Clue me in - building photo essays

Hi, Mr. Clueless here. I'd like to create photo essays where photos (uploaded from my PC) are placed between paragraphs of text. It's much more engaging and readable.

Other people are doing it, so it's possible. I am apparently obtuse and would appreciate some hints. Thanks folks!

Hey Douglas,

While I am still clueless about many things, I can create posts with images.  First, I created a post and uploaded all my images into it so I could right click on it and "copy image link".  Then, you can add an image to your post by clicking the "Img" button above and pasting the image url in the popup box.  I included my code below so you can click "Edit" to edit this post...but only copy all the text...then hit the back arrow button to cancel out of this.  If you do not have that capability, let me know and I will moosage you some code to place the images where they go.  This example below includes code to place images on the left or the right.  

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Unfortunately, no code visible. Perhaps my browser is locked down too tightly?

Linux Mint 20.1, Chromium browser. Running Ghostery and Disable HTML5 Autoplay extensions.

Notice the source for the photo is either online already or you can only put one photo in at a time so it does multiple threads to create a flow.z

So method 1 is to put the photos on some public site and link to the photos as you type with the Img  or URL buttons or youtube buttons.  This lets you mix text and pictures.  Works fine.  The problem is if the site ceases to exist then the link is broken.

Method 2 is to directly upload the pictures as attachments.  The problem with this one is that all the pictures are at the end of a given post.  So if you want to do text picture text picture ..... then you have to do separate posts with each picture.  Alternately you number the pictures and the posts and point to the proper picture in text and someone has to scroll down and find the properly labelled picture then back up to the text and back and forth as needed..  

I see. I use a snipping/snapshot tool to create a low-res photo file that doesn't waste tons of server space and also dis-includes all the personal data that is automatically embedded in a phone photo. Not sure of a solution.

Ah!

I think what you're looking for is explained in detail in Using formatting tags at permies.com to make your posts more awesome.

What you want to do is copy the image url and put it between these tags [img]https://permies.com/your-picture.jpg[/img]

To copy the image URL, you just right-click on it, like this

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For all of this to work, however, your images need to be already uploaded to the internet somewhere. Some people use flicker or other hosting sites. BUT, sometimes those sites go the way of Photobucket and decide to hold people's images hostage until they fork out more money. No good!

What might be a better (and more convenient option), is to host the image here on permies. There's a few places you can do that:

If you have PIE, you can start a thread in the PIE forum to host all your images.

If your images are for SKIP, you can start an image thread in SKIP Workshop forum

[list]If you are a Pollinator (which you are!), you can start an image thread in the Secret Minion Armyforum[/url]

You can upload your pictures to that thread, and then copy the image URL, and then put that image URL between the BB code [img] [/img].

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I hope that helps!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I see. I use a snipping/snapshot tool to create a low-res photo file that doesn't waste tons of server space and also dis-includes all the personal data that is automatically embedded in a phone photo. Not sure of a solution.

From what I understand, permies.com also strips all that automatically-embedded phone data. Which is pretty spiffy.

But, it's also super nice to upload small images to permies because it saves on our server bill.

Another neat thing that permies does is automatically turn uploaded images into only 700 pixels wide. If you click on the uploaded photo, you can see the full-sized image. But, if you copy the image in the thread, you just have a nice, small 700pixel wide picture. Spiffy!

Thanks everyone -- the trick is to post the image elsewhere and point to that URL.

But the most efficient solution is for me to be less long-winded and rambling in my little essays!

I honestly find it (for myself) often more efficient to dump the images in my own private image thread. Then I can look at them all, organize them, add captions, organize my thoughts, and then post a better post.

I also find I ramble a little less if I don't have to explain what's happening down below in my attached images, if I can just post the image with a caption directly in my post.

Sometimes I'll start making a post and uploading my images, only to realize it'd be a lot easier to upload them elsewhere and then embed them into my post. This also allows me to just ctrl+ to select a bunch of images off my computer to upload at once. When I do this, though, I usually don't remember which image was which when it comes to captioning them. BUT, if I dump them all in my private thread, I can caption them when I embed them into my public thread.

Another benefit to this is that I can change the size of my image by putting width=500 (or width=200, or whatever) into my image url.

So instead of my thread having this giant tall image:

This is 700 pixels wide, and super tall!

It could be smaller, like

This one is 300 pixels wide

or even tinier, like

This one is 100 pixels wide

The code for the last one looks like:

[img]https://permies.com/t/68930/a/209250/thumb-200_20230427_154504.jpg width=100 caption="This one is 100 pixels wide"[/img]

I can also add alt and caption text to it, to make it easier for me to find it later. So it could be:

[img]https://permies.com/t/68930/a/209250/thumb-200_20230427_154504.jpg width=100 caption="This one is 100 pixels wide" alt="Two children at play signs painted in steampunk vintage style with natural milk paints."[/img]

The alt text and caption also makes google love us better. Alt text tells google and other search engines what's happening in the picture. And then when people search for "vintage children at play sign" they might find my sign, and then they might look around permies, and they might even stick around. And google just plain rates us better if there's alt-text on images. So, it's all good things!

Excellent! Thanks Nicole.