Not sure where to put this question -
trying to post photos to Members Gallery. Have the directions given by dragons for posting the albums and also for using Picasa. When I go to Picasa and click "Export to Folder", to readjust the size, it give me a slide bar but in pixels. I know the picture can't be more than 1 MB, how do I figure this if I'm dealing with pixels?
Sorry if this is a stupid question.

Not a stupid question luvtotravel - only answers can be stupid!


The pixel bit just reduces the viewing size of your picture (640 pixels is ideal for the BB) -it just fits on the screen with no panning required.
This will substantially reduce the 'Megabyte' requirement. However, what really reduces the file size is the jpeg compression this is set by the image quality box under the pixel box - just set it to automatic and all should be well!

What was once a multi Megabyte picture, will soon be a much less than a megabyte picture, of very acceptable quality.

To see the difference 'right click' your original picture file and select properties then do the same with the exported file. There will be an enormous difference, and the quality is perfectly adequate, still, for posting on a the board.

Thanks SteveH, I will try that hopefully later today.
I just got my first digital camera for Christmas last year and this was my first tour with it. Had uploaded Picasa2 but still haven't quite figured out how to use it. Mostly I use a program that came with the camera called "Picture Project" but I was told it's good to have pictures in two locations so I chose Picasa. So far they just sit there.
I may be back for more advice.

Luv2Travel,

A piece of advice. Online picture storage sites like Flickr and Picasaweb will store your pictures but there is something you need to know if your intention is "backup".

These sites will only store the resized image and not the actual one. You may want to look at their premium services if your intention is to retrieve the exact file you uploaded.

Xponent or others, what is the best and most secure way of storing digital photo's.

Thanks exponent.
The only photos I resized were the pictures I wanted to post to the bulletin board. So you are saying that the other pictures would be regular size and the resized ones wouldn't?
My camera came with an upload program called "Picture Project" which stores the photos on my harddrive. Then I subscribed to Picasa but really don't want to pay a fee. When I upload to Picture Project they automatically go to Picasa including ones that I have deleted from Picture Project. Now recently I have started ordering prints from a local store which uses another program called "Photo Finale" so the pictures are several places, none of which are decently organized or labeled as I am having too much trouble trying to figure out how to do things.

I would also like the answer to Missie's question.

quote:

Originally posted by Missie:
Xponent or others, what is the best and most secure way of storing digital photo's.

Backup, backup, backup.

Have your photographs in multiple locations, that is key to storing digital pictures. I am a person who takes thousands of pics. On my recent 22 day tour, I took over 4700.

I cannot say what method is best, because a) there isn't one; and b) it depends on how much time you have to dedicate towards it.

Methods I use:

Computer: First in the line of storage. Best to store it on a second hard drive or at least another partition on your hard drive. This is to avoid losing/moving the files should you need to format/rebuild your machine.

External HDD: I have a couple of HDDs (both 3.5 and 2.5 inch) that I use with enclosures. This method is relatively secure. Make sure you use at least 1 disk that you don't fiddle too much with on a periodic basis. This backup is usually offline (you will not have ready access to the stored pics at all times).

CD/DVD backup: Works most of the time. Susceptible to scratches and permanent loss. I use this as the last option. This means that you will only touch this CD/DVD to retrieve pics if and only if all other methods (below) have been unsuccessful. Key to remember is that since in CD/DVD media, a scratch can mean potential loss of a few pics to the whole disc, it is imperative that you keep the media in a secure location and leave its use only in dire cases.

Online photo sites: Nowadays there is a wide choice of such sites. I use Flickr since it offers unlimited storage. For the free account, there is a "daily upload limit" of 100 MB/day. To most, this is good enough but for a guy like me, its not. Hence I use the paid version of Flickr, which allows unlimited uploads per day. This method should NOT be used as the primary means for backing up. Also as indicated in an earlier post, many of these sites will save only resized images.

Misc: Your other option is to use Memory sticks and USB pen drives. Usually it is as good as HDD backup, but beware of corruption since the pen drives have a higher rate of failure.

The underlying principles are thus:

a) Do not rely on a single medium for backup. 2 is better than 1 and 1 is DEFINITELY better than none.

b) Avoid very large capacity mediums. I have a couple of old 40GB HDDs that I use. My idea is that should a drive fail, it only takes 40GB of my stuff along with it.

Xponent ~ Thank you for all that information, I have three external backups, but one of them is to an 80GB external hard drive. I will look into Flickr

I would love to see your photo's when you get them on Flickr.

Thank you.