Groundspeak Portal

I am an experanced Waymarker and understand the process of uploading pictures.  What I am interested in, is any tips or tricks from the community to help SPEED up the process of loading pictures since the web site is currently running so slow.  Does optimizing pictures before hand help?  If so, any recommendations for software and size of pictures?  Does uploadin pictures from an online surver have any advantages?  If so, what server would you recommend?  Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.  I currently have over 150 waymarks from a recent trip to post.  Thanks for any help or suggestions.
The Federation

Key is to resize photos before you upload them.  There are many tool which will do this.  One free one if you have Windows XP is to get the photo resizer from the Microsoft site.  I resize mine to 800 x 600 and site reduces futher but these load fast.  You could resize to 640 x 480 to even speed it up more. 

I resize my photos during Export to 1/4 smaller from 800 x 600 pixels to 600 x 450 pixels and from .bmp or .tif  to .jpg.  I was tired of my waymarks almost always crashing so I just reduce the photo size as well as change the image type.  And then I upload the photo(s) to the Waymark.  It works for me.

What I do is this:
......  If you have XP.
1. go to where you store your photo. (Card or C: drive)
2. click to enlarge the chosen photo
3. at the bottom right of the page click the icon at the left of the "?"  mark
4. on the top of next page click on "image" and "stetch/skew"
5. resize to 30% (or whatever)  do experiment!
6. Under "File" click -- "SAVE AS" and save whereever with a name and note as to the size.
7. upload to "Gallery"

Voila, you're done.  Easy and fast.

I use a few resizers but like the one that came with Picasa. It automatically backs up my originals to another file. It is free and a great utility for messing with the photos to improve them if the lighting isn't good enough.

After I download the images to my computer.

right click on image>open with Microsoft Photo Editor.

in the tool bar >image>resize>change to pixels in drop down window and make it 600x800 or whatever pixels.

In tool bar >save as>whatever you want,when you do this your original image is saved and you now have a smaller image.

 

You can also use picasa,flickr,google,myspace and many other hosts as well.

Thanks for the tips I have been using XP resizer tonight and it has made a world of difference.

I've been using XP resizer, too, and look out reviewers - no stopping me now!  Thanks for the great tip!

I use office picture manager and export to a web photo - 640 x 480 pixels - zoom zoom zoom.

KE

Resizing has really helped me!  Just started a bit ago.  I use Corel Paint Shop for all my editing, and to resize I set it to 600 for either the width or height depending on orientation. 

I love the one click automatic photo adjustment.  Does wonders for most pics.  The "smart adjustment" feature makes it easy to lighten shadows or sharpen focus. 

My other favorite tool is the straighten tool.  And, I've been playing with the perspective adjustment tool recently, too.

All things to help make up for my inept photographic abilities!

resizing works good to speed up the load time! next often you can set the image quality too this can help reduce the load times as well and most of the times not visible when viewing on the screen.