixels (for landscape photos), and set the quality to normal. This resizes a big photo to a small one, and compresses it slightly to make it smaller. Next, type in a folder name (something like Lepsoc website photos), and click ok.
8) When you want to post the photo, you simply go to the directory that you created (eg. C:\Documents and Settings\Andre\My Documents\My Pictures\Picasa Exports\Website), select the resized photo and click ok.

(I don't take any responsiblity for mistakes that destroy or damage the original photographs! )

If I am a bit PC challenged I may upload a large image and it would display like this:

Hi All

Here are a few more hints on how to paste images into your posts.

The simplest way to do this is via the 'Select Image file to attach' button at the bottom of the page. Click Browse to bring up a file chooser where you can pick a file on your computer. Then put the cursor where you want the image to be pasted into your post, click the ([img]) button to the right, and keep on typing your post. When you've finished your post click Submit. This will upload the image (it has to be smaller than the 400kb maximum size explained by Andre) and post the thread to the site.

This is fine for single images but if you want to post multiple images you have to click Submit every time you choose an image, then Edit the posting. You can then put another image in. If you choose multiple different images and then click Submit, only the last image chosen will be uploaded, multiple times. Frustrating but avoidable.

If you have a photo gallery on another site like Flickr or Photocamel, you can use the Image Link button at the top right of the page, it looks like this:

You then need to open another tab in your browser and go to the picture in your gallery. Pick up its URL, and paste into the box that comes up when you click Image Link:

When you click 'Insert' the image file URL is pasted into the post, and it will look like this:

When you click 'Submit' the image comes up like this (well I had to brag didn't I?)

If your gallery allows you to copy the Linked Image URL direct like Photocamel does, you can paste it direct into the post without using Image Link.

Another tip - use Preview a lot until you are happy.

We will be looking at buying JoomGallery in the new year, so members can post direct to our site. But for the time being, you can see how easy it is to do anyway!

Cheers

Steve Woodhall