I'm really upset about pictures.

[Charlie B]

Fellow members,
I want to propose a change to Blue. I want linking to photos posted off site banned. Here is why. Go back through the threads and you will see that we no longer can see the progress of Ebbet's field that TeeJay had worked so hard to post, and now he is gone, We can no longer see most of Running Bears photos, We can't see CNnutbars photos, nor Deano's photos, which makes the archives of Blue more or lest severely depleted. I am sure there are many more posts that have been given the photobucket badge. The only pictures that were lost that were directly posted were due to a crash during an update and that problem has been corrected. If somehow the number of pictures for one post could be increased from 5 this would be fine with me. A few minutes posting to make a post permanent is worthwhile isn't it. I am not so sure it isn't just as fast to upload direct, all that needs to be done is to resize the pictures, and there are free programs that do that and you can keep the original size.
No one has control over the off site hosting. Once you get hooked on a site for your pictures what is to stop them from asking for a $400 extortion fee?
Charlie

[faraway]

I understand and share your frustration.
You get in trouble if you use your photos in several web sites as many do. That is the reason why a central archive is used and all further uses are done via references /links only.
The PB disaster has a long tail of devastation through all forums I know.

[Charlie B]

Well, if a website gets upset with me for posting the same picture (which is intended for different audiences) I would be very quick to leave that forum. One thing I hate is a forum with a moderator or owner that micro-manages. I have my own yahoo group that is for Samoyed dog owners and I allow anything in the discussions except religion and politics. We have been at it for 10 years now and even have got together for "pawtys" at various homes. Sometimes the threads remind us of the show "Connections with James Burke) but we all have fun and come from numerous countries and walks of life.
I think that is why we like this forum so well. We try to stay on topic but never will you get a nasty PM from a moderator if you make a reasonable mistake.
Charlie

[faraway]

I am sorry that is a misunderstanding.
The sentence with "get in trouble" should read :
It is to much trouble for me to post/upload my pictures where ever they are used. I prefer one central online repository to store my photos to be used from all other locations.

ps. The online repository is "only" a copy of the photos on my hard disk and my backup hard disk. My data my disk :-)

[Charlie B]

I understand Reinhard. I post to several different places but don't mind uploading separately. All of my pictures are still viewable for the most part while photos linked to PB are no longer visible no matter what forum. I think the reliability is worth a little extra effort, Just my opinion, but I do go back and review some threads, and several were classics and they are worthless now.

Charlie

[Genetk44]

James Burkes Connections...one of the finest and most interesting shows I have ever watched...absolutely intruigueing!!!

[ezdays]

We have always recommended that everyone upload their photos to here rather than link them from some photo site or another forum. To be sure, most forums, including ours, object to having photos posted there linked to other sites. We have had cases where someone's entire thread has been wiped clean of photos because they lost their photo sharing links. I just got a notice from Photobuckets that my photo sharing privileges are being restricted because they detected that I was linking some of my photos. To start with, I thought that was one of the advantages of using Photobuckets. It doesn't matter, a few years ago I linked some photos of things I had for sale, but they provide a link address for every photo, so I'm confused. Never the less, it can and does happen where you can lose some or all of these links.

Yes, right now, uploading photos one at a time is a PITA if you have a bunch to upload, but we are looking at a way to upload in bulk. Until then, we still suggest that you upload your photos to here and you keep them on your computer or other storage places as well. A few years ago we had a glitch and had to go back a few months to get a recovery set that worked and we did lose a few months of posts and photos. So, no matter what you do or how you store your photos, there is no guarantee that everything will remain there forever. Always keep a copy.

Again, we do urge everyone to upload photos to here that are displayed in your posts. Do not try to link to them to other sites though, if you need to do that, then that's what I thought Photobuckets was for. I'm not too sure now, after they sent me that notice....

[faraway]

I did just try to upload a photo for use in BB.
BB did find the photos library on my iMac and offered a selection of the photos but it failed to upload due to size problems. The photos are all larger than 250KB. Are you suggesting to have a parallel library exclusive for BB use with reduced size photos and disable linked photos? That would be a show stopper to post any photos on BB in the future.
The PB disaster is very annoying but we must be carefully not to overreact.

ps. PB blocks me in general now because I am using add blockers.

[UP SD40-2]

I wouldn't post pics I put on the forums here anywhere else, that's not a problem , the resizing thing stinks, but doable.

What about Imgur or Flicker? does anyone have any experience with either of those sites? are they worth using?

Sure, no matter what, just like everything in life, NOTHING is forever, but finding the best possible fix is where I think some of us are at now.

Just my 2 cents

[faraway]

....What about Imgur or Flicker? does anyone have any experience with either of those sites? are they worth using?....

I switched to Flickr some time ago when PB got very slow and did not interface well with Safari browser on iMacs. It is different than PB but essentially is it the same. You may play with my data at http://www.rub-peters.de . That URL leads you to my Flickr account.

The is one concern with Flickr. Similar to the old PB do they offer free and payed accounts. The paid account is basically the same but has statistics (might be important for professional) and no advertisement (any blocker works fine). I am afraid Flicker might have a similar financial situation as PB because for 99% of hobby users is the free account perfect. No reason to pay anything and the add blocker is very common. i switched to a payed account lately ($50 pa). May be that helps to keep my account in good shape (3rd. party linking).

[ezdays]

There is one reason for the size restriction, well, maybe two. Some people still don't have high speed Internet connections and so loading large photos is a real drag. Secondly, not everyone has a large high resolution monitor and so they may have to scroll to see anything larger than 800 x 600 pixels. The two may not always be related, but that's why we put those size restrictions on.

We can reevaluate this if technology has deemed that everyone now can view large photos at high speed...

[faraway]

There is one reason for the size restriction, well, maybe two. Some people still don't have high speed Internet connections and so loading large photos is a real drag. Secondly, not everyone has a large high resolution monitor and so they may have to scroll to see anything larger than 800 x 600 pixels. The two may not always be related, but that's why we put those size restrictions on.

We can reevaluate this if technology has deemed that everyone now can view large photos at high speed...

I second that restrictions because they are applied by good reason. The technical solution is the problem. PB and Flickr both make it easy to define the X * Y resolution while uploading and I did usually select 800 * 600. The uploader of BB does not have that feature. It is on me to resize and store the photos locally for uploading and hope the result would be below the size limit regardless of the resolution.
Professional libraries take whatever I submit and resize as directed by the uploader.

In short
1. redefine the limit from size to resolution
2. adjust the resolution while uploading to a max of 800 * 600

or

do nothing and leave that business to professional libraries and take the link

[Charlie B]

Well I guess I am the odd man as I do have at least 2 libraries one full resolution right from the scanner and another watermarked and resized that I use for posting. Most of my pictures are here or on Facebook. I frequent many historical sites on FB, local and railroad. Facebook allows uploads of lots of files and encourages sharing with all folks, even those that have no facebook account. I also have all of my hard drives backed up to google photo, and if you allow them to resize them to their hi resolution standards there is unlimited free storage But like everything else they could change their minds in a heartbeat.
With the passing of many older members and lack of participation from younger folks I don't suppose it really matters all that much if the pictures are lost forever.
Charlie