ALL READ -Photo Gallery Update-11/29/2007

[computerworks]

Photo Gallery Update

If you have been one of the members who has been struggling with a full Photo Gallery.... relief is here!

Believe me, we, the staff, have been discussing and analyzing the problem, and trying to come up with an equitable solution...
..one that will keep the site running smoothly and allow our members to use the ClubCobra Gallery to enhance their posts and just have more fun here.

Most of the recent issues have resulted from our re-activating the Quota System, limiting Members to 5 meg of space and Contributing Members to 20 meg of space.

Honestly, we had "the gates down" for a while and many have loaded up their Gallery with loads of v-e-r-y large images.
Understand that the raw images from today's big-megapixel cameras are great for photo printing or magazine publishing...but are grossly overkill for use on the web.
2, 3 and 4 meg images are just a waste of space for our use. The system will work with a little help from us in the back room...and a little cooperation from our members.

So...we have reviewed our capabilities and made some significant changes to the Gallery specs.

First, we have significantly increased the member's quota.

Now, registered members have 20 meg of Gallery storage, and Contributing members have 100 meg of space.

We have rechecked the Gallery configuration and now you should see an accurate "gas gauge" of what you have available and what you have used so far, when you go to the Upload Photo page.

Next, we have put in place some image size constraints.

After a lot of discussion, we decided that 300k as an image file size and 1300 x 1300 as a pixel size is more than sufficient for our use.
Typically 1280 x 1024 is a gloriously large and quality image for the web.

We have fixed the issue that was there in the past; now, if you try and upload an image larger than 300k, it will fail with an Error Message... telling you that the file size is too big.

Further, we have put in the software an automatic resizing program...if you upload a file (of course, less than 300k) that is larger than the maximum acceptable pixel size, the Gallery will automatically downsize the picture to something just below the 1300 x 1300 limit, while maintaining the correct aspect ratio. (That means no linear distortion when the image is shrunk)

Hopefully, these changes will help most members manage their pictures more easily.

If you still at the max with your present Gallery files, you might want to review your Gallery and exchange any of your old "gigantic" files for a similar picture of a smaller file or pixel size.

As I told someone recently who had a Gallery issue with the 5 meg:

Your two 2.5 megabyte pictures have used up your whole quota.... if you used pictures that were 800x600 and 50k in size, you could have 100 pictures instead of 2!

If you are not familiar with the tools on your PC for photo editing and resizing, try the Powertoys Image Resizing Tool that is presented in the sticky thread in All Cobra Talk.

Tips on Picture Uploads and Image Sizes

Please contact us if you have any specific issues and we will try and work them out.

Thanks to Brent for getting these changes in place on the overnight

Have fun

Ron
ClubCobra Moderator

[fasterpatrick]

Okay, I got that now when does the new day start. So I can reload my now smaller photos and not run into "you have reached your ten images a day limit."

[hey,littlecobra]

"795.6mb"

Contributing members have 100 meg of space.

this doesn't look too good, does it.
I have bought two digital cameras in <10 days. I have learned how to make images smaller, when shooting. I am a repentful, very sad contributing member. And.... i guess i am done uploading pics.
At some point, maybe the middle of the night on Christmas Day, i'll figure out where to now 'park' my photos... shutterfly, photobucket, flickr.... hmmm

thanks for the improvements, I am SURE they are very generous to virtually all CC members.

great to have the resizing tool built in. Thank you!
I don't guess there is a magic wand that will swoop over my gallery and fix everything, is there???

kristen

[Madmiles442]

Recently, there was an update with the Gallery Software. Does this limitation have to do with that? If so, can we downgrade back to the old software?
If it's server space, can we take up a special collection for memory space?
I guess I don't understand what the problem is. If it's a waste of space, who cares? Waste the space. What harm is it doing?
I just spent two hours deleting a ton of images from my Gallery. Many had positive comments, and I guess others enjoyed, but since I'm banging up against the limit, I had to do something.
I still have some in there, and some are large. But folks have told me they're using them for their Wallpaper or for a Calendar. That's cool, have at them.
For me, posting photos is part of sharing your life and Cobra experiences with others. There was a thread about Post Your Fall Colors. I couldn't participate because I was up against the size limit. It stinks!
Our Moderators work hard in their spare time to keep this awesome communication tool up and running for us and I am very grateful.
It's just that we have lost some of the ease of use and functionality with the site. And I, for one, don't know why.

[ZOERA-SC7XX]

Thanks Ron, I'll try to conform to the gallery limits in the future. While I'm still having a little trouble getting them shrunk, I will be working on getting it done.

[Ron61]

Miles,

The harm that it is doing is this, first this is not a photo hosting site, the gallery is just there for members enjoyment and to post downsized pictures. As Bill so patiently explained with his small car, 18 wheeler explanation, you should be able to read that and at least kind of understand what goes on. If you want to put unlimited pictures with the huge sizes the newer cameras take, it slows the site down so much that many membes get tired of trying to log in and just stop. Next, the old software did have limits and all the clubs that I belong to do, even the ones which charge dues. Brent was just slow in getting the limits set with the new software and as a result people started loading everything they had and not downsizing them at all. You can leave what you have in and go to Fotki, or one of the other hosting sites and start another gallery. You can use their free part or pay and have unlimited space. See Yetmins gallery in his signature line. Hope this helps.

Edit: A Possible Work Around Picture Storage Post # 6

Ron



Ron

[JCoop]

Thanks to CC for such a generous upload gallery quota to begin with; or just having a gallery period!
And Ron, thanks for the heads up. As one in the Graphics business, I should have known better; so I've batched my large files and reloaded them. Actually, a good opportunity to do some editing and weeding out of irrelevant stuff.

Cheers!

[Madmiles442]

Thanks Ron, I understand better now. I do like what Yetiman did with that Gallery on Fotki.
Thanks again.

[Yetiman]

Thanks
I need to find time to shuffle more pics into the folders, though it's easy to do on Fotki as I already have them elsewhere. Finding them can be the had part though as I have over 10 gigs (!!!) of pictures on there, mostly in hidden folders.

[Double Venom]

Computerworks,
I just switched with prejudice to "Vista". Powertoys windos picture resizer will not work, tried loading all my Vista updates and nothing seemed to work. Got a solution? Man, thaat resizer was great!
DV

[computerworks]

Unfortunately, there are no PowerToys for Vista yet.

A few third-parties have written alternatives to the Image Resizer program in XP, but I have not personally tested any of them, so I will not recommend them.

However, there is a cool trick you can do, using stock Vista stuff:

In Vista, the easiest way to generate a smaller, resized image is to trick the e-mail program:

1. Double-click image you want to resize to open in default Vista image viewer (Windows Photo Gallery)
2. Click the "E-mail" toolbar icon.
3. Pick a size and click OK.



You don't even have to send the email to yourself (although you can if you want). Just right click the attachment in the new email and choose "Save As." Now you have a smaller version of the large image saved....then, just discard the e-mail. :-)

[Double Venom]

Hmmm,
I'll give it a shot! And thanks again for everything.
DV

[1985 CCX]

I am with Kristen as I too am overloaded. Is it possible for the system to resize current files? Even then I would probably be overloaded?

I often thought about zapping the whole load of pictures but then posts pics might be erased which is bad also. Sorry for my ignorance.....

[Ron61]

Jeff,

I am not trying to take CW or Jamos place answering this, but since I have already ran into it, yes, taking pictures out of the gallery or deleting any attachments will just leave a box with a red X in the post you had the picture in. If you know what posts you have pictures in that are important, once you reload the gallery you can then go edit the post and put the new URL of the picture in and it will be back. If you have a lot of them that would not be a very practical option, but since I only had a few that is what I did. I have been removing pictures and attachments for the past month and now have mine pared down to a low value.

Ron

[wtm442]

Jeff
I was in the same boat and was way over the quota. So I sorted all of the pics in my Gallery, and deletes all of the big file sized pics. But you pics are very big (bigger than mine were).

I wrote down all of the file names I deleted that I wanted to reload in my gallery. Then I resized those pics on my hard drive down to 50 to 90 kB size.

But before I uploaded these small sized pics, I created a bunch of albums, which makes it a lot easier when trying to find a pic in my gallery. I did go back to some threads and fixed the link so the pic would show.

Yes, it did take some time. Now, if I want to have a non-Cobra pic on a thread, I load it to Photobucket and then link it to the thread in CC.

Here is the link to my Photobucket site.
http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc191/wtm442/

When Photobucket is full, I'll just go to another site. There are tons of sites that you can save pics.