help?

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Okay. So when I want to save a picture, I click "save as" and name it and move it to my computer. But when I want to upload said pic to LJ directly from the comp files, the pic comes out looking smaller and awful. What the prob here?

Comments

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

The picture's being resized in the code for your post - if you click through on the pic, you see its source, presumably the size you want it, and definitely clearer.

Here's the offending code:

"width: 314px; height: 419px;"

The image is actually 695x931. You pretty much never want to resize graphics using height and width tags - make the picture the size you want it in a bitmap editor before you upload.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Thanks. One more thing..what is a bitmap editor?

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Think Photoshop or Paint, for two extremes. Any software used to work on bitmapped graphics, which digital photos are. (As opposed, primarily, to vector graphics editors like Illustrator or Freehand.)

I'm not sure what OS you're running, but while Paint does decent resizes on photos and saves JPGs, it doesn't give you of control of compression and thus final file size. If you don't have any other options, the GIMP is basically a free, open source, rip of Photoshop, minus that app's professional print capabilities, which it doesn't sound like you need.

This is a simple issue of control of presentation: if you allow browsers or an online service like LJ to resize your photos, you're at the mercy of that software, to generally mixed results. While there are decent uses for formatting tags in HTML, displaying photos isn't one of them. Sizing the image yourself to whatever end size you're wanting and then displaying it as-is gives you total control over how it looks no matter who's looking at it, and with no re-display by intervening software.

Oh, and on top of everything else, by uploading a big photo and then relying on a secondary resize process, you're using much bigger files and more bandwidth than you need to. The person looking at your post has to load the whole big graphic file in the back, only it's crunched down smaller. The page loads faster and you generally streamline things for readers by presenting the photos exactly as you want them.

http://www.gimp.org/

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I decided to upload the pic to PhotoBucket, and it came out rather larger than I expected, but much clearer. Thanks for your help!

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Kewl. Glad to be of service. I don't like LJ's image hosting stuff much, myself, and tend to use ImageShack instead.