Posting images in the Bogleheads forum

The Bogleheads forum does not have any built-in facilities for including images in posts. Here is a rough-and-ready guide to how to do it. Unfortunately, exact step-by-step details depend on what platform you're using (Windows, Mac, Linux), what browser you are using (Firefox, IE, Safari), and what image-editing tools you have at your disposal, so this article can only suggest the general approach; you must fill in the details.

First, determine if the image is copyrighted. Usage which violates the image's copyright policy are not permitted in the forum.

If the image is already on a Web page
If you see an image that is already on a Web page and is a reasonable size, that means it has a URL--a "web address." If you have the web address for an image, you can post it in the forum by surrounding the URL with [IMG] tags.

For example, in Safari I can right-click on the Bogleheads' forum "compass" logo and choose "copy image address." That puts this URL into the clipboard. I can't see it, but the clipboard now contains the URL:


 * http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/templates/subSilver/images/logo_bar.gif

I now click the "Img" button, paste, and click the "*Img" button again, and I see this in my edit box:


 * [img]http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/templates/subSilver/images/logo_bar.gif[/img]

When I post, this is what now appears when the post is viewed:


 * [[Image:Compasslogocapturedemo.png]]

If the image seems to be on a Web page, but you cannot seem to get a URL for it, or your URL does not work
Sometimes an image really is just a static URL with a fixed address, but the URL contains characters within it that puzzle the Forum software. In this case, it may be worth using a "URL-shortening" site such as http://www.tinyurl.com. In this case, you are using it, not because it shortens the URL, but because it produces simple URLs that don't contain any punctuation but forward slashes. Unfortunately, not all of the pictures you see on Web pages are "static" images with fixed URL addresses. Sometimes a site uses Javascript and produces a URL that doesn't work inside an [img] tag. Sometimes it is Flash content, or a PDF file displayed inline inside the browser. In this case, you cannot just post a URL for the image. Instead, you might begin by taking a "screen shot," capturing the actual image on the screen.

On the Mac, you can do this with one of several built-in commands, including the Mac OS "grab" utility. Under Windows,  PRT SCN will capture the image of the current window into the clipboard. You can then open the Paint utility, paste the screen image in, and use Paint to crop it to size. There are also numerous public domain and shareware tools, cost-free or inexpensive, that make the task easier.

If the image needs no editing, but it is not yet on a Web page
For every other image, then, the task is how to get it into the Internet--how to "host" it and obtain a URL for it. There are many "free image hosting" services. One example is tinypic. These free image hosting sites are usually supported by advertising. Moderate caution is advisable as in any Internet situation where you appear to be getting something for nothing. Once you have the finished image in a file, in one of the standard formats such as .jpg or .png, you go to the free hosting site, upload the image, and the site will give you the address of the place where it's hosted the image. Tinypic is an example of one that helpfully formats the complete "IMG code"--the url surrounded by the two IMG tags--so you can copy and paste it in directly.

If the image needs editing
Many images will need simple editing. Images posted to the Bogleheads forum, for example, probably should be less than about 640 pixels wide or they create annoying effects for people with smaller screens. So you need to have a tool that does simple cropping and scaling, and it is helpful to have simple editing tools for drawing arrows or circles or text. Choosing a tool is beyond the scope of this article, except to say that for Bogleheads posting purposes you might consider using OpenOffice (or more recently LibreOffice) "Presentation" freeware program.

"Presentation" is the equivalent of Microsoft's PowerPoint and is very good for drawing arrows and circles. You can easily paste your image into a slide, edit, then convert to bitmap and Save Picture as a PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file.