Introduction
Pictures are vital. There is a maxim "a picture is worth a thousand words", but I challenge you to describe the exact nature of a 3D printing problem in even a thousand words. If you knew how to describe the problem, you would probably know the solution too!
If you're having difficulty with a print, or some aspect of a design, and if you want help, we can't see what you're seeing unless you provide pictures. You must show us what you're talking about!
You'll also need pictures to show off what you've achieved, even if there wasn't a problem.
Just Do it!
Back Story
Until October 2025, including media in posts required the media (including static images) to be hosted elsewhere and inserted in the post as a link. This was deliberate, to minimise the storage and bandwidth requirements for the forum's server. However, in Oct'25, one of the most commonly used media hosts (Imgur) pulled its service in some jurisdictions (including UK) as a protest against what they see as draconian online safety laws and the threat of prosecution if they did not comply. The consequence was that any media hosted on Imgur became invisible in forum posts to anyone in the UK (unless they use a VPN to disguise their geographic location), which is more than a little inconvenient for a UK-based forum!
As of Oct'25, this forum allows images to be uploaded and included in posts, within limits.
Preparing Photographs and Graphics for Upload
As per the 'back story' above, the preferred way to include pictures in forum posts is as attachments. This has the major benefit that the picture won't get lost some time in the future, which could render a forum discussion useless as reference material.
Although JPG and PNG are supported for upload, there is a strict limit of 256kB per attachment. That might seem tiny compared with the image sizes of several megabytes from a mobile phone camera, but actually it's adequate – the limit prevents the forum's storage being overwhelmed, and it forces people to be economical (all but a lost art).
PNG is only suitable for graphics (rather than photos), because the format is efficient when there are large areas of one colour (eg a drawing on a white background) but not for continuous tone variation.
Always crop the photo using your phone or tablet's photo editing tools (or image editor on a desktop), so it only shows what is necessary. Focus in on the detail, don't waste space on irrelevant surroundings. Doing that not only saves file size, it also helps readers see what you want them to see, and not be distracted or confused by anything else that would have been better left out.
Next you'll need an app to re-save the photo at a lower resolution and/or lower JPG quality, to get the file under the size limit. Any image editor or converter app should do it. Apple iOS (and perhaps MacOS – I can't confirm) users have it easier, this step can be ignored (see later). It is possible to avoid this step by having taken a wide-angle shot in the first place and cropping tight into the required detail (so the resolution of the resulting crop is low), or changing your camera settings to limit the file size of photographs.
Adding to a Post
Towards the bottom of the post editor, below the text entry box, there is an Attachments tab:
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- Attachments1.jpeg (121.62 KiB) Viewed 318 times
Click "Add files", and your computer's uploader kicks in to select a file (or multiple files) to upload. Only valid file types will be available to upload, but there will be no filtering on file size at this stage. You'll know the upload was successful when it gets a blue tick under 'Status" in the right hand column:
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- Attachments2.jpeg (97.62 KiB) Viewed 318 times
In the event the upload fails, check the error messages (it will say if the file is too large), make adjustments, and try again. Remedial action might include refreshing the web page, in which case do a CtrlA-CtrlC on your text first to make sure you don't lose it.
As it stands, the picture becomes an attachment to the post – a footnote, as it were. You can insert the picture into the post text by clicking the 'Place inline' button, which will insert it at the current position of the edit cursor. To see what it looks like, click 'Preview' (immediately below the edit box), and a preview of the post (in its current state of editing) opens up-screen from the edit box (scroll down to resume editing).
The forum software is a little unhelpful when it comes to presentation. Any blank lines above or below an included attachment get ignored, so it is impossible to space an image from the text... but I have a work-around for that: put a dot (full stop) on a line on its own, and hide it against the forum background by setting its colour to #EFEFEF.
iOS
When posting from an iOS device (or perhaps MacOS), the uploader allows you to choose a target file size. When you make a selection from Photos, as long as these are JPG not PNG (screen shots are PNG), "Show Selected" (at the bottom of the pop-up) produces a preview and "Actual Size" at bottom right. Click that, and you get four options (Small, Medium, Large, Actual Size) with file size estimates along side (this does not work for PNG – see below).
These sizes are achieved by a combination of reduced resolution and JPG quality. Choose "Small" in preference and see how it looks when uploaded in the post preview – you can always delete that upload and try a better version if necessary.
In iOS, PNGs can be converted to JPG by using a trick:
- Export the image to Files;
- In the Files app, locate the image and open the context menu with a long press;
- Choose "Quick Actions", "Convert Image", "JPEG" and select a target file size;
- Optionally, rename the new file to something relevant (the name will be displayed publicly in the forum post – see images in this post as an example), using "Rename" on the context menu.
Work in progress...
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