Title
Preparing Photos For Upload To BMC

Author
HondaBear

Published
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

In order to upload a photo to BMC there are some requirements that must be met so your photo gets displayed the best way possible. The major file restrictions are as follows:

1. The file must be in JPEG format (jpeg or jpg file extensions).
2. The final file size cannot be larger than 150KB.
3. Canvas size cannot be larger than 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall.

I will be demonstrating how to accomplish this by using IrFanView, a powerful free program that will allow you to do all of this by following some simple steps.

Step 1: Cropping The Picture

The first step is to open the photo you downloaded from your camera using IrFanView. Here is a sample photo that I have selected to use for this tutorial.



If you look in the lower left corner the program displays information regarding the canvas size of the photo. In this sample it's 1600 pixels wide by 1200 pixels high which is too big for BMC.



Also you will notice that there is a lot of unnecessary stuff on the picture that can be cropped as we want to focus on the model, not on the rest of it.

So the first step is to crop your picture. You do this by clicking on the picture, holding the left mouse button, and then dragging the mouse diagonally to another point on the picture. There will be a square/rectangle marking the area that just got highlighted.



Also note that when deciding what part of the photo you want to highlight for cropping it's good to keep something called the aspect ratio in mind. Using multiples of 8x6 is the best approach. This results in common dimensions of: 320x230, 640x480, 800x600, and so on. Because all thumbnail photographs are 80x60 pixels using this approach will result in thumbnails that do not look skewed or distorted. Skewing and distortion are signs that you've lost the correct aspect ratio.

Now you need to click on Edit, and then select Crop Selection. You can accomplish the same by pressing Ctrl + Y.



We now have a photo that shows only the model, leaving the unnecessary stuff out of the picture.



Also note the new canvas size. If the new canvas size meets the requirements then there is no need to resize the picture further and you can move to Step 3.

Step 2: Resizing Your Photo.

To resize a photo you click on Image, then on Resize/Resample option. Alternately you can press Ctrl + R.



A new window will popup giving you the current size and it allows you to set the new size.



From here is easy to resize. You can enter a new number on Width and it will automatically change the number on Height to keep the same aspect ratio. So you can enter 800 pixels there and then click on OK. That is all that there is to it. Also note that if for some reason the Height is higher than 600 pixels when you enter 800 pixels for the Width then you need to manually enter 600 pixels on the Height and let the Width adjust automatically. Usually it will be something lower than 800 pixels, but it will allow you to keep the same aspect ratio.

Step 3: Saving Your Cropped/Resized File

Once you are ready to save your file you can do so by clicking on File and then on Save As, or by pressing S.



When you do this a new window will popup. This window will let you enter the file name and the destination of the photo. Make sure the Save As Type is set to jpg/jpeg files.



When you save your file you need to look at the Properties of that file to see if the file size is over 150KB. If the file is larger than 150KB you will need to repeat Step 3, but this time look at the mini-window next to the Save Picture As window. You will see the jpeg/gif save options.



At the top there is a slide bar for the Save Quality. If you set that to 90 most of the time your photos will be under 150KB. I usually leave the rest of the options alone.

Hopefully this will help you crop and resize your pictures properly as not to have any problems uploading them to BMC, and to ensure the best possible photo quality. BMC's software will attempt to do all this for you but the outcome is often not as good as if you follow this simple tutorial.