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britinusa
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5404 Posts

Initially Posted - 01/16/2013 :  19:07:43  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Ok, venting a little.

The [url="https://www.catalina-capri-25s.net/cgi-local/MBR_gallery.cgi"]'Photo Gallery - <b>New</b>[/url] feature has now been online since August 2012. But very few are using it to post their pics - What's Up?

With a lot of boats on the hard, you guys (and gals) must have plenty of time to post pics and share them with the rest of us.

Why am I suggesting you do that?

Simple! Most of the albums on line right now are ones I have put up. And I'm feeling guilty!

We have had over 346,000 image views, including 6,400 Gallery views, and 8,002 Album views.

So the pics that are posted are really well received.

Now, get that creative juice out and put your sailing, project and Racing pics into the system. They are there for the long haul. Unlike pics posted on other sites that might go away or get shrunk, your pics here become valued archives relevant to the owners of our boats. The Gallery system is becoming a great resource for all of us.

So, come on! Post moving pics of your boat under sail, cold and dry pics of your boat on the hard, proud pics of your glossy hull at the dock, salivating pics of your barbecue on the rails, clever pics of your cabin carvings, puzzling pics of your boat heeling the wrong way, amazing sunset pics of your boat on the hook, lazy pics of your boat on the ball. You must have some!

Ok, vent closed.



My thanks to those that have taken advantage of the system (another value to membership!)

Paul

Joint Decision. (Sold)
PO C250WB 2005 Sail # 841.


Moved up to C34 Eximius

Updated August 2015

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iwillnotsubmit
1st Mate

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64 Posts

Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  07:18:15  Show Profile
If it was easier to post pics, I would post all mine. I am not very computer literate. Funny, but last year I built a new balanced rudder for my boat, it works great, but I am clueless when it comes to figuring out computers.

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awetmore
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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  11:00:23  Show Profile
I put the photos on my own photo hosting site and link to them here. I think most people probably have their own photo hosting already and don't want to upload them twice (once to their own photo site, once to the forums).

I've also noticed that photos hosted here and linked to in the forums often download very slowly. I don't know if this is because they are being scaled down to forum resolution on the fly or something else.

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  12:00:08  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Thanks for the responses Robert & Alex.

Totally understandable about the options to host pics here or elsewhere.

Uploading pics is easy, but you do have to be a paid member of the Association.

As far as 'download very slowly', when a member uploads an image, it is stored in it's full size glory, but when displayed in the Albums and in the forum the smaller copy is used (500px x 400px) so they display very quickly. However, if the display includes a link to the full size image and a visitor clicks on that link, then the download speed is really dependant upon the full size of the image, it can be pretty big!

One big benefit of uploading to the Association website is the long term storage. That makes them available to owners down the road, we have all seen the consequence of images being shrunk because they were 'getting old'.

I anticipate that years from now, visitors looking at our boats will have a huge archive of images to view that were posted by members that joined the Admiralty years prior. Each picture tells volumes about our boats and also implicitly shows some of the history as we make mods and post new pics (See Henk's pics for an example of that)

Personally, I don't spend enough time on our boat, so seeing the sailing/racing pics posted by others allows me to participate vicariously. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
<center>[url="https://www.catalina-capri-25s.net/cgi-local/MBR_gallery.cgi?Album+1000+75"]
<b>Thanksgiving</b>[/url]
Short long weekend sail Thanksgiving Weekend 2012.
Friday through Monday. Heavy down to zero. Great weekend. Nothing broke!</center>

Paul

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Davy J
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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  13:43:48  Show Profile
For me, six or seven years of using Photobucket to post pictures is just a habit. It just doesn't come to mind. It's not that I don't want to use the gallery, it's just a reflex of doing it the old way. Plus, maybe, just lazy. I'd need to figure it out!!

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zeil
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Canada
1314 Posts

Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  17:32:42  Show Profile
Paul: Just read your mid-winter trip report... thank you for sharing
...am envious

We'd love to transfer all our 50 or so boat related albums with hundreds of photo's covering the last 8 years from Shutterfly to this forum.

In fact I tried it some time ago without success.

Perhaps there is a reasonable fast way of "how to transfer", from Shutterfly. If so... we'll start at it right away.

It would make sense, as long as we own a 25ft Catalina, to have all information in one place.


1) Will there be a future charge consideration, nominal or otherwise, for storing, admin., etc., for this service?
2) Are non-members able to access this as well?

<center>[url="https://www.catalina-capri-25s.net/cgi-local/MBR_system.cgi?VM+2110-1563"]
Click to View Full Sized Image[/url]</center>
Trent/Severn waterway 2007 Approaching Orillia, Ont. after a stormy and wild crossing of Lake Sincoe with the mast down. This photo was taken by the people on a large yacht who kept an eye out for us while crossing lake Simcoe.


Edited by - zeil on 01/17/2013 18:13:50
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glivs
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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  18:40:42  Show Profile
Paul, I think the idea is great and would like to contribute but I have an issue on my end in downloading images/videos of any kind from any source... next to impossible unless the file is very small. I tried to view the pics you recently posted (JD canvas) but gave up the first couple of tries. Eventually, I clicked your link and walked away. When I came back an hour later the pics were waiting for me. Browsing the Gallery is out of the question.
The problem started a few months back about when I updated to Windows 7. Whether the issue is virus detector, router or feng shui is unclear. My wife has the same issue with her new Dell here at home, but not at work. So...do I start planning spring boat projects or tackle the connection issue...

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  19:09:31  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Gerry, I am not aware of any issues that would slow the download as you describe.

Henk recently published an album with multiple pics that he has also posted in the forum. The images load, about 30+ images in a single album, it loads for me in about 15 seconds. Each of the ablum pics are either 550px x 400 px or much smaller thumbnails.

Earlier this week, I was working with one of my website clients who was having trouble downloading his email. I expressed my surprise but asked if he was downloading a lot of stuff at the same time, perhaps a family member was downloading a movie. He checked! They were downloading 5 major sized full HD movies all at the same time! He stopped the download and his email arrived almost immediately. There can be many reasons for slow downloads, but my experience is that it is not our site that is slow to deliver.

FYI, when I created the Canvas album, I uploaded all of the images in a single step, the upload, 7 images each 1024px wide, took less than 55seconds.

I often use this site http://www.speedtest.net/ to test my net speed. Right now I'm getting 18.70Mbps down and 2.77Mbps upload speeds on my omgfast net connection which is above promised levels.

I know it doesn't help, but just thought I would share.

Paul

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  19:26:53  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by zeil</i>
<br />Paul: Just read your mid-winter trip report... thank you for sharing
...am envious

We'd love to transfer all our 50 or so boat related albums with hundreds of photo's covering the last 8 years from Shutterfly to this forum.

In fact I tried it some time ago without success.

Perhaps there is a reasonable fast way of "how to transfer", from Shutterfly. If so... we'll start at it right away.

It would make sense, as long as we own a 25ft Catalina, to have all information in one place.


1) Will there be a future charge consideration, nominal or otherwise, for storing, admin., etc., for this service?
2) Are non-members able to access this as well?

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Henk, 1) I see no reason for there to be a charge under the current site hosting offering that we use. We have substantial bandwidth and moving to an unlimited bandwidth option would be less than $10 additional per month.

2) Anyone visiting our site can view the images. They are restricted to be viewed on our own domains (catalina-capri-25s), viewed from posting on other sites will just show a pirate flag (my work there :)

Only paid members can upload pics to our site, but for several reasons, we do not allow non-members to upload, including that fact that it is an incentive to pay for membership. It seems to be working.

Sorry, no easy way to import from shutterfly, however, members can upload 10 images at a time, the multi upload feature does limit the upload to either no album or a single album.

I encourage anyone uploading to take the time to complete the image title and description. Not only does it add to the value of the albums, but also improves the search function.

When I developed the gallery system for the Association, my intent was to provide added value to the paid members, and to visitors. The rate of picture views does amaze me, and this means we are getting the information out there even more, expanding the outreach of the forum, which is extremely well positioned in the search engines.

My original post in this thread reported that we had 346,000 image views since August 1st 2012. Today, that number is already: 351344 Image Views. Or: Thursday 17 January 3139 views, and that was at 18:20PST.

Paul

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awetmore
Master Marine Consultant

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Response Posted - 01/17/2013 :  22:07:18  Show Profile
Paul: The reduced size ones download slowly too. Are you storing cached versions of the reduced size ones on the server, or are they being resized on the fly?

I'm on a fairly high speed connection (20mbit) and looking at the reduced size images that you post, not the full size. The example one in this thread takes a couple of seconds to load where photos posted from other hosting sites do load immediately.

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/18/2013 :  05:18:34  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Alex, my signature pic (below) is one of the smaller images.

Paul

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DaveR
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Response Posted - 01/18/2013 :  09:03:44  Show Profile  Visit DaveR's Homepage
I get the same lag that Alex describes and am on a healthy win7 pc, good connection. Very nice once it loads though.

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awetmore
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Response Posted - 01/18/2013 :  10:20:40  Show Profile
Paul,

I'm pretty sure the difference is that your system is caching the thumbnails (necessary to draw full galleries fast), but not caching the versions show in forum posts. This means that your server needs to convert it on the fly, and it's doing that more slowly than my connection (and apparently Dave's connection) can download it. I'd also add that the conversions that it is doing a pretty low quality. If you scroll up and look at the photo titled "Thursday" you can see that the pinstripe lines have a lot of jaggies, when a good conversion should look like this:


Here is yours for side by side comparison:


Rather than just having me complain you are welcome to email me (alex at phred dot org) if you'd like some assistance in trying to make this better. I'm a professional developer and picky about image processing. I can't dedicate a lot of time, but might be able to do some simple things to improve speed and image quality.

I've had these thoughts since the system first came online, but didn't want to mention them until you asked for some feedback.

Edited by - awetmore on 01/18/2013 10:23:45
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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/18/2013 :  15:57:48  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Thanks Alex.
Although I do not experience any slow downloads on any of my networks. The image processing is a bit of an issue. I do save the original upload converted to a png file, but use a linux library for the conversion(resize and cropping) I'll email you privately.

Just to ensure no ambiguity, the images are processed upon upload, not on the fly.

The good news is that I can reprocess the images in a batch if necessary.

Paul

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glivs
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Response Posted - 01/18/2013 :  16:56:31  Show Profile
Thanks Paul for the speed test link. The problem does not appear to be my network connection (or movies). Next likely guess is my router.

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/19/2013 :  09:45:54  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Just uploaded as an example.

This image was taken by my wife using her Nikon D3100 DSLR camera.
I imported the image to my laptop and edited it with PaintShop Pro (a Corel Program) and resized it to 550 pix wide then changed the canvas size so that it was 550px by 400 px (the size used in our gallery album viewe).
Then I uploaded it using the member image upload feature.

<center></center>

The image processing on the web site was effectively limited to copying the file, no re-resizing was needed, the program would have figured that out automatically.

This next image was uploaded at 1024px by 683px and so the system did resize it and pad it with white top and bottom.
<center></center>

Notice how the straight lines (striping and shrouds in particular) are clean in the top image and ragged in the 2nd pic. This demonstrates how the best results are when the image uploaded is nearer to 550px by 400px and the minimum of resizing has to be done.

This last example, shows an image that was uploaded at 550px by 367px so it just needed padding added to make the size 550px by 400px. The upload program manages that automatically.

<center></center>

Not bad at all!

So, to get the best results, resize your images on your PC before uploading them. Ideally, the image will be 550px wide and no more than 400px tall.

If you really want folks to be able see the detail, it's ok to upload an image at it's original size.
Here's an example. The uploaded image is 4608px by 3072px, so it will be resized to about 12%, a pretty heavy resize! In this case I have used the code to display the album image but link to the full size image. If you click on the image you can see the Full size image.
<center>[url="https://www.catalina-capri-25s.net/cgi-local/MBR_system.cgi?VM+1000-1577"]
Click to View Full Sized Image[/url]</center>

So that describes the state of the system right now. To get the best image for the forum upload images 550x400 or 550wide and less than 400 tall. But for really big detailed images, upload full size and use the link to full size.

I hope that helps.

Paul

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/19/2013 :  15:29:10  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Thanks to a Suggestion from alex, I have made a change in the image processing for all newly uploaded images.

here's the result of uploading the same very large images shown earlier, but with the new processing.

Just to recap:
I uploaded an image that is 4608px by 3072px.
Here's the album sized image:
<center></center>
Here's the thumbnail sized image:
<center></center>
and here's the album sized image that links to the full size version.
<center>[url="https://www.catalina-capri-25s.net/cgi-local/MBR_system.cgi?VM+1000-1584"]
Click to View Full Sized Image[/url]</center>

The improvement in the Album and Thumbnail is great!

I will write a routine that will upgrade all of the previously uploaded images during the next week.

Thanks Alex!

Paul

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zeil
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Response Posted - 01/19/2013 :  17:16:00  Show Profile

Thanks a lot for all your work Paul...

Here's a question: Just a couple of days ago I uploaded some 40-60 images without caption or titles to be placed later in a new folder called "mods"

Yesterday I made a new folder called "Mods", and wish to place, now that I have a minute, all uploaded images in the "Mods", folder, not just one at the time but.. preferably all in one go or... failing that 5-10 at the same time. Placing image by image will take too much time

However, I seem unable to place or search for even one of them in the "Mod", folder since they were uploaded without caption or title...

Any suggestions?

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britinusa
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Response Posted - 01/19/2013 :  18:55:13  Show Profile  Visit britinusa's Homepage
Good Question Henk.
First, I suggest making multiple 'Albums' as it might take some folks toooo long to download the images if they were all in one album. So perhaps 'Woodworking','Soft Stuff','Topside Helpers' etc. etc.

The good news is that it is easy to add images to an album.

Here's the process to follow if you have already uploaded the images.
Step 1: Create the album.
Login &gt; Click on Manage my Albums &gt; Click on Add New Album &gt; fill out the form (as much as possible), Save it.

Step 2: Add previously uploaded images to the album:
Login &gt; Click on Manage my Albums &gt; Look for the album you previously created and click on the Icon (Album Contents)

Now you will see a list of the images that are already in that Album (initially None!)

To Add pics to that album, click on the "Add Image to this Album" button.
A form will show where you can type in text to search for images.
If you leave it blank, it will show all of your images.
Now you will see a list of the images that match your search
(This is another reason for giving the images titles and captions, if you have hundreds of images, you can reduce the list to pertinent results)

For each image you want to add, just click on icon on the right side of the list for that image.

Once added, it will be removed from the list.

That way you can quickly add many images to the album.

When done, just click on the 'Back To Album Content' button and you'll see the album list of contents.

If you have not yet done so, then now is the time to publish the album so that it shows up in the 'Recent Albums' and the other Galleries.

To publish the album:
Login &gt; Click on Manage My Albums &gt; Click on the for that album and change it's status from Unpublished to Published.

Once done, your album should show up [url="https://www.catalina-capri-25s.net/cgi-local/MBR_gallery.cgi?RecentAblums"]here[/url]

Hope this helps.

There are many more 'Help' notes under the 'Instructions' link when you are logged into the member's area.

Paul



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awetmore
Master Marine Consultant

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Response Posted - 01/19/2013 :  21:42:25  Show Profile
Glad to help Paul. The new resized images look a lot better!


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