New User's Guide To Taking, Uploading and Publishing Photos

[Bud Wiser]

First off, you need to know that the maximium size of image you can upload to this site is 600k (as of July 2016, time of writing). Most modern cameras, smartphones and tablets take photos at a resolution much higher than this ... 'megapixels' is a resolution term often used, and it means 'big file sizes'! To solve this, any images taken with these devices needs to be 're-sized' to fit into this file size. There are several ways to do this, and I'm going to try and cover the main ones here.

This guide is split into 4 sections: Taking Photos, Resizing Photos, Uploading Photos and Publishing Photos.

1. Taking Photos - mobile and tablet users.

Ok, now, you may wonder why I've included a 'Taking Photos' section. Well, it's because there's an easy solution for mobile and tablet users that doesn't involve any resizing! It's called 'cropping' .. and every smartphone and tablet whether iOS or Android has this function without having to download and install any more software.

The trick is to take the photo from a distance, if you can. I don't mean half a mile away, just a few yards further back than you'd normally snap from. Frame the plant/bud/grow in the centre of the viewfinder/screen with a good margin around it, at least 25% of the width of the screen, if you get my drift. This 'extra' you'll crop out later, leaving the remainder of the image (the important bit in the middle) about a quarter in physical size (file size too) of the original photo. Should be enough. You may have to experiment a bit to get the right distance from the subject matter for an optimum result. The added bonus is that the lens on a smartphone or tablet functions better at a distance rather than close-up anyway. I've taken many a blurred smartphone image trying to get up close and personal with my buds without a macro lens!

This was the photo I took:

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And this is how it looked after cropping:

I've got an iPhone 4, so this bit's for iOS users, but I'm sure Android and other systems will be similar in theory .. I don't have the facilities to road test them all!

a) Take your photo, this is saved to Camera Roll. (or Image Gallery/Photos/Wherever-your-device-stores-images, on other systems). Get as sharp a focus as possible on the section of the image you want to keep ... this is important for a decent result.

b) Go to the image you want to use and select 'Edit' in the top right hand corner.

c) At the bottom of the screen, you have some tools, select the one on the far right, looks like a square with tails. The photo should now have a white square grid over it with 'handles' in the corners (white L-shaped blocks) ... use these with your finger dragging them to the required position, you'll see the unwanted areas now being 'greyed-out'. Once you're happy with the image, select the 'Crop' button top right and then 'Save'. You now have an edited, saved version of the original, which you should be able to upload .. provided you've been able to crop away enough unwanted image to get the file size below 600k. The higher the resolution of your original image, the more cropping you'll have to do to get it under the size limit. You might have to take a few until you master it.

You're now ready to upload the image.

2. Resizing Photos - all device users.

If you own a laptop or desktop and take your photos with a 'regular' camera, you should be familiar with getting those images onto your machine ... if not, follow the manufacturers' instructions quickly or you'll soon be out of space! Similarly, if you're crap with cropping on a mobile, or you take loads of images, this bit's for you.

There are two different ways of resizing a photo ... using an online website, or using an 'app'.

One's remote, the other's local to your device. Personal preferences now apply ... take your pick.

Apps.

Personally, I use the Grand-daddy of image editing, Adobe PhotoShop, but I have it because I use it for my work. The free almost-as-good 'competitor' to this is a program called 'Gimp' .. it's used by professionals too, has loads of advanced features and if you don't find learning new software daunting, this one's for you.

Alternatively, you may just want something simple, so I'd recommend using Google to search for 'free image resizing' apps for your particular device. There are hundreds out there, most do the same thing, and I couldn't recommend any particular one as I don't work for Which? Magazine! Follow the instructions/help files .. remember you're aiming for 600k or lower per image. You'll find plenty of free ones in your App Store.

Online.

Much easier if you're not batch processing and just want to resize the odd image. I wouldn't worry too much about uploading your photos to an online website, you're about to do that anyway, and there are millions of images floating around the web, many a lot more dubious in nature than the one you're about to share with the world I'm sure .. and far too many for plod to patrol! If you're really worried, use a VPN. I use NordVPN when I'm feeling paranoid ... they're based in Panama, so they're not required by law to keep log files unlike UK and US-based providers, but that's another mountain of worms I'll leave in the can for now. Just a short footnote on this to say that this website removes all exif metadata from your image when you upload it anyway, so you don't have to worry about leaving a digital 'trail'.

Go to picresize.com and you'll be faced with this:

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Select your image, 'From Computer', and navigate to the image by choosing 'Browse'. Once selected, a progress bar will appear showing that the file is being uploaded to the site. When it's finished (a few seconds to a few minutes depending on your connection speed) you'll be confronted with this:

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Now, scroll down until you see this:

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Choose 'Make My Picture':[75% Smaller] > You'll see on the right that my picture was 3000 x 4000 pixels to start, and with this amount of reduction, is now only 750 x 1000. If your maximum value in this box is around 1000, then you're pretty much on the money. Then choose 'Special Effect': None.

Now, the last bit. 'Save as' > choose image format:[JPG]; JPG Quality:[best]; Max. Filesize:[500] Kilobytes .. (I always allow some leaway, 100k in this case).

Click 'I'm Done ..'

The image should arrive back on your device, usually in your Downloads Folder:

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If you can't find it, do a search for 'rsz_nameofphoto' ...

Now you're ready to upload the image.

3. Uploading Photos - all device users.

Obviously, you need to be logged-in before you can start uploading images to the site.

At the top of the page just under the site logo there are a series of 'tabs': Home / Forums / Members etc ...

Select 'Gallery'.

In the top right hand corner, you'll now see an 'Upload' button ... click it:

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You should now be faced with this dialogue box:

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As a new user, it's unlikely you've already created an 'album', so that's the first step, so click 'New Album'.

Name it and save it.

You're now ready to upload to your newly created album.

Note: As a non-subscriber, I think you're limited to only 10 albums in your gallery ... so use them wisely!

You can upload more than one photo at a time, and you have the option to review your images before you publish them for all to see!

Which brings me nicely onto ...

4. Publishing Photos - all device users.

Now you have a gallery album full of bud porn and you want to share it with us, you need to go to the relevant forum section, start a new topic, and publish your images in your newly scribed article:

You have 2 ways to publish your photos, depending on whether you want the images to appear as thumbnails (neater) or full size (more awesome) ...

For the thumbnail look, choose your image from 'My Media':

Your image will look like this:

For the awesome look, choose your image by having a separate browser tab open set to your gallery images, choose your image from 'My Gallery' in your profile settings:

and then select the 'My Gallery' text ... you'll get this:

Choose your image by clicking on it, and if you go to 'Options' above the image you'll get this dialogue box:

Copy and paste the text contained in the BBCode box, and paste it into your post, and it should look like so:

Bingo! Welcome to BudPornUK.com ... the #1 UK budporn website (with a few growing tips thrown-in for good measure!).

Hope I've covered most stuff, if anyone has any more tricks up their digital sleeve, please pm me and I'll do a version 2! ...... As if ...! My brain's fried!

Bud Wiser

Edit: please give me half an hour to proof-read this shit and make sure I've got all the images in the right place before you fuck up my editing functionality by saying 'nice one!'

Edited August 1, 2016 by Bud Wiser

[Bud Wiser]

Pretty much done and good to go.

Hope this helps peeps ...

Bud Fried

[Biokid]

Not sure I would be wanting to 'upload' to a website to resize my pictures - never know whether they keep a copy or not.

Bio

[Bud Wiser]

@@Biokid

Up to you, if you're concerned, just use a device-local app. But don't think for one minute you're safe anyway.

Everything you do, mobile, upload, even accessing this website is logged by your ISP.

And all mobile data can be retrieved.

The only way to be completely secure is to use a VPN, strip all your exif data from your images yourself, and build yourself a copper-proof nuclear bunker!

My guess is they're so busy with terrorism and child porn, a few harmless plant pics won't constitute a National Police Enquiry.

Just sayin' ...

Bud Wiser

[distracted]

the site strips all exif data automatically from images, it isn't seen, it isn't recorded, it is just flushed into oblivion

[Bud Wiser]

@@distracted ... yup, 'flushed' is the word!

If that didn't come across in my post clearly, I apologise.

I think @@Biokid was referring to uploading your images to a public site, where exif data isn't removed for anonymity.

My thinking is this: I work in Web World and the focus is clearly on copyright, child porn and terrorism. Money, corruption and war.

I really don't think they give a fart, or have the resources, to chase a plant-loving horticulturist with strong home-made getting-shit-faced tendancies ..!

I, too, have proclivity for paranoia ... nature of the beast.

Bud Wiser

[lofthatchfarms]

My home page doesn’t seem to have all the tabs it shows above and I can’t seem to find my gallery