A single picture right out of today’s consumer cameras can easily be 3 megabytes or more in size. Pushing a 3 megabyte picture out of a blog page is roughly akin to trying to move a shipping container strapped to the top of a VW. It’s a lost cause.

There are two preparatory steps necessary to get a picture fit for web display before you upload the picture to your blog or other web display space. The process is called image optimization. (search “image optimization” for lots of how-to info and online tools)

Step 1 – re-dimension the picture to the actual dimensions in pixels that you want it to display once it is inserted in the web page. Keep in mind that the bigger the picture is dimensionally, the bigger its file size will be, even after compression.
Step 2 – compress the final picture after you re-dimension it using an image optimizer utility that outputs to an image format suitable for display on web pages – usually jpeg, gif or png.

Check out/download the free desktop program, VirtualStudio from OptikVerve Labs to help you with prepping your pictures for web publishing.

http://www.optikvervelabs.com/virtualstudio.asp

Size and touch up your original photo in VirtualStudio. When you “Save As“, look for the Advanced button on the save dialogue. Click this to find a compression slider. 80% on the slider is a good starting point. (jpeg images.) If you are saving as a GIF file you will find the number of colours under the Advanced button, starting at 256 scale this back to 128 or 64 to cut the file size.

Making sure that your images are well optimized before you load them to your web page or blog will ensure that you are not balooning the overall weight of your page and causing load time to slow to a crawl.

• Step 1 – re-dimension the picture to the actual dimensions in pixels that you want it to display once it is inserted in the web page. Keep in mind that the bigger the picture is dimensionally, the bigger its file size will be, even after compression.
• Step 2 – compress the final picture after you re-dimension it using an image optimizer utility that outputs to an image format suitable for display on web pages – usually jpeg, gif or png.

Advanced image editing software like Photoshop, Fireworks etc. have access to optimization tools inside these editors. Consumer grade photo editors also have image optimization tools but they are generally hidden away deep in the program and often don’t get found, learned or used by the casual photo publisher.

There are many good image optimizers available online or in the free image editing programs being made available for download. You just have to find them and use them.

One such program is Google Picasa™. It’s free, fairly easy to use and does a pretty good job of organizing your photos. It provides a fairly extensive, though basic, set of photo touch-up tools. It also has an image optimizer in it. Unfortunately, the optimization function can be hard to find for the causal user.

The video in this post is a quick guide to using Picasa to get a picture web-ready in just a few clicks. Do yourself a favour and learn how to optimize your pictures before you get that “over storage quota” notice or surprise bandwidth overuse charge from your web host.

[field name=pic-vid]

Not only can you post single photos that are converted at very good quality, but you can also post a folder of pictures that gets automatically converted to a photo gallery. Posterous is making improvements all the time and already has a number of themes available. The default theme is very clean. http://posterous.com

View my test photo blog at http://cloudstreet.posterous.com

Included is an account setup wizard that makes connecting to your blog simple. (For WordPress you need to first login to your admin area, choose Settings–>Writing. In the Remote Publishing Section, check the XML-RPC box.)

ScribeFire’s interface is easy to use and understand. A convenient and clear panel beside the editor window allows easy access to Blogs, Posts and Pages for straight forward review and revision. The minimal editor tool bar does include convenient utilities for adding YouTube Videos, regular hyperlinks, and images to your posts.

More information is available at http://www.scribefire.com/help/supported-services/

Not having a table utility among the default editing tools is also bothersome – you need to install a plug-in to get it in there.

I like to get around the above limitations by using a more full-featured external editor to make up more complex pages/posts. I then just cut and paste the externally generated code into the html view in WordPress. If you happen to be using a Mac, the free SeaMonkey browser suite has a nice, full-featured editor that works great for formatting up pages for pasting.

For Windows users, Windows Live Writer is a free download that allows you to author posts, connect and publish to one or several blogs. Its editor is comprehensive and very functional. It really comes into its own when you start arranging pictures or other media within your posts.

I like using Windows Live Writer as a one-stop-shop for managing several blogs. Note that if you are using Live Writer with WordPress, you will not be able to connect until you first login to your WordPress admin area. Choose Settings, then Writing. In the Remote Publishing Section, make sure the XML-RPC box is checked.

Drive out of the mountains toward sunny Longview, Alberta. Turn around and take a look back to the West. This spot is just a few minutes east of Highwood House overlooking the Tongue Creek Ranch.