Computer Problems and\or Advice 2008 to 2011

[Tony Willis]

Help !!! 

Untill recently I had no trouble posting photos on the forum, although I did have to turn down the quality settings on the camera to about mid-way.
Now ,even trying to post just one photo I keep getting the message that the file is too large.
One such photo is the Pleione on my profile, but it loaded to this OK 
Any ideas ?

Eric

I take my pictures at maximum size and then resize them for the forum using 'Irfanview' .This is a simple free program which always gets excellent reviews

[ranunculus]

Just as a matter of interest, Eric ... I presume they are still being saved as JPGS and not as something that cannot be recognised by this forum?

[Eric Locke]

Hi

Thanks everbody for your help.


I did not realise I could view the file size of each photo on windows .This is a great help.
For some  reason it appears ASDsee was not re-sizing my images for a while, but now seems to be working again.    Perhaps I should try one of the other alternatives mentioned.
I must now try to take photos on a higher resolution and re-size ,because in the past these would not post either ,even after re-sizing. My camera has 5 resolution settings between 640 x480 and 2592 x 1944 ,with either 3 or 4 quality settings for each .In the past I have had to take shots at a mid-range for them to post after re-sizing.
To test all is working again , I will include here the photo on my profile.

Once again thanks to you all.

Eric

[Eric Locke]

Hi

I wonder if anyone could point me in the right direction to find a site I can download a copyright programme ?
I have had problems ,mainly on Ebay, of others using my photos without asking first .

Eric

[Maggi Young]

Eric, I think that someone recommended a programme when we discussed the problem of photo theft in relation to Galanthus pictures.... I'll try to find it......



 Mark Smyth wrote this.......

I used to use a progrmme called Picture Shark that automatically puts a water mark across imges. Although it is opaque many people said it spoilt the images. I thought it didnt. I'll look for some and post them
http://www.picture-shark.com/watermark_freeware_image_protect_gallery_default.htm

[Eric Locke]

Thanks Maggi

I do seem to remember reading this sometime ago, but if I remember correctly the copyright information could easily be removed on the programme mentioned ?

Eric

[Maggi Young]

Yes, I believe that was the case.....    ...... but it seems that is possible in many types...
 Those Forumists using the copyright markings on their photos might tell us what they are using?

[Rodger Whitlock]

I wonder if anyone could point me in the right direction to find a site I can download a copyright programme ? I have had problems ,mainly on Ebay, of others using my photos without asking first .

Nearly any image editing program should be capable of this if it has two facilities: (1) the ability to add text to an image and (2) being able to apply a "mask" to an image. You create an b/w image with the text you want, then use that as a mask on the image you want to mark, then fiddle with things like color, brightness, contrast, and gamma. The mask will ensure that these changes are applied only to the text area.  The details of menus and such vary from program to program.

Some graphics editors may have a watermark feature to do this directly; look for a "watermark" feature and see it does what you want.

Or you can just emblazon your image directly with appropriate text using the text tool.

"The Gimp" is a powerful free image editor, but I don't know if there's a windows version of it.

[t00lie]

I'm not that computer savy so hopefully this makes sense.

Wanting to free up some space on my computer i recently purchased a portable external hard drive and proceeded to copy my pictures folder totaling over 3 GB to the new hardware.

Unfortunately during this time there was a problem and i had to reboot the computer prior to completing the copying/saving with the result that when i returned to the my pictures folder it was empty---no trace of pics of my field trips of the last 3/4 years !!!!!! .

No problem i thought --my automatic backups were going to an online storage website so i'd be able to restore all my missing pics from that site----well after 2 days of frustration no help there --it took 8 hours just to get to 60% before the restoring came to a go slow/stand still.....

Another go overnight and we got to 20% before another stand still---now i have exceeded my broadband limit and speeds have dropped to dial up ,(maybe because of the attempts at restoring???).

I then decided to reduce the size of the required restore by going into the storage website and identifying the individual folders i considered essential----no luck there either as i could only locate a small number of earlier dated field trips which i already had on C/Ds   

So in the process of 'flagging' all of it away this morning i decided to check the new external hard drive and bingo what should be there but 3GB of pictures.

What a relief --now why didn't i check the new hardware as a first priority    .

Cheers dave.

[gote]

Dave,
Since you think you found your pics again this is perhaps unnecessary info.
If you were very unlucky only the register was transferred to your external disk not the pictures. I sincerely hope this is not the case.
On the other hand: The pictures were not wiped from your disk. Only the register was.
As long as you do not write anything on top of it they can be recovered. The thing is to avoid overwriting at all cost.
I would have taken out the C: disk bought a new disk and put the OP system on that. Then I would have put in the old disk as E: or whatever and used recovery software on that.

I have always been worried about web site storage. Suppose the website goes bankrupt. What happens? Presently an external disk seems to me to be the best answer but we all have our idiosyncracies.
It is not difficult to write a program that does an automatic backup of all new/changed files and there are probably many available. 

Göte
 

[Martinr]

Anyone using Internet Explorer 8 yet? It keeps appearing in my 'downloads ready for your computer' tray. I'd like to know it's worth it before I change.

[JohnnyD]

Had the awful experience of an SD card which was corrupted.
All the pics were taken with our Lumix FZ18, and some had been on there a long time!
Googled 'corrupted SD' and found a piece of software called 'Zero Assumption Recovery', which has a free (yes, totally free  facility for the recovery of pics from SD cards.
Tried it yesterday and recovered over 260 pics from a 1gb card.
It took around 45 minutes and around ten were not recovered - but that's a lot better than losing all of them.
The actual programme was ZAR 8.4. Look to choose the specific bit which is the free element as you go through the procedure.
Johnny

[Diane Clement]

Anyone using Internet Explorer 8 yet? It keeps appearing in my 'downloads ready for your computer' tray. I'd like to know it's worth it before I change. 

We've been testing IE8 at work this week - I'll let you know the outcome.
IE7 is reported to have a lot of bugs

[Martinr]

Thanks Diane, I shall be patient and await your words of wisdom

[Diane Clement]

Thanks Diane, I shall be patient and await your words of wisdom   

My technical advisor (that sounds posh!) has advised me today not to go with IE8 as the opinions are very mixed.  We have decided to go with IE7 for the time being.