Picture Posting Guidelines

[fulcy]

Alright, so this has been a long time coming, but since this seems to be an image intensive site, I think it's a good idea we put some rules in place for posting images.  First and foremost - do not post images that are hosted on sites other than your own - no hotlinking to images from http://www.1999.co.jp/, www.hlj.com, other forums, etc. - post a link to the image or the article, so we're not stealing that sites bandwidth every time the page is open.  This also applies to avatars.

Now that that's out of the way, onto the images that you host on your websites, to show off your work.  If you don't have your own website to host images on, use one of the many image hosting services available - like photobucket.  The limit for the size of any image posted on Fichten Foo Forums should be no larger than 640 pixels wide - anything wider requires either a link to the image, or a thumbnail linked to the image, as shown below with the Master Grade Deep Striker.



The thumbnail is a nice, manageable size - 150 pixels wide - and is large enough to show what the picture is about, yet is small enough that it won't take long to load.  Here's the html code for the thumbnail linking - except with parenthesis.  Replace the parenthesis with brackets when putting up your own images/thumbnails.

(URL=http://www.mechaskunk.com/random/01.jpg)
(img)http://www.mechaskunk.com/random/01s.jpg(/img)(/URL)

To sum it up, 640 pixels wide or less and hosted by YOU, post them in the thread, 641 pixels wide or more or hosted NOT BY YOU, use thumbs or links to the images.  Thanks!

Another Rule (added 8/21 by FF): NO HUGE FREAKING SIG IMAGES OR AVATARS. This will be grounds for banning. Avatars should be less than 140 pixels square. Sig images must link to personal website otherwise they will be removed. Sig Images shall be no larger than 150 pixels x 50 pixels.  Also, be tasteful in your selection of these images.

No images in quotes Please delete images when quoting a prior post.

These rules subject to change without notice and based on my own whims.

[FichtenFoo]

Thanks for setting these guidelines up! This will help all of the non-bandwidth people here and even those of us WITH broadband. So everyone please make sure you follow these when posting pics.

[bhop73]

450?  That seems kinda small.   I think 550, or 600 would be fine for dial-up users (as long as they're optimized correctly) and still give enough pixels to actually see details... maybe you should give a file size limit rather than a pixel limit since technically, a poorly optimized 450pxl image can take longer to load than a correctly optimized 800pxl image, but *shrug* it's not my forum..

I can see where you guys are coming from, but, Personally, I don't like thumbnails in forums, it just feels like an extra step I could do without, but that's my opinion.

Just curious how many people (besides Phil) are on dial up anyways?

[fulcy]

It's the format of the forum that limits the width, we're not using the width to limit the file size.  Theoretically you could have a picture 450 pixels wide but 5000 pixels tall, and it would fit in the guidelines - though that may be frowned upon .  Personally, I prefer thumbnails in forums, since I can see which pictures I want to look at before having to download them, and thus not download the ones I don't want to look at, saving me time loading a page.  And, really, it's what us mods want, so that's how it's going to be.

[bhop73]

"It's the format of the forum that limits the width, we're not using the width to limit the file size."

Heh, heh.. that could easily be fixed by pushing the "newspaper clipping" on the right side over a few pixels..  :wink:

[FichtenFoo]

"It's the format of the forum that limits the width, we're not using the width to limit the file size."

Heh, heh.. that could easily be fixed by pushing the "newspaper clipping" on the right side over a few pixels..  :wink:

I'm not concerned about the board stretching a little into the newspaper... It's more an effort to keep the left-right scrolling (thus hard to read pages) to a minimum. Plus with smaller images, there's less jumping when you open a "last message" link. One of my big peeves is opening the last message link to a thread (so that it goes to the last read post) with tons of images and then watching the page jump around while it loads the images and having to wait till it's done to keep the page still to read a message. It may not do that on a mac, but on Firefox (my default and fav browser) and IE (sux0rs!!!111) it does.

The same thing goes for long links. Those occasionally make the pages scoll L-R. It's one of the things I end up modding the most here.

[bhop73]

I'm not concerned about the board stretching a little into the newspaper... It's more an effort to keep the left-right scrolling (thus hard to read pages) to a minimum. Plus with smaller images, there's less jumping when you open a "last message" link. One of my big peeves is opening the last message link to a thread (so that it goes to the last read post) with tons of images and then watching the page jump around while it loads the images and having to wait till it's done to keep the page still to read a message. It may not do that on a mac, but on Firefox (my default and fav browser) and IE (sux0rs!!!111) it does.

The same thing goes for long links. Those occasionally make the pages scoll L-R. It's one of the things I end up modding the most here.

That's cool.. that's an explanation I can understand.  I hate that jumpy thing too (yeah, macs do it too)

[fulcy]

"It's the format of the forum that limits the width, we're not using the width to limit the file size."

Heh, heh.. that could easily be fixed by pushing the "newspaper clipping" on the right side over a few pixels..  :wink:

That was the explanation given to me when drafting up the picture posting rules, so don't look at me

[Doctor Seleski]

For some of the larger images posted is there even an effort to optimize them?  I think most of them are raw files from digital cameras.

[maxwinamp]

thanks for the heads up on the image size man!! :)
will definitely keep that in mind :)

[FichtenFoo]

Another image rule was added that I forgot to mention. No huge sig (or avatar) images. These are not only annoying to look at but also make the pages load slower and chunkier. Repeat offenders will be dealt with with a banning.

[FichtenFoo]

I updated the max image width since the board has a new design. The new width is 600 max.

[fulcy]

I updated the entire first post, so that it doesn't say 600 pixels in one place, and 450 in another

[FichtenFoo]

Modified rule regarding sig images and the fact that these rules are subject to change without notice, and my various whims. :wink: Oh and I was looking at various avatar sizes and since the majority of what I noticed is around 140 (larger than my requested 100) wide I changed the rule. No avatars larger than 140 or they'll be deleted. This is also because the group banners are about that wide. :oops:

At least make sure that they are small in file size. Remember we have quite a few users (including our mod Phil) that are still on dialup.

[FichtenFoo]

Added below info regarding quotes and images.

No images in quotes Please delete images when quoting a prior post.

[fulcy]

Added Sig Image size guidelines.

[zerobxu]

The Picture Posting Guidelines have been updated. The maximum allowable width for an image is now 640 pixels (previously 600). This is in response to those of you out there who use 640 either as a default camera setting or a default resize option--and haven't figured out how to crop or do a custom resize.  


If you had previously posted an image that was 601-640 pixels wide and a Moderator changed it to a link, sorry. Don't go back and edit your own post. This isn't retroactive. And images over 640 pixels will, of course, still be changed to links.

[FichtenFoo]

Bumping this topic due to a rash of very excessively large or "pointless" sig images. Please read forum guidelines regarding sig image use. Help keep FFF clean.