HowdA all.

Just thought I would add a quick bit on doing images for the site.

Uploading images

First off... if you wish to upload images (for Premium Geeks only), then you really want them to ideally be jpeg's. Bitmap images (files that end in bmp) are not compressed so an image that is a bitmap is about 10 times larger (in file size) than if the file is saved as a jpeg.

Avatars

You can only use Giffs and Jpegs for avatars.

Sizing

Currently, your avatars need to be less than 70 pixels by 70 pixels. Uploaded images have to be less than 100K in size (if I remember right) and Avatars must be smaller than 20k . This means that you may need to crop, or resize the image to get it to upload.
There are a couple of very easy ways to do this.

Here is one way of resizing images on the cheap. You don't get a great deal of control... but it still works spiffy.
Remember that if you use MS Paint, to check that the image is saved as a jpg. You can do this by clicking File then "Save as" and make sure the 'File type' box says jpg.

If you want a little more control without the whistles, bells and costs of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro... you can try this shareware program out... its free for 42 days, then it requires you to pay something like £10 for it. If you are still using it after 42 days... then you got your moneys worth.

Anyway, hope this helps.

Hey Sam, I'll be happy to help out here. If anyone needs images resized, just gimme a shout.

Here is another free program that will help when resizing images:

http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

You can resize your images but it will make copies so that the originals are kept intact too.

Just done that its fab thanks, but now i can't figure out how to get back on the uploads bit of the site. I've done it once and can't for the life of me do it again!!!

Nina xxx

Sam you have to explain this in laymans terms to me as I have no idea if my pics are ok - can anyone check my stuff to find out and let me know if I need to make any changes?

Hi Judy..... in 'laymans terms', you need to understand the basic principles of resizing a picture so that it is acceptable in here.

FORMAT:
The picture needs to be in the correct format, this simply means that when you look at your picture on your own PC, the file extender (the 3 letters after the filename) should ideally be jpg or gif. So then, if you've taken a pic of your new glitter nails and saved it on your pc, you should be looking at a filename of glitter.jpg Photographs should always be saved in the jpg format as this preserves the many different colour shades in a photograph. If your picture has been saved in the bitmap (bmp) format, you wont be able to use it in Geek as its going to be huge in filesize.

SIZE:
Following on from above, you also need to to know the basics about picture sizes. It's no big mystery, the only think you need to remember is that photos taken with a digital camera by and large are way way way too big to be used on the internet. They have to be re-sized so that they'll display on a webpage reasonably quickly. A good filesize to aim for in Geek is anything between 30 kilobytes upto 50 kilobytes for a full size picture. You've got to remember that there are still people using dial-up modems to access these pages so it's important to keep the filesize small.

For a more detailed explanation, please see http://www.thenaildirectory.com/resizing-a-picture.html If you have any probs understanding what you find there, let me know and I'll try and clarify.

just wanted to say i was told about a really great pic resizer program,its called picasa-its totally free and its supported by google.Its so easy to use and then all u non premium geeks can put more pics in your gallery coz it resizes them from between 10kb-30kbs so they upload instantly and u can fit loads more pics in the size ur allocated for your gallery.
HTH
Just type picasa2 into google and the link should come up.