Guide: Posting Maps & Images
Monsen
Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
There are several ways you can post your maps to this forum. This post showcases the different options. See the comment below for an example.
Embedding in a post
The easiest way to post a map is to embed an exported image of it into a post. There are multiple ways to do this, you can click the small image icon at the bottom of the post editor to pick a file from your computer, you can drag a file from your computer, or if you have an image on your clipboard, you can even paste it with Ctrl+V. As long as it is an image (.png or .jpg), it will show up inline in your post.
The images are restricted to a maximum of 2 MB in size. Anything larger than that, and an error message will show in the post box. You can close this error message if you want by using the X in the top right corner of it, but it won't be included in your post either way. Uploaded images will be resized to fit in the post.
Note that even though images can be up to 2MB, smaller images is much kinder on people having slow or metered connections. I highly recommend that you stick to jpg images over png whenever possible. Jpg is much smaller, and the visual difference is almost non-existent. Jpg is often an issue for people editing the image, but you are usually not posting images for other people to edit anyway, but to showcase your own work.
Attachments
You can also create attachments to your post. Just as with images, you can drag and drop these, or click the attachment clip at the bottom of the post editor to add an attachment. Any files that are dragged into the post editor becomes an attachment if it isn't an image. Note that if you want to upload an image as an attachment instead of displaying inline, you can also use the attachment clip.
As for inline images, attachments are also limited to 2MB in size, and only common file types like text, pdf, office documents, CC3+ maps/templates/symbol catalogs and zip files are allowed.
Note that posting your .fcw files as attachments is a great way for people to take a closer look at your maps, but you should always accompany that with an inline image in the post too, so people can see it right in the forum without opening CC3+. People might not have CC3+ on the computer they are using right then, or they don't have the addon you used so they can't see all the symbols, or they might be on their cell phone or tablet, unable to sue CC3+.
Image Gallery
Every user have their own image gallery where they can upload larger images. You'll find your image gallery by going to your profile page, and then hit the Gallery link in the sidebar. This is also how you visit other people's galleries.
Here you can create your own galleries, and upload images up to 5MB in size to them. As for images in posts, please do consider that a lot of people have slow or metered internet connection, so it might still be worth it to use smaller images if you wish most people to enjoy your gallery, trying to go for the largest image size allowed just to get the best quality may not be the best user experience.
Again, please consider jpg over png. The visual difference is miniscule, and since jpg is so much smaller than png, you can upload an image many times the resolution than you can manage with png, actually giving you a better quality image because of it.
Another way to make the gallery better for people with slower connections is to not have too many images in each album. It takes time to load all the thumbnails when someone enters an album, so it is better to have multiple albums with fewer images than just a few ones with a huge number of images in each.
Also remember that most people use computer monitors with a resolution of 1920 by 1080, and most users aren't going to zoom in on the map anyway, they only want to see it full screen, and not the smaller size that an embedded image in a post will be. So the best size for the gallery is usually to stick with that 1920x1080 size, that will get you an image that are best suited to how most people will view it, those 8000 by 6000 pixel images are generally just causing people to take longer to load it. The image quality can look better if you export it at a higher resolution from CC3+, and then downsample it to 1920x1080 in an image editor, but it is up to you if you think that small improvement is worth it.
The image gallery viewer doesn't have a zoom button. If you want to view an image in a gallery in a zoomable way, I recommend you middle-click the image thumbnail in the gallery. This will open the image in a new browser tab instead of the gallery viewer, and this allow you to use the browsers zoom functionality. This also has the added functionality of showing the URL to the image in the browser address bar, which you then can use if you want to link to the gallery image directly from a forum post. Please DON'T use this to embed the image in the post though, as that will force everyone reading your thread to download that huge image, which is the reason for the more conservative image sizes in posts. The forum will auto-embed any link put on a line by itself, but if you write a small text, like "Link to full size image" and turn that into a hyperlink to the image (select the text after typing it to have the toolbar show), you will just get the text.
Comments
Example - Post with gallery link, embedded image and attachment
This post includes an inline image, and a link to show a larger version from the gallery, as well as the same image uploaded as an attachment. There is also a link to the community atlas at the bottom showing how the forum automatically creates "rich" links just by pasting the URL on a line of it's own (the site you link to must support this to get the best result).
Full Size image here (Warning; large file)
See my full gallery here
The rich link below was created automatically by the editor by pasting "https://atlas.monsen.cc/Maps/Corgin" on it's own line and hitting enter.