Read this before posting....

[Gordon Maney]

Read this before posting....

This is the place for you to post pictures of your trucks, and also tell us about them. It will also help newcomers to learn the various models.

Please limit the image size to no more than about 600 pixels for the largest dimension. Also, your file size cannot be any larger than 128 kilobytes, and smaller is better. Over time, we will work toward coaching everyone to use smaller image files.

If you post an image that is too large to see and requires scrolling to see it all, I will probably delete it and ask you to post a smaller image. We want your image, we just don't want it to be too big to see.

This is the place for you to show off your truck. Please start a new thread for your truck. No doubt, folks will offer comment in your thread, but they should not post images of other vehicles in your thread.

Have fun....

[Paul Cook]

Gordon, my son and daughter-in-law are both serving in Iraq. They have e-mail access, but with time constraints. Our duty as grandparents includes sending photos.

I had no problems sending them photos I took with my six year old digital camera. It took great pictures when you worked at the snap shot size, but they were low resolution and could not be enlarged very much. Their size was generally in the 40 - 60 KB range. Most of the photos on my web site were taken with the old camera. The photos were great when transmitted electronically. They were marginal when printed.

I recently replaced that camera. I set my new camera to take photos at medium resolution. Suddenly the kids could not receive my pictures. The server timed out because their access had time limits. Over there they have to share the lines.

The first thing I did was resize the photos to fit on the screen without scrolling to see the whole picture. Even when they are resized to the 600 pixel width, the file size can be around 500KB.

I have learned to get the same photo down to 50KB. Here's how.

First, crop the photo. Whether it is a beautiful grandchild or a great truck, trees, sky, grass, and buildings are not the subject of the photo. Even with my new computer, some photos in e-mails or on the Forum take a long time to load. Watch the typical photo. As the photo comes into view, we see nothing except trees for a while. It takes as long to present an image of the trees as they took to grow.

If you feel scenery is the subject and not a person or truck, skip the comments about cropping. We will look at the trees, even though most of us have seen them. The same for mountains, rivers, etc. Gordon might even add a "Scenery" Forum.

Once you have cropped the photo, use "Save As" instead of "Save" so you do not lose the original. To print photos, particularly enlargements, you need to keep the medium or high resolution images. That's why you should always use "Save As" for your e-mail and Forum photos. Identify the cropped photo you saved for e-mailing or posting to the Forum by adding a "-1" to the original file name. In most photo albums, a "-1" file will be next to the original so you won't have trouble finding it.

Also, the "Save As" function gives you the option of saving the cropped photo at Low Resolution. Choose that.

Cropping and saving photos at Low Resolution gives you a file that is one-tenth the size of the original, uncropped, medium resolution file. And the photo quality is more than adequate for including in an e-mail or posting on a Forum.

[Gordon Maney]

A lot of good thoughts. There are a lot of people getting into trouble because they are taking very important photos using digital cameras set on low res, allowing them lots of exposures stored in their media. Later, when they want a big print, or even a medium print, that is nice, their file won't support it. They get mad and say nobody told them. Often that is not true, but the get more photos on the card mentality is hard to beat.

I produce a lot of 800 pixels wide images, though I have a two page monitor. I wonder what many of you find to be the largest you can view on your monitor...