Topic: Posting Pictures

[Brian Skalinder]

General Guidelines

In order to maintain a manageable database size, we prefer TSers upload pics directly to TS only if they relate specifically to users and are instructive in some way.  Otherwise, we ask TSers to upload pictures outside of TS -- even if they're of general interest to TSers -- and link to them in the post.

A few examples:

• close-up shots of a mic configuration that may help others understand how to set up their mics properly, understand shock mount profile, or get a sense for windscreen size and fitting:  Attach to your post / Upload to TS.
• photo of a mic stand and mics in a crowd, simply showing "yes, there was a mic stand at this show!", while related to taping, isn't particularly helpful, so:  best to upload outside of TS and link.
• images of bands/musicians, crowds, fans, generic venue shots, etc.:  upload outside of TS and link.

Posting per the above guidelines will minimize impact on TS bandwitdh, prevent database maintenance / recovery from slowing down further, and defer until a later date the inevitability of purging ALL uploaded pictures in TS because the database size has become unwieldy, etc.

Linking to pics outside of TS.com

Attaching images to your post uploads the image to TS.com.  All future viewings of that post use TS.com bandwidth to download the image TS.com members.

Pics obviously take up a lot of bandwidth.  Bandwidth obviously costs money. 

One easy way to reduce the bandwidth load here at TS.com is to host image files off-site and link to them in your posts.  In this way, TS.com doesn't use its own bandwidth to download the images to TS.com members - the off-site host uses its bandwidth.

To link to off-site images:

[1]  If you can, shrink your photo to a reasonable size (72dpi, 800x600).  I use freeware IrfanView to accomplish this task .  Open the image and from the main menu select:  Image | Resize/Resample.

[2]  Post your photo to a website or hosting service that allows hotlinking (e.g. Photobucket does, Yahoo/Geocities does not).

[3]  Press the Insert Image button to add the image tags to your post.

[4]  Type or paste the URL to your off-site photos between the image tags.

[5]  Repeat [1] - [4] for each image you want to display in your post.

Uploading pics to TS.com

In the Attach field below the message field, simply use the Browse button to find the image file on your local machine.  Then...post away - but make sure to put some text, any text at all, in the Message: field.  Note: if you preview the post, you may have to re-attach the image.  Pics must be < 512 KB.  Sometimes, though, we clear out pictures en masse to save HD space, so if you want to ensure the pics appear long term and you maintain control of the pics, best bet is to host off-site and link here.  If larger or you just want to host the pics off-site, see below.