Tutorial - taking screenshots, resizing images and uploading images

[Goofy]

Made a quick tut for friends on another site - thought it would be helpful for newcommers here too

Said i'd write up a tutorial last night........ so i suppose i better get started! Truth is there's loads of ways to do each of the things i'm about to show you - i'm just going to show you the programs and methods i personally use



Okay, first up i'll show you a simple way to Take A Screenshot

There's a few ways to do this - the old skool method is to use the printscreen button on your keyboard then open up MSpaint, paste the image then crop to size........ but i'm lazy and that takes too much time for my liking So, i use this - Easycapture

It's a freeware program and does quite a few nifty tricks. Click the link above to download the program - install the program then run it:



Simply click the "capture" tab at the top and you'll then have quite a few options in front of you, the one you'll use most often is "rectangle region" - click on it and the program will disappear allowing you to capture whatever you like. Simply click and hold the left mouse button then scroll across the image you want to capture - let go of the button when you've covered the image. The program will now reappear and the screengrab you've just captured will be in the window pane. Then you simply click file/save as, then enter a filename - easy as that. (jpeg is fine for most but png will give better quality albeit with a higher filesize).

I use this program on a regular basis, saves a load of time and of course, it's free :thumbsup2: It does plenty other things as well but i'll leave that to the rest of you to have a play around with

Resizing Pictures

Most of us nowadays have fancy phones or cameras which will generally take pretty decent pictures and quite often, they'll be rather large too! So, before posting them onto the forum you'll generally want to reduce the size of them to a more manageable size and also reduce the filesize at the same time. I'm guessing the vast majority of us will be running a PC with Windows XP, 7 or 8 on it (if you're on a MAC then go ask Apple for help :p ) so i'll show you a handy tool that will do the job in seconds!

Image re-sizer for Windows

Click the above link to download the tool then double click the downloaded .exe file to install. This resizer actually works with Windows so you don't have to open any programs to use it. Ok, now you have it installed it's a piece of cake to use! Simply right click on any image on your hard drive you wish to resize and you'll see a new option in the list called "resize pictures", click on it and a new window will pop-up:



Medium is normally fine for most pictures you'll be posting (high scores, new darts etc) but there's a few options to try - see what works for you with trial and error This same tool can also resize multiple images at the same time - lets say you have a batch of images that you want to resize, just pop them all into the same folder then click and hold the left mouse button, highlight all the images then click the right mouse button and select image resize.

There's plenty programs out there that can be used for picture resizing but i find this basic method to be easy, fast and very good

Uploading pictures

Ok, so you have the image you want to post sitting on your desktop, it's resized and ready to go - so how do you get it from your PC onto the forum? You're gonna need to find an online image host! Now, there are literally thousands of image hosts out there, some good, some bad, some indifferent. The biggest and best known full-size pic hosts are probably Imageshack, Photobucket, Tinypic, Imgur and Flickr. I'm sure many of you may wish to create and account with one of these hosts and store all your pictures with them in albums for future use - all i'm going to show you is a quick method for random throwaway images. For the purposes of this tutorial we're going to be using Imageshack, or more precisely, the Imageshack standalone uploader.

Imageshack Uploader

Click the link above to download. Once downloaded double left click the .msi file and follow the instructions to install. Once installed open the program up:



To use it simply drag-and-drop your images from your desktop (or any folder) into the box on the left then click the 'upload' button. Now, the reason i like this program so much is that you don't have to be registered to use it and it also supports multiple uploads. You can drag any amount of images into the pane and upload them all at once. Once it's finished uploading you'll get a pop-up box with various options:



For posting pictures on the forum you'll want to click on the text just below "Hotlink for forums 1", select 'copy' from the list then simply come onto the forum and right click in the reply window and select paste - easy as that.

Now, if you've uploaded more than one image at a time you'll have various options:



From the tab at the top, if you select "all images and video files" it'll give you the image codes for every image all in one go - alternatively you can select them one at a time by using the arrows just below the "file x of x" text.





Well i hope some of this will be helpful for some of you - if you have any questions about anything here feel free to ask in here or send me a pm. Cheers, Goof.

A final little tool that i almost forgot about is the Imgur Browser Extension which you can find here - http://imgur.com/apps

I've been using Firefox for a number of years, i like it due to it's mod-ability - i have a load of extensions installed and this is one i use pretty much daily. At the moment there's an extension available for Firefox and Google Chrome (although i've never tried the Chrome version i'll assume it's the same). This is a really handy tool for quickly nabbing a pic from one site and posting it on another. Once installed all you have to do is right click on any image in your browser and you'll have an option reading "Imgur - quick upload", click it and you'll instantly be taken to imgur's site and the image you've selected will automatically be uploaded, then you'll be presented with various links for your image - click and copy the text below "BBCode (message boards & forums)" then you just need to 'paste' that code onto the forum for it to show.




All the methods above are what i consider to be the fastest and easiest ways to capture, resize and upload images. Once you've done it a few times you'll get the hang of it and it will literally take you only a few seconds each time to do.

All programs posted above are open-source/freeware programs and have all been virus checked.

Feel free to ask any questions

[sebcole]

can you not just upload the saved screenshot capture from your computer?

[Fods]

Upload through this site you mean?

[sebcole]

Yes I tried, however it never accepts a pgn or jpeg file Maybe their are size restrictions?

[Dermotron]

You can't upload direct to here, you need to go via a hosting site, hence the tutorial.