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Questions about Photo Viewing Website...

The TVClubHouse: Archives: 2004 January - Arpil: Questions about Photo Viewing Websites - Snapfish, Ofoto, etc. users admin

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Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 7:27 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Well, this started out as a question in the Computer Problems thread, but I decided to move it over here and make a new thread.

I am rather new to using Snapfish and have several questions. Thus far, I have put large file size photos over there that were shot with a digital camera and ordered 4x6 prints from them. I was very pleased with the prints.

Now I have a lot of vacation photos I would like to put over there for friends and relatives to view, not necessarily to make prints of them. All of the digital files are currently very large, because we shot them big in case we wanted to make prints of them. I can put the big files over there, no real problem, except with my dialup, it takes a long time. They also take a long time to open, and I can't view them on the slide show because they take so long to open. The only way I know of right now is to individually resize them and then post them.

Which brings me to my next question (or my first question, don't think I have actually asked one yet).

I have seen Draheid recommend irfanview in the past for photo editing. I have not downloaded it or tried it. I have three fancier photo-editing programs on my computer now. But I have seen Draheid talk about being able to batch photos. I think I would like to batch a lot of my vacation photos by reducing their size, so I can post them at Snapfish, and they can be seen on the slideshow viewer. Will irfanview do batching of this sort, resize a batch of photos, perhaps reduce the Kb?

Is there a better way to do what I want to do other than adjusting each photo one by one on my existing photo editing programs? I have MGI Photoshop4, Picture-It Express, and Adobe Photoshop 5.0LE (limited edition, free with scanner).

Hippyt

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 7:45 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I'm not sure,but I think irfanview only works on photos 200 kb,or smaller.I accidentally took a bunch of huge photos,and couldn't re-size them there.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 8:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh! Thanks, Hippyt. That would automatically rule me out of using irfanview. I think the photos I want to downsize are all bigger than that.

Draheid

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 8:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I just loaded a 753K photo image using Irfanview with no problem. I then batch loaded 21 images averaging 730K each and told it to reduce by 50% and this also worked great. Although the resulting image size is exactly 50% since 'quality' (compression rate) was set to maximum of 100. 2nd pass, I set the 'quality' to 75 again to 50% size and the resulting files are now an average of 66K each. Still no problems at all with batch processing.

When I was auto-capturing the eaglecam, every 10 seconds, I was able to load and crop 100's of images in a single pass to remove the frame from each captured image without any problems at all.

I can't think of an easier way to batch process then with Irfanview.

Now as far as photo editing software to buy, I would now recommend Paint Shop Pro 8.0 which I have been using quite extensively lately and really enjoy the quality and ease of use of this program.

Hope that helps.

Hippyt

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 8:34 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh,well,what do I know? LOL,maybe I should try again.

Cathie

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 10:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I have used Paint Shop Pro since version 5 and love it. You can download a 30 day trial of version 8 at Jasc.com but the file is around 58MB and would take really long for a dialup connection. Retail prices for version 8 range from $59-$99, so shop around for the lower prices if you are interested.

Juju2bigdog

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 12:55 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Draheid, if it will batch reduce size and quality, that is exactly what I am looking for. I will download it. I presume I will be able to figure out how to batch process?

Landi

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 3:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
i use ofoto.com for my albums for friends and family. i like the abilities of ofoto to print pictures out. they're usually in my mailbox in two days from when i've ordered them!

i've used paint shop pro for YEARS! it's much easier to use than adobe, but now that i have to learn adobe, i'm having some difficulties converting tasks. things don't always work the same. if you don't ever have to worry about graphics but need a little help paint shop pro is the way to go!


Juju2bigdog

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 3:56 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks, Landi. I think the printing capability is what I will like most about Snapfish. Don't even have to go to Walgreens for developing, LOL.

I'll keep Paint Shop Pro in mind for when I get my 5th photo editing program on this computer (after I get my 4th, irfanview). I haven't had the time to really study what any of them do, so I go with whichever of them is intuitively best.

Juju2bigdog

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 8:59 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Questions re: irfanview.

1. I have irfanview downloaded.
2. Do I also need to download the plug-ins separately? it appears to have come with some plug-ins.

Draheid

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 10:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: I haven't downloaded any plugins that I'm aware of. Just the main program itself, installed and run it when I need. It seems to have everything I need already installed. I'll take a look and see what the plug-ins are though and let you know if they are worth the effort or not.

Draheid

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 10:10 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: The all_plugins file is approximately 4,420KB. Unless there are some of the additional file formats that you specifically need to access, I don't think the plugins are necessary for your purpose. You can see a detailed list and description of the additional file types that the plug-in enables to you on the Irfanview Plug-ins page.

Hope this helps.

Edit to add: Click Here to view the currently supported file formats with and without the plug-ins. (* marked formats require plug-ins)

Juju2bigdog

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 10:45 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks, Draheid. I sorta didn't think I needed any of the plug-ins either. Okay, I am going to try to teach myself how to do batches.

Looks like I want to start with File>Batch Conversion/Rename, and that I need a target place to put the files already set up. I also went to Help and found some topics on batching. Need to read those.

Draheid

Thursday, January 01, 2004 - 11:06 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: After selecting the batch option, choose the destination folder and file time, then the two keys are:

Options - to set the compression ratio - the lower the number (on jpg files) the tighter compression and thus the smaller file.

Set Advanced Options - to set the destination settings, resize, sample rate, etc.

Once you have those set and the destination folder, select the files to batch convert and click 'Start' and you're done. Soon you'll have a folder with batch processed images to use.

Hope that helps.

Juju2bigdog

Friday, January 02, 2004 - 12:44 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Draheid, I think it will help tomorrow when I get to looking at it. I printed out the Help instructions, and I know I have to do something with Advanced Options.

Not sure I saw anything about time, but I guess I will find it.

On the destination folder, might I want to make a new folder to put them all in? Such as in My Pictures>Vacation Photos and then a new folder like Transfer to Snapfish? And if so, do I have to have the folder made in advance? Or can I make it from the irfanview Batching screen?

Draheid

Friday, January 02, 2004 - 12:49 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: I recommend seperate folders, perhaps an 'Originals' folder and a 'Modified' folder - whatever name you choose - since it will write the changed files with the same name, you sure don't want to use the same folder again. Otherwise you'll end up overwriting your original image files! Either way, I you need to create the folders before going into the Irfanview to batch process as the browse there only lets you choose an existing directory.

Juju2bigdog

Friday, January 02, 2004 - 10:18 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks, Dra. Yeah, what I meant was - should I set up a separate folder before I go to create the batch of modified pictures? It looked like that was what I needed to do. Glad you warned me about the over-writing thing.

Okay, hopefully I will get to experiment with irfanview and batching photos today. If not today, soon.

Juju2bigdog

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 1:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Okay! I have successfully batched! Cool!

Twiggyish

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 8:10 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I've used Irfanview for quite a while. I prefer Paint Shop Pro, but the other is great, too.

Juju2bigdog

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 8:20 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Well, and this morning, my computer froze up several times, causing me to have to shut it down using the surge protector on-off. Once when it was performing the scan incident to improper shut-down, it froze while doing the scan, and I had to shut it off using the surge protector on-off switch again. Only thing different in past couple days is I installed irfanview.

So, now I have uninstalled it for a bit to see if the freeze-ups continue.

Sheesh, it's just always something.

Twiggyish

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 8:37 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Have you checked your resources?

Costacat

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 8:45 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju, I use Irfanview at work all the time (not as a photo editor, but to quickly view pix). I've got Windows 2000 at work and it's never frozen up on me, or caused my system to freeze.

I used other tools, such as screen capture programs or PSP, to do my batch converts. As a technical writer, there are many times when a graphic format that is suitable for online viewing (help files) looks like heck when printed (PDFs).

Juju2bigdog

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 9:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Twiggs, not sure what that means. I have lots of RAM and huge hard drive mostly empty.

Twiggyish

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 9:34 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Do you have a lot of programs in your startup?
(The area next to the clock on the lower right)
You may want to check your startup items.

Juju2bigdog

Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 11:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Nope, I keep those pretty lean, try not to have a lot of extraneous stuff in there. Just have Zone Alarm, Norton anti-virus, and right now the 30 day trial of Trojan Hunter which I put on after Norton failed to detect two new trojans. Oh, and Pow! popup killer and Yahoo messenger.