Saturday, September 27, 2008

Some of This, Some of That

I feel good! Yesterday I completed my top, now called Raspberry Rumspringa (it's the second quilt in the Rumspringa series. I just love that word. Rumspringa, rumspringa, rumspringa.) And no, you don't get to see it.

We had sunshine and I got out a bunch of quilts to take better photos of them. Not great photos, but better. While I had the camera out, of course I had to take a pic of baby Pokey:


You know how I showed you a pic of Nancy's quilt that she made at Gwen Marston's retreat? Well Nancy has now started her blog - woohoo! It's called True Blue Quilting Nana. She's got pictures and a story from retreat, so go say hello and encourage her to post even more!

[edited to answer Clare's question: No, this isn't the Nancy who's antique quilts appeared in Liberated String Quilts. I still hope that Nancy starts a blog too!]

The Priority Hope Challenge is going great - come on over and check out some awesome little quilts. There's still plenty of time to make one of these yourself.

I'm cogitating and plotting another class. I'll fill you in soon (and if I don't, jab me with a stick).

The rest of this post will be about photos and space limitations on Blogger.

I have been posting over three years now and have only used up 16% of my alloted 1GB of space on Blogger. But, having said that, I resize my photos BEFORE I upload them to Blogger.

In Picasa, I edit my photos and SAVE them. I name them and then go under FILE and choose the option to Export Picture to Folder. It gives you the choice of what size to make the photo. For snapshots and almost every one of my pics, I now choose 480 pixels. That's a nice size. For pictures of quilts that I want you to be able to see the detail, then I'll go to 800 or 1024 pixels. Very rarely have I gone about that.

So I choose a size and send my photo to a folder called Websize. I only upload to Blogger from THAT folder.

I put my pics on my blog using blogger itself. I click the little square that looks like a landscape and it pops the Photo Upload tool. I choose the browse my computer option and always have my photos in the center and LARGE.

Now Picasa and Blogger will take the full huge megapixel photo and resize it to fit the screen properly, but they don't resize the number of pixels. So you're still taking up all that allotted space. How do you know how big your photos actually are? Go to your blog and click on a photo - if it comes up huge, bigger than your computer screen then you know you're loading big photos. Click on the pic of Pokey up above. When that photo launches, it won't be much bigger than how you're seeing it in the blog post.

Some other things to know. As soon as you've uploaded a photo into a blog post, that space counts against you even if you choose to delete it and never publish it in a post. Space gets used by UPLOADS. So going back and deleting old blog posts? Won't work. No point in going and resizing photos either. The space is already counted against you.

So the moral of the story is, you have plenty of photo space for your blog. Just make sure that you resize your photos and make them smaller before you send them into a blog post or the Picasa online photo album.

And I just hope that none of you have the terrible time loading photos that Giraffe Dreams Carol E. had (has?). That's how I learned that it's uploads that count against you.

Good luck. Did that answer the questions?

I'm editing this post to answer a couple of questions.

How do I know how much space I've used? Click on that little landscape icon when you're editing a blog post. The Photo Upload Tool will pop up. At the very bottom, next to the orange button it will tell you what percentage of your space you've used up. Mine says: You are currently using 161MB (15%) of your 1024MB.

OR you can follow the directions here - but my way is a lot faster. It also says that if you have to buy more storage space it costs $20 USD per year for 10 GB.

20 comments:

Lynda said...

Looking forward to the next class!

Kieny The Dutchlady said...

I always use Picassa to resize my pictures and to upload them. I write my blog on my notebook at home and when I click on the uploaded pictures they stay medium sized. However, last week when I was in my husband's office I noticed that on his computer my pictures came up really big?

Joyce said...

What happens when we use up all our space? I am thinking of having my blog made into a book just in case. I am afraid Blogger will suddenly disappear or start charging an arm and a leg.

Clare said...

I may be getting my wires crossed here, but is this the same Nancy whose quilts are in Liberated Strings?

There are a few bloggers who load their photos up full size and I've had to stop reading as the blog takes an age to load.

Wooo hooo for sun, but I'm going through my blues box for my Hope quilt.

Karen 's World said...

Very interesting information. Thanks for explaining how it all works. How can you tell how much space you have used up? I'm looking around on my dashboard but not sure where to look.

Carol E. said...

Wow, I'm glad I helped educate some people. Thanks for sharing your method. I'll admit I don't really like Picasa (it confuses me) so I have not used it much. However, I also have discovered a somewhat satisfactory solution to my uploading problem. For some reason if I upload one and it's "funky," I delete that one, save my text and exit from blogger, and when I come back in, it uploads perfectly. weird.

Tonya Ricucci said...

I've edited the post to answer some of your questions.

Stephanie D said...

Good information--I might just have to bookmark this post for later!

Rosalyn Manesse said...

thanks for the tip. I have Picture Project which is the software for my Nikon camera, and I tried the export thingy and it will also make the photos smaller. I made a "Blog" folder for them. Next time I post a photo, I'll give it a test.

YankeeQuilter said...

I think I'll have to print this post for later...I haven't edited anything and I am quite sure that I am burning through my space quickly!

Fran said...

Thanks for the info Tonya, being new at the game all this is very valuable information to me. I am deffinitely going to bookmark this page. Good memory,just short..(*LOL*)
Now I'm off to go check out your friend Nancy's blog.

Have fun in the sun while it lasts.

~~Fran...:c)

quiltmom anna said...

Thanks for all the information, Tonya and the heads up about space restrictions.
I have begun to resize my pictures( my techie son showed me how to do that) but I will probably have to have him create a cheat sheet for me so I remember all the directions LOL
I love the picture of Pokey the cat.
If you want to see Mars the cat- I have posted her picture on my blog.

I still haven't figured out how to reply to people on my blog - except by going to their email or posting in my own comments. I am sure there is a really obvious way but I haven't discovered it.

Hope things are good in Paris these days.
Regards,
Anna

Threeundertwo said...

The photo advice is very helpful - thanks!

But I really wanted to comment and tell you I love your cat. What gorgeous eyes!

Sharon said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! for all the good info on posting pictures. I knew some of it, but not all. Still new at some of this.
Your promise of another class has me drooling. I hope I have time for the next one!
Pokey is such a gorgeous cat! And glad you had sunshine! Yay!

Twisted Quilts said...

Thanks for the suggestions about pics. I what you described last night and it worked perfectly. Much better. Thanks also for all your encouragement.

Browndirtcottage said...

thanks tonya.....i'm going right now to try this......as usual....your info is SO right on!

Victoria Findlay Wolfe said...

Thanks AGAIN for the wonderful info.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that information! I've saved it to the desktop so next time I post I can do this!

Magpie Sue said...

Ton, do you know whether you have to have a Picasa online photo album to get the pix to enlarge when clicked on by a viewer? I tried your suggestions but they don't seem to have worked to get that result. At least, not this first time...

jovaliquilts said...

Thanks for the resizing photo tips. I haven't been using Picasa (hasn't been possible with a Mac before, but maybe it is now), but I'll see if I can figure out how to resize on the system I do use.