Pic hosting and submissions? (Advice please)

[BigJim]

Right then, with my brother finally getting a digicam I can (finally) start posting some of my pics at cmon for critique, advice & criticism, yay!

However I\'ve got a bit of a problem - for anything larger than a single character, I just can\'t get my pics small enough.

To photograph a Dreadnought or Tank-sized mini, or to get enough shots of a squad to make cover it sufficiently, I\'ve got to create a composite pic from several others in Photshop (the BBC in no way endorses this product.. ), however, try as I might I can\'t get them under 100k.

Even putting the .jpeg compression down to gharsterly levels only knocks \'em down to about 400k, & since most of my pics are of vehicles & squads, this is going to be a slight problem.

I use Photobucket, but it\'s problem is that if my pics are over a certain size, it automatically shrinks them to fit, however, in order to show on CMON, I\'ve had to make them all into very narrow but tall pics, so they\'re 600 by about 1400+ pixes, way too tall for Photobucket to host without shrinking them - and then of course they\'ll be tiny when they appear on CMON.

Oh, what to do? [/drama]

I\'m sure I can\'t be the first person to have ever had this problem, could anyone give me any info on either an alternative hoster (that doesn\'t mess with image sizes), or even ust let me know how they did it - I\'d be eternally grateful. *heart-shaped smiley*

Cheers muchley & have fun,

 

[Frustrated Father]

You might have done it already, but I\'ll take a stab at it in my own laymans way and see if something might help you out.

First and formeost, I take all my pictures in 1280x (whatever, can\'t remember really) just because I\'m too lazy to change the size on the digital camera. Obviously that is a mite too large to show here on CMON. So to photoshop I go.

In photoshop I open up a blank 600x1400 and then minimize it. I then open up a gradient background that is 600x800 and minimize it. I then go in and open up all my pictures that I\'m going to make a collage with.

To each of these, I open up and go to \'image size\' and usually break it down to about 500x wide and see where that gets me in size. Usually it is small enough, but if not I will keep cutting it down in 50 incriments until its the size I want.

I then do all the photoshop magic, wand it, reverse select, drop it into the gradient background, merge the layers, cut what I want out of it and then drop it into the minimized blank that I\'ve created. I then go back to the gradient and undo everything up until the point where I merge it.

I then go on to the next picture and do the same thing, bringing it over my gradient on top of the other layer (picture) so that I have the gradient the same color, delete the previous layer, merge the layers, and cut and paste again.

Usually I do this four to six times. Redundant, but I think my pictures come out fairly well (and I might of lost you a paragraph or so back, if I did, ask, I\'ll try and clarify). I then do \'auto levels\' (CTRL-SHIFT-L) to get a more \'realistic\' look and then do SAVE AS JPG.

I then drop the quaility down until it is under 250K (what photobucket accepts without shrinking it on its own). Usually around a quality of 9 or 10 which I think keeps it looking fairly good.

Upload to photobucket and then setup here and you\'re good to go.

Hope something in the above helped. Think I confused myself actually.

lol

 

[Astonia]

Great explanation FF.
There\'s also a function called \"save for web\" at least in ps version 6, which decreases the file size quite a bit.

 

[BigJim]

Cheers!

Ah-ha, I use Photoshop CS on my desktop (which is currently awaiting a new HD), & I\'ve only just got Photoshop 4 (yes, 4) LE running on this laptop hooked up to my main monitor. (long story, don\'t ask )

As such I don\'t have many of the features you mention open to me, plus a maximum of 5 layers at any one time (boo!) but I\'m sure there\'s maual workarounds so I can basically copy it.

I\'m really sorry but I\'m not quite sure I understand what you\'re doing though, as far as I understand you\'re resizing your base image down to 500px wide, then basically pasting it into a new layer, removing the background & putting on a new colour gradient layer.

Unfortunately, it\'s not the background that\'s the problem, I\'m cropping my base images down as much as possible beforehand, although fading the edges of a close-up layer over a bare part of the pic may help in some cases.

If I can give an example;

This is a composite pic of my Dreadnought. Now, it\'s only about 300px wide, but I put this together in PS4 this afternnon, & the image should be 600px wide, however, it\'s height has caused photobucket to shrink it, therefore also shrinking it\'s width to match.

If I were *only* limited to 600 wide I\'d be laughing, as I can produce tall skinny pics all day, but my problem is I can\'t fit it all into the 800 or so px in height they allow you, not without posting 2 or 3 additional pics.

Does that make sense?

Thanks for all your help so far, it\'s really appreciated.

 

[james9487]

Well, the dreadnought looks good.

 

[Shadzar]

Originally posted by BigJim

dont know if this can help, but here i croped a bit out since you have several views of the front, and the base from the one with the banners was in unfinished state, so it and a few other bases didnt need to show ful since the lower right corner now has a good shot of the base. then moved them around a bit

38k
600 x 825 pixels.

if you cant use it then let me know and i will wipe off my system.

 

[Naukhel]

I, personally, haven\'t posted much, yet, having just gotten my own camera last weekend. However, just wheedling about with the cheezy Kodak software that comes with the camera, I\'m starting to produce some OK single angle shots. There\'s an option when you save that lets you shrink the pic down in 25% increments, as well as the \'Best for Web\' option. This helps reduce the size of the file, and then, if you\'re skilled with PS (I\'m not at all skilled with PS), you can crop even further and follow the steps above for really nice collage work (I wish I could manage it, but you don\'t want to see me trying -- or maybe you do -- you\'d laugh a lot).
Naukhel
figurinepainter on Ebay

 

[Klute]

Pay the subs for photobucket and the size restrictions are much greater.

Also one or two good views are better than 5 or 6 bad ones.
Keep an eye on the resize and compression settings,some make the image look worse.

Nice work Shadzar.

 

[BigJim]

Gotcha, so the general concensus it to be more creative with the views I use (I feel like I shold be rapping that last line), & to play w/Photoshop\'s quality setting. Cool.

I\'d never used the camera before, (Nikon Coolpix 5mp), but I did manage to set it the lowest res setting suitable, so it\'ll be the photoshop settings I fiddle with next.

Thanks for all your help everyone, especially Shadzar, nice one.
I\'ve noticed a few details out of date on the example pic I used (for example the magic swapping weapon on the right arm ), so i\'ll put together new one to post properly, but that\'s the kind of thing I\'m going to try next.

I Do prefer real close ups, but I also like to get the whole model in my shots, or at least as much as possible.

Bah, if it wasn\'t for things like Dreadnoughts & Tanks I could use my scanner for pretty much everything, it\'s not dead fancy, but I like it & it gets the models looking just right with much less fuss than having to light & set up a close up photo.

Thanks again all, I\'ll try & get my first batch up today.

 

[Klute]

@BigJim

Keep your camera at 5mp.That way your original will be the best quality possible.
Then edit you pic to your hearts content in photoshop and save as new images keeping your original 5mp file intact.
For close ups use the 5mp pic and zoom in and crop the area you want instead of photoing specific parts.

 

[BigJim]

Hmm, good plan, that man.

I\'m a film guy at heart, it feels too wierd with a little bit of silver plastic perched at the top of my tripod, & some reason I can\'t get over the whole process going on inside the camera, I\'m used to taking the pic & then doing any settings in Photoshop.

Cheers a lot for the sound advice, I\'ll try that later on & see what I come up with.

*gratitude*