How to create a report with pictures

[Papasequoia]

I’ll be expanding on this post over the next few days with more details, pictures and screenshots, but for now here are the basics.

1. SELECT THE PICS YOU WANT TO USE AND COPY THEM INTO A SEPARATE FOLDER.
Before you write a word you should sort through the pictures of your trip. Delete the blurry shots, the shots of your shoe, etc. While you are doing this you should be thinking about the story you want to tell. Using the “save as” feature on whatever photo viewer you use on your computer save a copy of the photos you are going to use in your report into a separate folder.

2. RESIZE AND PERHAPS RENAME THE PICTURES.
I don’t know what the maximum size is to upload pictures on the forum, but I use a batch converter on my photo viewer (Irfanview) to take every picture in the folder to “set long side to 1024” and to rename all of the pictures. For a report on the Kern I might have it rename to Kern01, Kern02, etc.
Now you have a folder full of just the pics you plan on using for your report, resized and renamed. Doing this is easy, fast and enjoyable. While you are picking the pictures you want to use you are re-living your trip and mentally composing your report. (More on using Irfanview later).

3. WRITE YOUR REPORT IN WORD OR WHATEVER WORD PROGRAM YOU USE.
I can’t stress this enough. I have a copy of every report that I have written dating back to 2005 from several different forums some of which are now extinct. I also have the folders with the renamed/resized pictures that I used for those reports, so Photosuckit can bite me. I know that there are many of you over the years on various forums who have started reports only to find the whole thing disappear for whatever reason. That’s a very frustrating happenstance that can be easily avoided by writing your report first as a Word (.docx) file or whatever. It also lets you write it in stages if you are busy, coming back to it later.

4. WHILE WRITING YOUR REPORT HAVE THE FOLDER WITH YOUR PICS IN IT OPEN.
Did you know that if you hold down the Alt button with your thumb then tap the Tab button that you can easily switch between windows/folders/programs? Give it a try next time you have more than one window open, it’s a great timesaver. Anyway, while I am writing my reports when I get to the spot where I want to insert a picture I just look in the picture folder then write the number of the picture that I want to insert. I don’t do anything else, I just alt/tab between picture folder and word document.
So, for example, let’s say I am writing that report on the Kern. I have so far three pictures that I want to use. Picture one is a diaper pile, picture two is a stocker without a tail and picture three is a trash pile with Styrofoam worm containers, salmon egg jars and powerbait containers. Here is what the start of a report might look like in Word (everything between the “ “ quotation marks)

“It was a beautiful fall day on the Kern today. However, although the summer crowds are no more, the trash they left behind like this diaper pile is still there.

1

But the fish were eager and hungry even if they were just stockers to start.

2

The Kern is a beautiful river if you are wading in the water out of sight of the shoreline. Unfortunately, it too many places still, when you wade back onto shore you find stuff like this.

3

Fortunately, later in the day I moved to a spot where there is now a dumpster and I found lots less trash and nicer fish…”

5. TIME TO POST YOUR REPORT ON THE FORUM.
Your report is now written, edited, spellchecked, with numbers as placeholders where you are going to put your pictures. How long this took is up to you. Longer reports with more pictures obviously take longer, but since you don’t have to write it all at once you can spend as much time on it at a time as you wish. In Word (or whatever) choose ‘select all’ then choose ‘copy.’
NOW you can open the forum, go to the section where you are going to write, choose new topic, give your report a title, then PASTE your report into the box. Remember, if ANYTHING goes wrong, you still have a copy of everything you wrote, with numbers for placeholders for the pictures you are going to upload.

6. UPLOAD YOUR PHOTOS TO THE FORUM.
Later I will add some screenshots here, but basically this is what you do:

a) Underneath the text box where your report has been copied you will see three boxes – options, upload attachment and poll creation. Click on upload attachment.

b) A box opens that says Filename: and button to “choose file.” Click on that and a regular browse option lets you find and choose the picture file you want to upload. Double click the picture.

c) The name of the file is now visible and ready to upload. Click on the button that says “add the file.”

d) Now you have a box that says “posted attachments.” Let’s say you upload 10 pictures. For each picture follow steps a, b and c. When you have uploaded all your pictures (Let’s call them Kern01, Kern02, etc.) you will see all 10 of them in the “posted attachements” box. Under each file will be two buttons – “place inline” and “delete file.”

e) Now, all of your pictures are uploaded and ready to insert into your report in the space that you left for them. Scroll up the “1” that you left in your report, erase it and leave the cursor there. Scroll down to the “posted attachments” box and under picture number one click on the box that says “place inline.” Rinse and repeat for all pictures (scroll up and find the number 2, erase it, leave the cursor, scroll down and under picture number two click on “place inline” etc. etc.)

7. THAT’S IT
After you have uploaded all of your pics then placed them inline where you want them to appear in your report you are ready to hit submit (or preview if you want to make sure that it all worked).
CONGRATULATIONS! You now have something that is a pleasure to view and read by others. It may take a bit longer than uploading 50 pictures onto Facebook and waiting for people to click like (wondering if they even opened the folder and looked at all 50 pictures, or if they just clicked like and moved on). You have got a story to go with your photos which for many of us is a lot more pleasant than a bunch of random photos. And if anything should happen you still have your report saved in Word and your photos from the report saved in their own folder. How many of you lost photos and reports when the Kern board shut down? And you can do all of this without using Photosuckit, Imgur, or any other photo website.

I hope that helps some of you who have struggled with creating reports with pictures, especially since Photosuckit started holding our pictures hostage. It’s a lot of words to describe what is really a pretty easy process and once you have written a report or two with this method and gotten used to it I think you will agree that it’s not that hard. I’ll add screenshots and info on using Irfanview later, but there are dozens of photo viewers out there that will resize and rename your pictures.

[stanbery]

Jon
Very nice right up!!

Jon

[Wildman]

Sure a lot easier then the work flow I have been using over the years and I won't lose my post photos to Photosuckit. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

[Jason]

So much good information and advice in this post. Now I just need to get out and fish so I can have something to report. Thanks for taking the time to write this, let's hope it leads to more trip reports.

[Ants]

Here is something to watch for.

I updated my phone to IOS 11.1.2 just before heading out on a trip. My phone and iPad and computer are linked using photos. But, the thumbnail photos didn't appear on the iPad. The iPad photos wouldn't upload.

What happened. The software update changed the default setting so the photos I took were saved as heic instead of jpeg. The heic format is a new setting that saves photos in higher resolution using less data. But, heic is not recognized on the other devices.

Solution. Numerous solutions are offered to change the photos to jpeg, but the easies was to send the photos by email to myself. During the process, jpeg photos arrive. Keep the new photos and delete the old ones.

Final Step. Go to your camera settings and formats - choose Most Compatible and original photos are produced in jpeg.

Ants

[Rockstar Fisherman]

So I was able to resize my images in Photobucket not too long ago. Now I'm not seeing how I can do that...

The Help center says you can do it by using the Transform button in the Editor, however all I see that I can do is crop my image or Rotate it, not reduce the size like I used to be able to.

Any help, I'm not looking forward to resizing everything elsewhere then re-uploading it.

Thanks,
Mike

[stanbery]

https://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/200723884-Upload-Size-Options


here you go

Jon