General advice about posting things other than text eg pics, line diagrams etc

[Rob]

Hi folks

Another topic area where I've come unstuck a few times

I've learned the whole photobucket thing for pics and there's a long thread about that earlier. But sometimes I would like to append other artefacts.  Drawings being the usual thing

Herman I notice you've added a few annotated diagrams over the months, I'm guessing you drew them in paint?

Could you confirm please and if so....how do you actually post them?  Do they behave the same as a pic?

Also does anyone know if you can post office documents here?  I'm thinking either a spreadsheet for tabular data and/ or PowerPoint or word for other things

[Rob]

test

The G button 5 th from left 2nd row

[Rob]

test

D button 6th in

[Rob]

test
M button

[Rob]

That's a good one....moving text

[Rob]

test test test

The table button

[Rob]

Code Select Expand

code

quote

Ah that's how you do lines

[Rob]

Well that's the buttons all tested. Still can't see how you can post office files anywhere

[Herman Trivilino]

Herman I notice you've added a few annotated diagrams over the months, I'm guessing you drew them in paint?

Could you confirm please and if so....how do you actually post them?  Do they behave the same as a pic?

Yes, Rob, I used Paint to type in the text.  Then I just upload them like any other picture or drawing.

[grepper]

The idea of embedded files is that they are displayed in the body of the post.

You should be able to embed just about any common image file format, i.e., BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF,JPEG, TIFF, etc.

Some image editors and drawing programs may by default save to their own "special" format.  These are usually more of a "project" format that retian editing information, so that they can be saved and then reopened and editing can continue with the same layers, objects, text boxes, etc., available.  In that case select Save As and save to one of the above formats.

You cannot embed  Word or other word processing or text files, video files, and data files.  These types of files would require their native application, i.e., Word or whatever other application created them.  For those you need to provide the URL so that the file may be downloaded.

[Rob]

Very clear......thanks Mark

So for proprietary formats (project files) you're referring to the likes of photoshops PDD file format right?  Hence the need to save as....cool...got it

Shame about office files though

[grepper]

Correct Rob. You got the idea.

Many image processing and drawing programs support "objects" such as layers and objects that you can move around the screen, an "undo" list and other session information that allow you to save your work, and later reopen and still have all of those same elements available in the same state as when you last saved the work.  Proprietary formats such as the PDD (Adove PhotoDeluxe) format, is one such example.

All of these require their creating application or some other application specially programmed to deal with them.

Basic image files are called "flat' file formats.  They cannot contain layers, objects and other session information.  When you save a "project" type of file to a standard image file type such as JPG, the image is said to be "flattened" because the objects are "flattened" and become part of the image information and can no longer be manipulated as objects.

I believe that if you can open the image in Window Paint, then you should be able to embed it.  But if it requires, some other application such as PhotoShop, Word or a CAD program, then you need to save it to a standard, simple, image file format before you can embed it in a post, or if it's not an image file, provide a link for downloading.

[Rob]

That's very articulate, thanks Mark

So one last question re office files. I appreciate now based on your explanation that the formatting data in word is sort of equivalent to the layers objects in photoshop, ie its session and application specific.

So can I whack say a spreadsheet or ppt file up on photobucket as if it were a pic file like a jpg and then link it here.  I've only ever thought of PB as a picture hosting service, but maybe if it takes any file, that's the solution?  Is photobucket really just a giant web based storage device that's file format agnostic?  Sort of like a hard disk the size of China?!

[grepper]

Photobucket only supports image and video files:
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PhotoBucket:

Supported file types
    Images – gif, jpg, jpeg, png, bmp, tif, tiff
.bmp files are converted into .png files. We support most .tif and .tiff files.
    Videos – 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, avi, divx, flv, gif, mov, mp4, mpeg4, mpg4, mpeg, mpg, m4v, wmv
All video files are converted to .mp4 format when you upload them.

Your file type must have the correct file extension and internal file type or your upload will fail. If you have a media file with an extension that is not on the supported list, use a graphic/image or video editor and try to convert it into a supported file type, then save it as the new file type, with the appropriate extension.
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Other file hosting services such as DropBox, support any file type. I'm not recommending it, just one that came to mind. It's just a cloud storage service that you can store and download general stuff from.  There are many such services:
http://online-storage-service-review.toptenreviews.com/

There are free ones.  Search for "free cloud storage service" without the quotes.  Free ones may make you look at ads, or not, or whatever.  A little research is required unless someone here can recommend one.

[Rob]

Thank Mark

I've already got a Dropbox account.  That will no fine

Thanks again