A collection of guided tutorials to perfect your image before uploading to the site.

A collection of great helpful Tips and How-Tos from our experienced members.

First, you will need some type of image editing software that will let you crop an image. If you don't already have software that was included with your camera or scanner, then you can download shareware image editing software that can do the trick. You don't have to buy an expensive image editing software suite to crop and resize an image.

For this tutorial I will be using adobe photoshop to crop my image. The technical procedure will be different for each software product, so I will focus on concept only. Starting with this painting of an alien girl, I want to create a thumbnail that will be interesting. Simply reducing the size of the image to 80 pixels is not in my best interest here. Although some images are perfectly suited for a simple reduction in size, in my opinion, this one isn’t.

You may be wondering what, if any, advantages you have by going through this lengthy process. Well, there are some really good reasons:

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When someone sees a thumbnail, they see the whole thing at a glance, not at the original quality and resolution that you intended, but at a severly reduced quality of presentation.

[*]Many browsers, intentionally or not, will prejudge the image and decide if clicking on the link and seeing the full view is worth wasting their precious internet time or not. Some thumbnails don't really give a good impression of the full image either, so browsers selectively pass the image by to something else that looks more interesting. This means less views for your image and less comments, votes and feedback.

more to come...