Tinweasel
23rd Dec 05, 1:03 PM
Image Guidelines:
Images of miniatures posted must be in focus. This will prevent all sorts of unnecessary hardship, as Forum Members will give you grief about it. It honestly defeats the purpose of asking for comments/suggestions and/or displaying your painting abilities if the pictures aren't even in focus.
For the sake of not hogging file space, bandwidth, downloading time, etc. with unnecessary content in pictures, it is highly recommended that you crop excess "wasted space" out of your images before you post them. Please use some sort of photo editing program (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Windows Photo Editor) and crop your images down to a manageable size prior to posting.
If your posted image is greater than 800 pixels across, either link to it, or make a smaller preview version. This is both to make viewing threads more pleasant, and to prevent breaking the layout when you exceed the default width of a thread. (Thanks to peer)
If you are creating a thread with a large amount of data - say 250k or higher, be it one large image file or several smaller ones, give a little warning in the title of your thread. This is to forewarn those poor souls who still have dialup. Keep in mind that linking said images is also acceptable. (Thanks to peer)
It hopefully goes without saying that, while some miniatures/displays/dioramas do show partial/full nudity and/or graphic content (i.e. "art",) this Forum is visited by minors and folks that may be offended by such things. It is recommended that you perhaps mention some sort of warning in your post and/or not make the image directly visible, out of general courtesy.
Image Posting Suggestions:
Images of miniatures can be captured by any number of sources, with the best quality usually obtained from digital photographs, followed (in no particular order) by scanned non-digital photographs, direct scans of the miniatures themselves, and webcam image captures. Whatever source you use to get pictures of miniatures, vehicles, monsters, etc. - make sure that you test your technique prior to posting images in the Forum. In other words: make sure that you are familiar with getting reasonable quality, decently-sized, and in-focus images, for the reasons discussed earlier in these Guidelines.
Taking miniature pictures with a digital camera:
Set your digital camera on maximum quality settings.
Set your digital camera on Macro (close-up photography) settings.
Turn off flash to prevent glare/reflection off the miniature or figure itself.
Take pictures with as much ambient (environmental) light as possible, and try to avoid direct lighting as this will cause the same distortion as flash. There are many ways to accomplish this: take the pictures outdoors with the miniature facing the direction of the sun (but not in direct sunlight), take pictures in a room with good ambient brightness from multiple sources of light, take pictures with the miniature surrounded by high-wattage bulb lamps (while avoiding direct light from the direction of the camera lens, if possible, and with possibly the best results - take pictures of miniatures that are in a "light diffusion box" or have some sort of translucent filter between direct lighting and the miniature.
Make sure the figures have a clean, plain background in a neutral (non-bold) color. Soft greys, blues, and ivory colors are suggested, since black backgrounds tend to make photographed miniatures look too "stark" and pure white backgrounds tend to "overwhelm" photographed miniatures.
Make sure the camera is focused on the miniatures or figures themselves and not the background. In many cases, this means the miniatures must be centered directly in the image, but many cameras can also allow "locked" focusing distances even if taking wider-angle photographs.
Ensure the digital camera is steady when taking pictures to avoid "jiggly" captured images. Ideally this means a tripod, but even a camera propped on a stable surface on the same plane as the miniature (book on a flat table, etc.) is good. If your camera has a self-timer or similar feature also, this is preferable to holding/touching the camera directly as it allows for cleaner images.
Even the best digital cameras may still need adjustment of the pictures for quality tabletop miniature photography - this can be through the camera itself (preset color/lighting balance, aperture, and contrast) or an image/photo editing program (adjustment of brightness, sharpness, histogram levels, or RGB color levels.) (Thanks to Fiend)
Images in posts to the Forum cannot be added directly, they must be linked to from an outside source, therefore:
Save the image you would like to post to your own computer (if applicable.)
Edit the image (size is important, as discussed above!) with some sort of image editing program and save it in .gif or .jpg format.
Post your image to some sort of hosting website (your own personal web space, hosting.hwcommunity.com (http://hosting.hwcommunity.com), www.photobucket.com (http://www.photobucket.com), www.imageshack.us (http://www.imageshack.us), www.tinypic.com (http://www.tinypic.com), www.flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com), etc.) and "Copy" the link applicable for "posting your picture in forums."
"Paste" the IMG link directly into your post, or use the "Insert Image" feature of the Forums and follow the prompts. (Thanks to SierraKnight/misterjustin)
Images of miniatures posted must be in focus. This will prevent all sorts of unnecessary hardship, as Forum Members will give you grief about it. It honestly defeats the purpose of asking for comments/suggestions and/or displaying your painting abilities if the pictures aren't even in focus.
For the sake of not hogging file space, bandwidth, downloading time, etc. with unnecessary content in pictures, it is highly recommended that you crop excess "wasted space" out of your images before you post them. Please use some sort of photo editing program (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Windows Photo Editor) and crop your images down to a manageable size prior to posting.
If your posted image is greater than 800 pixels across, either link to it, or make a smaller preview version. This is both to make viewing threads more pleasant, and to prevent breaking the layout when you exceed the default width of a thread. (Thanks to peer)
If you are creating a thread with a large amount of data - say 250k or higher, be it one large image file or several smaller ones, give a little warning in the title of your thread. This is to forewarn those poor souls who still have dialup. Keep in mind that linking said images is also acceptable. (Thanks to peer)
It hopefully goes without saying that, while some miniatures/displays/dioramas do show partial/full nudity and/or graphic content (i.e. "art",) this Forum is visited by minors and folks that may be offended by such things. It is recommended that you perhaps mention some sort of warning in your post and/or not make the image directly visible, out of general courtesy.
Image Posting Suggestions:
Images of miniatures can be captured by any number of sources, with the best quality usually obtained from digital photographs, followed (in no particular order) by scanned non-digital photographs, direct scans of the miniatures themselves, and webcam image captures. Whatever source you use to get pictures of miniatures, vehicles, monsters, etc. - make sure that you test your technique prior to posting images in the Forum. In other words: make sure that you are familiar with getting reasonable quality, decently-sized, and in-focus images, for the reasons discussed earlier in these Guidelines.
Taking miniature pictures with a digital camera:
Set your digital camera on maximum quality settings.
Set your digital camera on Macro (close-up photography) settings.
Turn off flash to prevent glare/reflection off the miniature or figure itself.
Take pictures with as much ambient (environmental) light as possible, and try to avoid direct lighting as this will cause the same distortion as flash. There are many ways to accomplish this: take the pictures outdoors with the miniature facing the direction of the sun (but not in direct sunlight), take pictures in a room with good ambient brightness from multiple sources of light, take pictures with the miniature surrounded by high-wattage bulb lamps (while avoiding direct light from the direction of the camera lens, if possible, and with possibly the best results - take pictures of miniatures that are in a "light diffusion box" or have some sort of translucent filter between direct lighting and the miniature.
Make sure the figures have a clean, plain background in a neutral (non-bold) color. Soft greys, blues, and ivory colors are suggested, since black backgrounds tend to make photographed miniatures look too "stark" and pure white backgrounds tend to "overwhelm" photographed miniatures.
Make sure the camera is focused on the miniatures or figures themselves and not the background. In many cases, this means the miniatures must be centered directly in the image, but many cameras can also allow "locked" focusing distances even if taking wider-angle photographs.
Ensure the digital camera is steady when taking pictures to avoid "jiggly" captured images. Ideally this means a tripod, but even a camera propped on a stable surface on the same plane as the miniature (book on a flat table, etc.) is good. If your camera has a self-timer or similar feature also, this is preferable to holding/touching the camera directly as it allows for cleaner images.
Even the best digital cameras may still need adjustment of the pictures for quality tabletop miniature photography - this can be through the camera itself (preset color/lighting balance, aperture, and contrast) or an image/photo editing program (adjustment of brightness, sharpness, histogram levels, or RGB color levels.) (Thanks to Fiend)
Images in posts to the Forum cannot be added directly, they must be linked to from an outside source, therefore:
Save the image you would like to post to your own computer (if applicable.)
Edit the image (size is important, as discussed above!) with some sort of image editing program and save it in .gif or .jpg format.
Post your image to some sort of hosting website (your own personal web space, hosting.hwcommunity.com (http://hosting.hwcommunity.com), www.photobucket.com (http://www.photobucket.com), www.imageshack.us (http://www.imageshack.us), www.tinypic.com (http://www.tinypic.com), www.flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com), etc.) and "Copy" the link applicable for "posting your picture in forums."
"Paste" the IMG link directly into your post, or use the "Insert Image" feature of the Forums and follow the prompts. (Thanks to SierraKnight/misterjustin)