Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with images

How to get images to display in IE8?

cardamom — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 06:43:49 -0800

Help a non-web designer solve an image display problem in IE8. As part of my job I need to post announcements to a proprietary, password-protected site. There is no HTML control in the announcement panel nor is there a button that allows you to insert an image. I've worked around these limitations by making my own basic HTML pages with tables with images using the "img" tag. I open the HTML page in Firefox, then copy the web page into the announcement panel. I'm on a mac, so it's been working great in Firefox and I have IE6 in Parallels, and there is no problem there.

However, it's come to my attention (a little late, I suppose!) that none of the images show up in IE8. I think it is because the images are not relative, but link to an offsite webpage, but I really do not know. I don't see how I can use relative links, as I don't have control over uploading images on this site. I noticed that changing the tag to "object" makes them display in IE8, but no show in IE6. I've tried nesting both "img" and "embed" tags into my tag and that doesn't work either on IE6.

Ideally, I want my images to show up in as many browsers as possible.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, and Happy Holidays!

Webpage personalizer wanted

leigh1 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:25:28 -0800

Is there a website that can allow me to make a personalized webpage (similar to iGoogle) full of pictures, like a simple image gallery, and all I have to do is add link to the picture? I don't want thumbnails, I want the page to be scrollable and all pictures at 100%. This is for personal use only. I am too lazy to save pictures to my disk and make this in Dreamweaver, then upload for every picture, etc etc.

T-shirt graphic search

lou — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:49:51 -0800

Where can I find some high-quality images of models (male and female) wearing blank colored t-shirts? Basically, so I can use them to mockup t-shirt designs on actual people wearing actual shirts. Different colors are key-- I'm looking for navy blue and red/maroon at the moment-- and relatively high quality, you know, larger than a 400x300 gallery thumbnail. Google image search doesn't help much.

Of course, I'd prefer anything freely available/accessible, so don't refer me to stock image sites-- I know about them, not willing to pay for them right now.

I like pretty pictures to LOOK pretty!

miss lynnster — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:27:48 -0800

Most awesome, pretty and easy to figure out Flickr image gallery plug-in for Word Press? I'm having some photographers and artists provide content for my LA site, and I want to make sure they're displayed in the most graphically appealing and easy (to navigate as well as to set up) way. I'm not a programmer so I tend to like the plugins that have all sorts of cool features without me having to create them.

Up until now I've been using Picasna for Picasa, and I liked the Lightboxy gallery that it uses but I really am not thrilled with the way the image gallery shows up in the post before you click on it to view the images up close.

Thanks in advance for all of your advice. :)

Your Most Stunning Photographs of Disease, Please.

foxy_hedgehog — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:28:59 -0800

I'm compiling a set of 30-40 photographs related to any and all aspects of disease for a high school visual literacy project. The students are high school juniors who are struggling with literacy and writing. I'd love your suggestions for compelling, diverse, and striking images and sites that have collections of same. The theme is deliberately open-ended, and can include images from medical and scientific history as well as depictions of illnesses, medical epidemics, and attempts to treat and cope with disease. This could include everything from Sebastiao Salgado's photographs of the distribution of the polio vaccine in India and Africa to the (in)famous Benneton "Pieta" photograph. The goal is to find images that provoke thought, convey information, and tell stories.

I need to include background information on the photos (such as context, description, photographer, title, date, and any copyright information) so any suggestions that have this would be very helpful.

Many thanks for your thoughts and suggestions!

Updating my portfolio website and need help with web navigation, images, hosting and more.

mintchip — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:04:23 -0800

Updating my online portfolio and need help with web navigation, images, hosting and more. I would like to update my online writing portfolio, which is currently a blog hosted by Blogger. Each post is a thumbnail image along with some introductory copy. The thumbnails link to large jpg images
stored on Flikr. I want to spend a minimum of time updating my site, and I need to be able to make updates with ease. I have old versions of Photoshop and Dreamweaver at my disposal. Can you help me with these questions?

1. Navigation: On Blogger, new posts appear in date order rather than being organized by category. I am not happy with this navigation limitation. Is there any way around this without creating a whole new website independent of Blogger? I have been thinking about purchasing a domain name and then using an HTML template, but it would be easier if I didn’t have to do this. If I do need to move to a different site format, what would you recommend for a simple template and/or host?

2. Photo storage: My thumbnail images, which Blogger creates, link to Flikr photos. However, the type in these larger images isn't fully readable until the user clicks a second time (after clicking on the thumbnail), to enlarge the image to full size. I’m afraid some readers won’t do this. Is there a good solution to this? Where should I store my photos (if not on Flikr)?

3. Photo size and format: What are standard image sizes? If I abandon the blog format and create a new HTML site, how should I go about creating all of the JPGs I will need (full size, thumbnail)? What is the standard size for full size images and thumbnails and what do you recommend for a naming convention? Would PDF format be preferable? If so, what software should I use to create my PDFs, are there any standards to these, and where can I store them?

4. Should I allow people to download my writing samples, either as JPG or PDFs?

What can you see in satellite photos?

k. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:33:01 -0800

Satellite photos: what interesting features can be seen or measured in them (or other aerial photos), and where can I get a supply of images? Examples I have already seen, from some crude Google-searching:
Roads
Buildings
Degree of development (urban/suburban/rural)
Oil spills (apparently these are usually hard to see)
Blooms of algae (cyanobacteria) in the Baltic Sea
Damage to buildings from earthquakes

More would be appreciated--the more specific, the better. These will be used in a computer vision system, so I'd especially like to know where I can find a supply of images containing whatever feature I'm looking for (including the above)--easy for buildings or roads, but hard for rare events like oil spills. Natural disasters seem interesting, if there are pictures available.

I would also consider some other kind of non-photographic data as well, if it could be combined with maps or photos. Don't worry whether you think it's suitable; any idea you have will help!

My Taxes paid for that satellite... can I at least have pix?

tmcw — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:43:15 -0800

I want to download a bit of Landsat data - two small countries worth - but can't find any way to efficiently do this via GloVis or elsewhere. Where can I just select places on a map (or use my GloVis-exported) scene list to download these in bulk? Given 200MB/scene and the 80 scenes I need, it'll be 15.6 gigs downloaded (and likely around 40 unzippped), but that's not the problem; there just doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Also, huge bonus for any source that offers even a rough natural color (simulated) version of these files so that I don't have to do the merging myself. GeoTIFF is probably the format I'm going for (I'm using a completely open-source stack, and may have access to an ArcGIS install, but it's way way inconvenient for me).

Yes, this is an obscenely specific and obscure question. I guess I am testing the outskirts of askmeta utility by asking this one, but seeing all of these interfaces to the data and high prices and all of this bs, I have a feeling that smart people must know a better way to get lots of this data in a good form quickly.

Thanks!

Where to find copyright free historical images?

LarryC — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:21:27 -0800

What are the best searchable sources for copyright-free historical and other images? I know about Wikimedia Commons, about searching for Creative Commons licensed material on Flickr, and about some regional repositories such as the Washington State Digital Archives (where I work). What other good sources are out there? Google searches lead me to subscription databases of stock photos.

A synthesizer image simple enough it can be engraved

ifjuly — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:30:44 -0800

In search of a fairly simple online image of a synthesizer for a wedding ring engraving. I have decided to go with this wedding ring set for my upcoming ceremony. I've contacted the jeweler and am good to go except for the images I need to supply.

I found the perfect one for my ring--an iconic, simple image of an open book. However, for the groom's ring I'd like a synthesizer image as they are near n' dear to my beloved's heart. Unfortunately, my Google Image Search-fu has failed me; all I can find are extremely cheesy, generic clip art synths or the kind of cool synths he loves but only in hyper-detailed photographic images. Ideally I'd have an online black and white drawing or stamp (or otherwise simple kind of image) of a cool, iconic synth like a Wasp or MS20. Do you have any pointers for where to look, or better yet, images on hand that might fit the bill? Thanks.

The jeweller also said this when I inquired about what kind of image would work: "any graphic should do--but not too linear, as it's cut through one sheet of metal & soldered onto the interior piece."

I'm not sure I understood what she meant by that, actually.

(And just in case you're wondering, the reason I didn't put this in the shopping category is the shopping part, namely the ring, is taken care of; it's the hunt for an image that's the problem.)

How can I build an online tool that checks the size of an image?

ocherdraco — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:11:46 -0800

How can I make an online tool to show someone whether an image they've uploaded is high enough resolution for print? I work in book publishing. One of the things I do is to help my authors organize the images they've gathered to include in the book. The complicating factor is often that authors (who are often not the savviest computer users) just go on Google to find images, and often end up with images that are much too small to print, because they are displayed at 72dpi on screen, and the author doesn't understand that the size an image is on a screen is not necessarily the same as in print.*

It would be incredibly useful if I could have an online tool to point them to that would be able to tell them "The image you have uploaded [or "the image at that url"] will print at 2.5" x 3.5", which is approximately 1/4 page" or something like that.

It would need to be able to:

detect the dimensions of the image in pixels
display the dimensions, in inches, that the image will be when displayed at 300dpi
be able to tell the author a general size for that image (too small to print, 1/4 page, 1/2 page, full page, etc.) based on parameters I would include

How can I build this?

*I have actually had an author hold up a ruler to a computer monitor to say, "See, it's big enough!"

Organizing images and graphs

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:14:00 -0800

Any advice on the best way of organising images and graphs for a PhD student? I'm interested to learn what strategies people use for organizing images, graphs and diagrams over the course of a long research project. I find that I spend a fair amount of time reformatting images for various purposes, such as documents, presentations and posters.

At the moment I am writing a paper using Latex, so I want all my graphs to be .eps and a certain size. But I can't figure out what the best font/image size to use is, or line-weight. Do people use a personal 'style guide' for each case? Are there any standards out there?

I am creating my images from Matlab, R, ArcGIS and Excel.

I'd like to develop a good strategy now so that I can use the diagrams and graphs I have now in a few years time.

Thanks!

What's a good application for organizing photos on a Mac?

The corpse in the library — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:16:15 -0800

What's a good application for organizing photos on a Mac? I gather photos from websites and repost them on my blog. I'm looking for an application that will help me organize the photos before I use them. Ideally, I'd like the process to go like this:

1. Import the downloading photo into the application.
2. Add keywords so I can find the photo ("sink" "Chair" "paint")
3. Add information about where the photo came from (a URL, the name of the person who told me about it)
4. Repeat many times
5. Browse through the photos either by keyword or by skimming through thumbnails.

I don't want to edit the photos. It's important that the keywords and notes I add not be accessible once the photo is on the website.

I have iPhoto and Adobe Bridge, but they both are more program than I need for this -- I want something I can fire up, quickly use, and shut right back down. I tried Picasa but didn't like it, and it seemed (I could be wrong) that the notes I wrote would end up being public if the photos were used on the blog. PhotoReviewer was intriguing, but it doesn't work on OS 10.5.

Any suggestions?

Firefox Frustration

chrisalbon — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:47:59 -0800

WebDesignFilter: Why is Firefox resizing my images? My site displays a random image to visitors in the top right corner. When I view the image in IE (in Windows) or Opera (in OSX) the image displays correctly. However, when I view the image in Firefox (in OSX), it is smaller (and therefore blurry).

You can see the problem by following these steps:

1. Visit the homepage: http://warandhealth.com/.

2. If you are in Firefox, the image in the top right is resized (slightly smaller) than it should be. If you are not in Firefox, the image is displayed correctly.

3. If in Firefox, right click on the image and select "View Image". This displays you the non-resized image.

4. Click the back arrow navigation bar.

5. Click the forward arrow in the navigation bar. Now are seeing the resized image.

6. Click on the image once and firefox will display the image in the correct dimensions.

It does not matter if I specify the image dimensions in CSS or even html, Firefox always resizes the image.

Why is this? How can I make firefox display the image correctly?

Help me organize my scanned papers and sketches

moonroof — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:00:01 -0800

I'm looking for a program or file format to organize hundreds of scanned page image files and add comments to them. Any suggestions? I've been scanning all my old papers/sketches/notes into my computer so I can recycle the physical copies and save space in my apartment. Paging through them with the Windows image viewer is fine, but I'm wondering if there's a program that I could use to organize them all into a single file, like a PDF maybe? I'd also like to have a field at the bottom where I could add and edit text comments. If this is possible to to do with Acrobat, how do I do it? And if not, is there a program that will do something similar to what I'm describing?

Free high-res images for my walls?

zoomorphic — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:35:20 -0800

I have access to free printing on canvas paper, so I'd like to find some high-resolution (100 dpi minimum) images of neat illustrations and unusual images to frame. I'm not a cutting edge art aficionado, but I like everything from the poppy fairytale illustrations of artists like Yoko Furusho to botanical drawings, Japanese prints, creepy images from old books, antique maps, Arthur Rackham, etc. I prefer color illustrations over black-and-white because my walls are tall, white, and sterile. For starters, this site has been helpful, though most of the images aren't big enough. Of course, I still plan on supporting artists via etsy.com and various shows, but I have far more blank walls than dollars to decorate them.

Thanks in advance!

Looking for an alternative to Echopic that shows "image views"

eden — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:20:16 -0800

Echopic is shutting down June 1st and doesn't seem to allow people to upload pictures anymore. It was an ideal solution for my needs not only because there was no signup but also because you could see the # of "image views" on the administration page making it perfect for stat-tracking Craigslist posts. Anyone know of another free image host that has similar functionality?

Using other people's pictures in blogs

like_neon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:58:05 -0800

Related to this question, but beyond Flickr: where it's just random product images, can I or can't I re-host their image with proper credit and a link? So there are loads and loads of blogs out there that are all about finding *stuff*. They can be handmade stuff, they can be mainstream designer stuff. They usually have a picture of the item (not hotlinked) and a link to the source.

Is this legally OK?

The Flickr question advises that the blogger contact the person who took the picture. But jeez, what if you are posting pictures of things from Nordstroms? Amazon? Nike? What's a blogger to do?

Seek. Seek. Seek. Find?

ocherdraco — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:04:57 -0800

Is there any service that searches across Getty, Corbis, Alamy, and other major professional editorial photo resources? I often have to find obscure images for work, and it would be helpful if I could search many services at once, rather than going to each separately.

If there isn't such a search engine, what photo services do you use for professional editorial content? (If I can't search them all at once, I can, at least, put them all into my bookmarks.)

How can I generate a text list of image filenames and dimensions on OS X?

joshwebb — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:28:12 -0800

How can I generate a text list of image filenames and dimensions on OS X? I have about 150 images and I would like to generate a tidy little text list of these images' filenames and dimensions (in pixels.)

Ultimately this will be uses to populate an XML file for use with an image gallery, if that helps at all.

I'm just trying to avoid having to manually write out each individual width and height.

I'm running Leopard (10.5.6) and have access to Adobe CS4 software, but as far as I can tell this isn't possible with something like Bridge and Googling has failed me.

Any ideas?

how does google produce streetscene?

cameronfromedinburgh — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 11:36:51 -0800

As a photographer with particular interest in 'stitcher' type panoramic images I was interested in the hardware and software that Google have used for their street scene application. Does anyone have any info? What type of camera and lens combo and specialist software, even if it was written just for Google.

Is there a high quality repository of art images?

Leech — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:52:08 -0800

Is there a website or anything with high quality art images? All kind of artists, from Picasso to Hundertwasser. I think there should be a torrent tracker or anything related to art/artists.

Bunny Identification Request

zackola — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:28:39 -0800

What is this bunny? I seem to remember this bunny from something, childhood? some game, some toy, or maybe some weird poster more recently. It looks familiar to almost everyone I show it to, but no one has been able to place it correctly. I attempted to contact the person whose avatar this is on Flickr, but have got a bounce back from the email I found on their website. Help me out big green I know someone out there will be able to place it.

Move my archive of awesome to the cloud?

ooklala — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:09:45 -0800

How can I organize my archive of awesomeness which has mostly pictures? I have started an archive, much like Adam Savages creative projects archive, of awesome random stuff, like interesting images I find, or links or songs, etc. Currently this archive is a folder on my desktop ("archive of awesome"). To organize the items, I have been writing in the metadata (spotlight comments) about everything. I'D like to move this archive to the cloud, whilst keeping the process of adding things to the catalouge simple. What service can I use for this?

REQUIREMENTS:
currently, all pictures, mostly weird ones that I get to make points for friends and such. I plan on adding text clips and links.
I use a mac, and would like something ideally that combines a desktop software and a nice website.
It must be easy. If it takes more than a few seconds to add to it, it will probably end up being too cumbersome.

Gradient background?

nikkorizz — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:53:31 -0800

Is there a way to create gradient backgrounds on webpages without using images? I want something to the effect of this site such that the background is a gradient that extends from top to bottom. The catch is that I run a news blog website and posts sizes can vary significantly in length, so using a set image doesn't quite work out .

I'd really like to avoid using tables to achieve this effect and I really want the gradient effect to extend from top to bottom.

Any ideas?

This is for a Wordpress blog, by the way.