How do I add images to my article?

To add an image to an article that you are posting, simply type the local address (ie, the directory and file name of the image on your hard drive) in the "Upload Image" box below the message field. If you don't know the immediate location of the file, click "Browse" to search through the folders on your computer. The image must be less than 80kB in file size, otherwise the system will reject it. Please keep the dimensions at 800x600 or less as well.

If your photo is too large, which, if it's an original from a digital camera, it almost surely is, you can use image editing software to produce a smaller version. Irfanview is a very good free image viewing and editing program. Another option is resize2mail.com, which is a good online image resizing utility.

An image re-sizer that's actually easy to use comes from Microsoft. The PowerToys Image Resizer lets you right click on your thumbnail and choose a variety of sizes to change your image to. It will then make a copy and keep your original. Unfortunately Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, seems to have not carried this program forward for Vista.

You cannot type the web address of an online image in the "Upload Image" box; the server will not find the file. However, you can use HTML tags in your message body to display 3rd-party pictures from other websites (just highlight the URL and hit Img in the box at the bottom).

Please do not submit multiple posts to upload multiple images. The board upload tool only works for one image per post. In order to show more than one image per page, you must send the pictures to a 3rd-party webspace, such as Flickr, Photobucket, TinyPic.com, or Image Shack and use the Img tag to display them in your post.

How this works is you just copy and paste the URL from a photo on your online storage site into your article, highlight the URL, then hit the "Img" box under the text box. The correct tags for displaying your online picture in your post will be added to your URL. You have to use an URL that ends with the image extension, such as .jpg . Other URLs won't display your image.

Some people like the free Picasa Web Albums for this. You don't have to have the Picasa software installed in order to use the Picasa web albums. Your editor has found Photobucket generally easier to use than Picasa.

One way to use Picasa in the forums is by using html. Go to the page your photo is on. Find 'Link to this Photo' and 'Select size'. Then copy the long html code from 'Paste link in email or IM' into your post. You don't need to use the Image tags when doing this. Note that not all forums support the use of html, but we do.