Image Sharing Sites

Thanks, Jim.  I am not attempting to copy the image, but rather the link to the image.

So, if I click on the uploaded image, the site shows me only that image on the screen.  Then I click on "Share", then "Get link", and "Copy".  After copying the link to the image, I paste that into the URL line in the "Insert Image" window on TSF.  This process is almost identical to what I do on PB, with the only difference being that PB works and GP doesn't, at least for me.

This is what the copied link looks like:

photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO-tieb-s8ZmdfzSyCBvyTlIysGvGZrsn9Eiaud8_l33zZMWwJ2RDL0C6XY_5NG9A/photo/AF1QipOsEvB5AM-KKEYJ0Wh34yS9k5QtfJbW7TpDYUmA?key=MDhkcDlXZzlFLVhTc2N4M0tBREJaUmpVSU5LdDFR

Thanks, Postmaster, that would seem to explain the problem.

I think I will look back through some of @falshung's other suggestions and try to find a site that offers all of the services in one place.  Thanks again!

Test shared from Google Photos. It seems to work for me.   I did not use share feature since it gives you access to entire gallery but had image view and then copied link address. I use smug mug for other photos but may use this method for stamp images.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, Al, but I cannot see the image that you posted.  All I can see on TSF in your post is what looks like a grayed-out version of a "Do Not Enter" or "Wrong Way" road sign, which is a gray circle with a white rectangle in the middle of it.  I assume that that is not what you posted.....

I'm familiar with Google Photos as it is my image hosting choice.  I find it fairly straightforward - there must be some small detail that's going haywire with your attempts at posting.

First, when you're looking at your image in Google Photos, right-click on the image and that will bring up a context menu.  You need to choose "Copy image address" (or whatever similar command, various versions of Windows might have various ways of saying the same thing - if you're on a Mac, you'll need to get help from somebody other than me!).  This will paste the image's Google Photos URL on your clipboard.



Now you need to put that URL into your post here on TSF.  When you're posting images stored on Google Photos here, you need to choose the blue "Reply" button on the right side of the posting area - if you don't, you're stuck in the "Quick Reply" mode and you aren't given the option of posting images, videos, URLs, etc.  Google Photos URLs don't have a ".jpg" at the end so the forum's ProBoards software doesn't know that you have an image.  You have to click the blue "Reply" button in order to get to the icons that allow you to specify image URL locations.

Click on the little "Insert Image" icon, 3rd from left in the pile of icons at the far right.  It looks sort of like a landscape in a picture frame - hovering your cursor over those icons should bring up alternate text that tells you what the icons do (in order from the left, you have "Link", "Email", "Insert Image", "Insert Video", etc.).  This brings up a small dialog box that you can use to insert your image URL.  Click inside the "Image URL:" text box to get the cursor in the right place (I also get rid of the "http://" that is pre-written there, if you don't you might manage to ruin the URL syntax).  Then right-click to bring up a context menu and choose "Paste".



This will put the Google Photos URL currently on your clipboard into that text box.  Then click on the "Insert Image" button (or just hit Enter) and the ProBoards software will figure out the correct codes to treat your URL as an image location.


The image will then show up.  The image is going to appear where you had the cursor when you clicked on the "Insert Image" icon.  I habitually enter three blank lines and then put my cursor on the middle one before I insert the image - that gives me a blank line above and below my image and makes it easy to continue typing afterward.



One final thing - sometimes you might accidentally click on the "Preview" or "BBCode" links at the bottom of the Reply window.  This just allows you to have a look at the codes that the ProBoards software uses to make your images (or videos, or URL links, or whatever) show up properly.  If your picture disappears and is replaced by an ugly string of characters, that means you clicked on the "BBCode" link and you need to choose "Preview" to get back to seeing pretty pictures again.



Ryan

Several of us are unable to see anything other than a "do not enter" icon so I'd recommend you reconsider your approach. When I was using Imageshack several years ago, some members were only able to see a frog's image and that prompted my switch to Photobucket.

Beryllium Guy ,

I just tested an upload using Google Photo and it worked so I thought I'd post a description of the steps I followed -- maybe it will help.


First, I uploaded an image and this is how it appeared after doing so -- I'll call this the "album view."




Next, I double-clicked (left) on the image and got this expanded view.




I right-clicked on the expanded image view and selected "Copy image address" from the pop-up box that had appeared.



I then clicked on the forum's "Create Post" button and selected the "insert image" button in the menu bar.




When the image box opened, I pasted the image address that had been copied from Google Photo into the box.



Clicking on the "insert image button yielded the following in my post:



Note that if you right-click on the image while in the "album view" you will not get the "copy image address" option -- this might be what is preventing you from posting the image.




I hope this helps. 

No image here, just the little box with black square and white x.

Wow, Michael, I am not sure what's going on, then.  Sorry.  I thought I finally had it figured out.  Maybe it's back to Photobucket for me....

Something strange and inconsistent is going on with this.

Well, as I said to Michael, this is both strange and inconsistent.  I think I have had enough fooling around with Google Photos.  I am ready to try something else.

All right, I have followed @falshung's suggestion, and I have opened an account with Postimage.  Can you see the 1200dpi scan of Hong Kong, Scott #47 below?

Great, Steve, thanks!  I think I will start using Postimage now, especially for any high-resolution images.  As Nelson told me, Postimage seems more user-friendly than Photobucket, and it doesn't have all of those annoying pop-up advertisements, which constantly interrupt me when I am trying to work on the site.

Thanks to all who have offered advice and helped me to get my image compression issues resolved!

Postimage 600 dpi scanned & uploaded 5 mins ago

All my GVI I stamp posts are from Postimage

General ones & newsletter are from Imgur

One time ones are from Picpar - the easiest & fastest but no storage

My Forgery Blog/Website is WordPress, the program stores the images on my dedicated server in 3 size formats so losing the pictures, which can happen with 3rd party sites, is minimized

Photobucket - they compress any high res images
None of the ones I use compress, I ran tests on all of them. As a plus they are free and there are no upload limits.

Actually I also use an excellent German (Abload) one (for photography) and a Russian one (Yandex) but they would have a language issue for most users  I'm a little fussy about picture quality and not having all my pics in one place

I scan & post everything in JPEG usually 85% quality
Saving as a TIF would not make any difference for a forum post other than making the file much bigger.
PNG format I use for transparencies like the background shadow images in the newsletter
For photography I work in RAW format images

Thanks for your comments, Big Blue (jkjblue).  Please find a new "pristine" image posted below.  How does it look?

It happens to be Portugal, Scott #426.   It is engraved and has lots of detail.  I have scanned it at 1200dpi, using the "optimized for image quality" setting on the scanner, and I used the "do not resize my image" feature on PostImage.  Jim or anyone else, please let me know how the image quality looks to you.  Thanks!

Thanks for the comments, classicalstamps.  If this latest image doesn't look that good, then I am not sure what more I can do.

To answer your question, as I mentioned when I made the last post, I specifically used the "do not resize my image" option on PostImage.