Picture overload is a common complaint against new CCF posters.This is understandable, because when you post 16 magnified scope pictures of tiny features, the forum code will expand them into a giant strip of full size images. There is an easy way to present the detailed information without drawing complaints: the image grid. This guide will walk you through creating an image grid on an iPad, but the theory works fine for all phones, tablets, or computers.
1. Take the pictures. Take your photos with whatever device you desire. The most common situation to generate lots of tiny detail images is with a microscope or magnifier.
2. Place the images into a new album. This step serves two purposes. First, it allows you to create a title which can become part of the final image. Second, it allows you to rearrange the images into your desired order. I prefer a 3-wide grid.
3. Crop and rotate the images. I prefer a square crop because it produces a regular image grid. Rotate all the tiny coin features so they are right-side up (or whatever way best shows the doubling or other key feature).
4. Take a screen capture of the grid. Before taking the screen capture, I usually set the album options to no borders so that there isn't much wasted space between images. I also position the title so that it hangs in a good position at the top left. If it ends up in a bad position covering something, you can copy an image three times and pad the top of the album frame. On iPad, the screen capture is triggered by quickly depressing and releasing the home and power buttons simultaneously.
5. Crop and resize the image grid from your main image library. Use crop to trim any irrelevant images from your image grid. Then resize the entire image grid to below 300kB. I use the free Image Size app. Usually 800-1000 pixels wide yields an image slightly below 300kB size, but you might have to adjust the width setting to get something that fits correctly.
6. Upload the image grid the same way you would upload any picture. Congrats, you have created a complaint-free image grid to show many small detailed photos of your coin features. Enjoy!
Posted 09/26/2024 11:56 am
