Beers needing photos

tried to add a photo once and it was impossible to get the correct size. I gave up after four tries to size it.

Enjoy

 

I use a free photo-editing app called PhotoScape. Works great and pretty easy to use. After doing a few of these, I can edit a beer or place picture pretty quickly.

 

So many of the beers without a pic are draft-only beers that do not have a bottle/label, and maybe not even a tap handle with the beer's name on it is available to take a pic. It's a large space on each beer's page to see a blank frame, so it would be great to have some other option to place something else there. Perhaps it could just be a generic light or dark colored beer in a glass/mug/snifter, etc. that would be typical glassware for that beer's style.

 

I've had the same experience as Giantspace^. I have had the pleasure of adding a few new beers here and even a new brewery. I have also taken photos but despite not being any kind of tech-nube, and believing I'm following the site guidelines to the letter, even after several attempts/versions/edits I have been unable to get the photos uploaded. It's frustrating, adding a beer and then having to leave the space for the pic blank.

 

I don't want to give away my secret on how I upload my images, but it's not much of a secret. It's the first suggested link for image resizer when you click on an "upload image" link. It's as simple as setting the height to 300, and width to 150. Zoom in/out to capture the whole label and then save. It'll give you the file size before you ever download so you'll know if you have to compress it more (I never have even with an above average camera). It requires no additional downloads or softwares. For reference, I run this same site on Google Chrome/Internet Explorer on two seperate Windows 10 PCs (in case that matters...?)

The trick is to make sure you take the photo far enough away that you can get the full 300 pixel height. To combat that, I generally take a portrait photo of the entire bottle/can, which will generally cover the required pixels and give you room to crop.

Link to the resizer.

 

Great idea OP
Always nice to add pics to the blank ones and clean up all the missing info.

 

Same site I just linked too. Great stuff.

Just set height to 300, width to 150, zoom in/out to capture the entire label, and then download the resized file.

 

I just go through the recent reviews and add the missing pics every day. I usually run across breweries that don't have any pics added and update their whole catalog if I can.

 

Here's what I do. Take a pic, crop it using my mobile, go to https://bulkresizephotos.com
Click choose image, click the exact size option, AND you're ready to upload the pic on BA.

 

I've done that , & file still too big.I've also tried with photos that were greatly cropped, & starting with a smaller image size (in the camera). Still too big.
One thing I haven't tried : putting photo on Google Photo, which vastly downsizes photo on the free part, then saving that back to my files, & trying to upload that to here. I've deleted the original photos of the ones I tried to put here, so don't have them , to try that.

 

Interesting. I'm only shooting on a T7i, which is a touch over 24 megapixels. I'm shooting in large form JPEG and RAW, but only upload JPEG that's been downsized in Lightroom here. Maybe that's the difference...?

 

But if you look at the above chat it seems I need to be some kind of tech-guru to get photos up. As it happens I can understand the^ discussion but I expect a lot of people would not be able to. And that was kinda my point, uploading pix is too complicated and time-consuming for too many.

 

So what do you propose to make photo uploads easier?

I'm curious what your workflow is to ready a picture for uploading that is resulting in failed uploads.

Again, I just use resizeyourimage and it takes care of everything. I use large format JPEGs from a 24 megapixel camera and my photo is never too big. I do cut it down to 300 pixels in height and 150 pictures in width, which isn't complicated at all. Generally the file size is 12 KB at max after the trim, which is a solid 8 KB below the site limit. You can type in those numbers in the website link I provided and it will generate an image to those exact dimensions (which are required by Beer Advocate at this time).

Wait, after reviewing the site photo requirements, are either of you uploading your cropped images in a file format other than JPEG? @mikeinportc

Site requirements state:

(Emphasis from the Beer Advocate page, not my own)

 

I think to suggest improvements to a process you'd need to be very used to and insightful into the current process, and clearly I'm not.
My workflow? - Take a pic on my phone. In a photo editor cut it down by cropping off unnecessary background. That's step one of 'the battle' to get the file size down.
At that point the file might still be perhaps 3-5 times too big, so ...I kill the resolution to the extent it's almost pointless posting it, or chop a beer bottle in half?
Finally even when I know I have a permitted file-size I try to upload it, with a starting point of assuming it won't work, and it might take me several more tries and re-edits if it works at all. This is why these days even '1st pics' on existing ratings, or '1st beers with pics' the pics only get posted about half of the time.

- Nope the aim is JPEG image file.
The difficulty is in triangulating file-size vs dimensions vs getting an image that doesn't look like it's being seen through a blizzard.
- 550ml Can = 6.5*17cm=260%
-330ml bottle 8*24cm=300% [both approx]

Required image size 150*300pixels=200%
Maybe that's what's at the source of the problem [for some]?

 

Not sure issue with uploading. I went to Re-sizeimage, uploaded my pic, resized it to 150x300 and it will not upload, resized to 300 x 150 same response. Not sure issue but it gets frustrating. It states image has to be jpeg, check. Says image has to be size I have, check, upload failed... Pass

 

Screenshot of image properties? Not sure if total width and length is shown there, but it may illuminate an issue.

Also, not to be a dull IT tech, but are you sure you're uploading the correctly resized image and not the original? I've accidentally selected my full-size photo more than once on an attempted upload, which resulted in a fail. I now just save my resized photos to my "downloads" folder just to keep them completely separate from my full size, unedited photos.

Thanks for sharing your workflow. Interesting choices. So you're setting your pixel count in height and width via percentages and not hard coding?

And most photo editing software will give you an option to export to a different format and/or size. Rather than upping pixel size in the photo itself (the ol' blizzard look), I'd try cutting image quality to 50% on an export and see how sharp the results remain.

 

every time I try to add a picture when adding a beer it says the page is missing from the link.