TinyPic

[Dave Humphries]

I know we've had incorrect images from TinyPic too in the past, but frankly, for free (and without advertising splashed all over), what do people expect?

So, for me; a few days loss of service in over 5 years working generally well, isn't too bad, but YMMV.

If you've been here that long, you'll know that Sean leaves almost all member communication and control to the moderating team, so we are "the management" in my view.

No, we're not paid, nor have any financial interest.
AFAIK Sean funds CiC entirely (although there are ads in the tutorials) and certain aspects of the way the site has been set up is to minimise running costs; e.g. we don't seriously host images here for storage and bandwidth costs.

It was the lack of ads in the forum that was the decider for me joining, well that and also that someone responded here, unlike a couple of other places I tried.

[NorthernFocus]

Golly, bad enough that I am trying to figure out how to take these pictures, but trying to post them to the best of their viewing ability really does get complicated!...

Don't worry. We'll meet you where you are. Just do what works for you and some day if/when you worry about that level of detail then that will be the time to figure it out. By all means your available time and effort are better spent behind the viewfinder of your camera

[skitterbug]

Hi Sandy,



Short answer: Yes
Longer answer: If a TinyPic photo is not viewed by anyone, anywhere. for 90 days, it is apparently removed. That said, I have not noticed this being a problem, but equally, I have not looked for it especially.
Any site can have a technical failure, denial of service attack or similar that causes it to 'go down', usually images are recovered from their back ups, but it must be possible that some might be lost permanently (so we shouldn't rely on it as a back up service). I host mine on PBase and have done for oooh, some 6 years or so. During that time, it did go down for a few days, but eventually all my images were restored.

The issue with some hosting sites is that directly linked images posted here may contain the folder/album structure as part of the url, so that means if you re-organise your own albums, you may accidentally break the link. I see this far more often. PBase is one that doesn't do this, the image url is permanent and I can re-organise my albums without worrying about this.

I see this as a problem for CiC then if our uploaded work is lost! It would destroy the posts/threads wouldn't it?
It would be better if I had a paid website to put my stuff, but that's a cost that I don't really want to take on. I felt like Tiny Pic was a fairly safe place to store photos (what is ever safe on the web though????) but it doesn't look that way now.

The thing to consider is that apart from special cases, you want the most people to be able to see your image at a 1:1 ratio between the on-line image and the screen LCD pixels. Therefore, since most decent monitors are approx. 1920 x 1080, or 1620 x 1050, so while allowing for browser edges, etc. I post mine with a maximum height of 950 px. Height rules because most monitors will be landscape/horizontal orientation.

So, to answer your question; if portrait/vertical orientation, pick a size that's a bit under 1000px on longest edge, but if landscape/horizontal orientation, then pick a size that is under 1000px on shortest edge.

People using phones or tablets can rotate very easily to view appropriately, but then they're not likely to be able to critically analyse image quality on those devices for a variety of reasons.

I'll keep the sizes in mind. I wonder how my uploaded stuff has appeared so far? Since I only view my pics on my computer equipment, I don't have any idea how it shows up for others.

PS Dan's point about sharpness is also valid.
I always downsize to viewing size and sharpen for that size for optimum viewing.
Also, if you upload full size images to Flickr, it allows anyone to access and download them, so they can rip 'em off and print large without your permission, perhaps even passing the images off as their own.

So even though I have my pics "locked" for my personal use, people can still get to my content and download it for their use? Not that any of my stuff thus far is anything stellar but still it wouldn't be nice for them to be taking it without my permission.

Okay, thank you Dave. This is a lot to consider!

[skitterbug]

Don't worry. We'll meet you where you are. Just do what works for you and some day if/when you worry about that level of detail then that will be the time to figure it out. By all means your available time and effort are better spent behind the viewfinder of your camera

Thank you Dan! I appreciate your humor! Back to my camera and thinking about what next week's P52 entries will be! <grin>

[Mike Buckley]

Dave,

In the five years I have been participating here nearly every single day, I don't remember TinyPic ever having been down so consistently for so long as is happening in the current ongoing issue. It's in that context that I was surprised that we had not heard anything about the owner's response to the situation.

When you ask what people expect, my expectation explained above about communicating with us is not unrealistic in my mind. That's especially true in the context of the very recent situation just a couple or so weeks ago when Donald passed along very comforting information letting us know that Sean was aware of a different situation and was working on it.

This is my last post on the exact topic begun in my post #32. Again, thank you for providing the additional information.

[Geoff F]

Just to add a little more to your potential confusion, Sandy.

If you do consider having a separate photo hosting site there are so many to choose from!

After initially testing several, and failing to even get into some, I went for P base which does make a small charge; but for that payment you get an easy to use safe and secure system with a fair bit of flexibility. No adverts popping up everywhere or any worries about being hacked etc.

One advantage of this method is that you can create specific galleries of images which are easily viewed by your chosen friends or the whole world, depending on your settings. For example all my chosen images are at

www.pbase.com/crustacean

And they are available to be viewed worldwide not just on specific postings in specialist sites like CinC.

Regarding image sizes for uploading. Straight from camera is too large for internet use so any site which accepts this sort of upload will automatically resize the images; and their method may cause some softness compared to doing it yourself with 'proper photo editing software'. I sometimes add a little bit of extra sharpening after substantial resizing - but that is a topic for another day.

As Dave mentioned, average screen size gives the best and easiest to upload results. For example, start by setting the resolution to 96 pixels per inch (European) or 72 ppi (USA) monitor resolution. In reality, either will work fine.

Then set the image size, using the pixel option, to somewhere between 1000 and 1500 pixels (average usable sizes) on the width OR about 1000 pixels for the depth (portrait ratio or square).

But make sure you are doing this on a copy not resizing your original image. I normally save any images destined for uploading in a separate folder then upload from there.

In reality, I use a different computer for photo work then transfer to my internet computer using a USB removable drive. This prevents any malware from infecting my main work equipment; but let's not worry about that sort of thing for now.

Try a few test items and see how you get along with this resizing method.

[skitterbug]

Just to add a little more to your potential confusion, Sandy.

If you do consider having a separate photo hosting site there are so many to choose from!

After initially testing several, and failing to even get into some, I went for P base which does make a small charge; but for that payment you get an easy to use safe and secure system with a fair bit of flexibility. No adverts popping up everywhere or any worries about being hacked etc.

One advantage of this method is that you can create specific galleries of images which are easily viewed by your chosen friends or the whole world, depending on your settings. For example all my chosen images are at

www.pbase.com/crustacean

And they are available to be viewed worldwide not just on specific postings in specialist sites like CinC.

Regarding image sizes for uploading. Straight from camera is too large for internet use so any site which accepts this sort of upload will automatically resize the images; and their method may cause some softness compared to doing it yourself with 'proper photo editing software'. I sometimes add a little bit of extra sharpening after substantial resizing - but that is a topic for another day.

As Dave mentioned, average screen size gives the best and easiest to upload results. For example, start by setting the resolution to 96 pixels per inch (European) or 72 ppi (USA) monitor resolution. In reality, either will work fine.

Then set the image size, using the pixel option, to somewhere between 1000 and 1500 pixels (average usable sizes) on the width OR about 1000 pixels for the depth (portrait ratio or square).

But make sure you are doing this on a copy not resizing your original image. I normally save any images destined for uploading in a separate folder then upload from there.

In reality, I use a different computer for photo work then transfer to my internet computer using a USB removable drive. This prevents any malware from infecting my main work equipment; but let's not worry about that sort of thing for now.

Try a few test items and see how you get along with this resizing method.

Confusion... yes! It doesn't take much to mix my muddled mind up! LOL

I've been looking at pbase and will consider it. It may be a small price to pay to have a safe site for pics. I'm still wondering what happens to this site if these free hosting photo sites close up! If the pictures disappear, it would cause havoc.

So taking Dave and your suggestion, I snapped a pic and used the export settings on Light Room as follows.
W - 1,000, H - 1,000 pixel and 96 pixel per inch. See how it turns out here. It is still sitting on Flickr.

What do you think? Does it show enough detail. Okay for critiquing, etc. by the group?

Out my back door. Winter has returned! Brrrrrr!

[Cantab]

The fourth bin is galleries that no one but me can access. One of this is called "test images." That is where I dump stuff that I won't want long term or that I haven't decided about. Many of the images I post here are initially in that hidden directory. If I decide that they are worth showing, I just move them to a public gallery, which takes almost no work.

Dan

Dan, when you move a photo from one Smugmug gallery to a different gallery, doesn't that break the link to CiC? -- although it presumably does not in your case?

[lunaticitizen]

I know we've had incorrect images from TinyPic too in the past, but frankly, for free (and without advertising splashed all over), what do people expect?

So, for me; a few days loss of service in over 5 years working generally well, isn't too bad, but YMMV.

If you've been here that long, you'll know that Sean leaves almost all member communication and control to the moderating team, so we are "the management" in my view.

No, we're not paid, nor have any financial interest.
AFAIK Sean funds CiC entirely (although there are ads in the tutorials) and certain aspects of the way the site has been set up is to minimise running costs; e.g. we don't seriously host images here for storage and bandwidth costs.

It was the lack of ads in the forum that was the decider for me joining, well that and also that someone responded here, unlike a couple of other places I tried.

I think we should also consider the possibility of TinyPic or its parent company went bankrupt or simply stopped providing free service. After all, they don't have any financial incentives nor responsibility toward their free-tier customers.

The ease of uploading pictures means a lot for people here, so...

Maybe it's time for us to consider paid services, such as Cloudinary or Imageshack? The Imageshack Pro costs 300 USD per year; if 300 members of CiC donated 1 USD per year it would be enough to cover the cost

[NorthernFocus]

Dan, when you move a photo from one Smugmug gallery to a different gallery, doesn't that break the link to CiC? -- although it presumably does not in your case?

I can't speak to SmugMug but with Zenfolio the link is not broken when photos are moved. I also have a pBase account and I believe that is an issue with them. But those things are easily worked around.

[John 2]

Still no joy here today (09/02) and unfortunately I don't belong to any of the many hosting sites (SmugMug/Zenfolio etc.) so my activity will be unavoidably constrained until matters are sorted out. Is there any news?
(Not a complaint Dave. I agree with your assessment).

[Manfred M]

TinyPic is owned by PhotoBucket.com This posting problem extends the TinyPic website homepage itself, not just via the link here on CiC.

TinyPic site maintenance / site issues area beyond the control of anyone here at CiC. We don't have special access to anyone there.

I have posted most of my images via my Flickr account, so I personally have a work around, but understand that this option does not exist for all CiC members.

[Dave Humphries]

~ with Zenfolio the link is not broken when photos are moved. I also have a pBase account and I believe that is an issue with them.

Not in my experience Dan.

My direct link url looks like http: // www .pbase.com/dhumphries/image/164912695/original.jpg
I had to insert a few spaces to prevent it becoming a link.

Where:
a) the numeric part is a unique image number that doesn't change if I move or copy it within my site
b) the word "original" could be replaced by "small", "medium" or "large" to display at other sizes (only when they are smaller than original)
... and "large" seems to be 800px on longest edge, while "medium" is 400px and "small" is 160px, but I never use these options due to the issues regarding sharpness.

[NorthernFocus]

Good you clarified the pBase question, Dave. It's been a long time since I've linked to my account.

[Geoff F]

Sandy. Returning to your test upload here. That has come out very clear and almost at full screen size on my monitor.

The images in P base galleries show basic exif information such as camera used, shutter speed, aperture and Iso. You can also add as much extra information as you wish in the Image Description panel before uploading.

[skitterbug]

Sandy. Returning to your test upload here. That has come out very clear and almost at full screen size on my monitor.

The images in P base galleries show basic exif information such as camera used, shutter speed, aperture and Iso. You can also add as much extra information as you wish in the Image Description panel before uploading.

Thank you Geoff for letting me know that my uploaded image is a successful display. I'll continue to edit my pics in that size then. It will save space on the net and maybe reduce the chance of thievery! <chuckle>

And you found my note to you on Pbase! Wow! I'm still considering Pbase hosting. TinyPic is still not taking any images.....

Have a great day!

[davidedric]

As of of now, the Tinypic web site seems to be back. Now to try an upload.

[davidedric]

No.Failure.

[NorthernFocus]

pBase is about as simple and inexpensive an option as can be found on the web. Very straight forward and I pay $25/yr. Not sure what the storage limit is but I have a couple thousand images on there and haven't hit the limit. I used it for years until I opened a Zenfolio business account for image sales. Now it's simply easier to us the Zen account for linking images here. The cost is several times that of pBase.

[GBO25]

Forgetting about linking via other sites wouldn't you think that Tinypic or Photobucket who own them, would put a post up on their site acknowledging that they have a problem. If they don't admit it then they have no respect for their paying or free customers..
I've searched everywhere and can find no reference from the companies involved that they have a problem

There is a mention at http://blog.photobucket.com/status/ Where Photobucket say they've fixed a problem but there are plenty of comments below it that say they definitely have not.

Time to find another way I think and I'm not going to upload extra images to my flickr account just to post them here. That's needless doubling up.