Note: once you see this message on your screen you can actually go offline and read it without the pressure of the ticking telephone-cost-counter…… 

Posting photos, either in an album or on a message board, reduces your allocated 3MB storage memory (unless you bought extra storage space) by the file size of that posting. This means that sooner or later you will be out of memory.

There are a few tricks how to cope with this problem:

1. Keep the size of your images "reasonable". Experience has shown that a maximum size of 600 x 400 pixel (landscape) or 400 x 600 pixels (portrait), at a setting of 72 dpi, is excellent for appreciating both the content and the quality of the image. If the bigger side is shorter (smaller) than 400 pixels, it becomes difficult to appraise the image. But anything between, say, 450 and 600 is ok!
2. After you have such down-sized your digital original with some photo-software, you have to safe the image to your drive before you can post it. The "jpg" (jpeg, actually) format is the most common and also the most suitable. It compresses the file to a size which makes uploading comfortable, with the added effect that this image will become "visible" (fully visible; you know how the photos on the Internet start with a small strip on top and then become bigger and bigger downwards, right?) The speed of this "opening up" process is determined by file size: the bigger your file – the slower that process. If your image is (file-size wise) very big, many a potential viewer might give up before the image is completely visible.
   When you save your photo to your drive (after you have already sized it down to app. 600 x 400 pixels, right?), the different programs (photo software like Photoshop, etc.) will let you choose the amount of file compression, though this might have a different "name", depending on which software you are using. You will have to experiment to find out as to the best setting in your particular case, but please see that your image will not be bigger (file size, not photo size) than app. 50KB (fifty kilo bytes).
   JPG-file compression reduces the quality of an image, but a 600x400 pixels image at app. 20% compression comes out no bigger than between 40 and 50KB and is still of excellent quality, no visible loss. (Note: there are programs available which allow you to save "loss-less", but I have no experience with those. Asking a related question on the message board should yield relevant information about this).
   
   When posting photos in an album, MSN offers a "Resize photos" option at the very bottom of the "Add photos" page, the page where you can choose the photos (thumbnails) to be uploaded from your drive.
   The "Standard size (recommended)" option works very well and resizes your photo from whatever (bigger) size it was to a maximum of 600 pixels (bigger side) and a reasonable file-size, without any visible loss of quality. Please note, if you are an expert computer user, you can resize and save the photo yourself in a way that you will not need that MSN feature. But those who are new and less experienced might find it helpful.
   
   
3. This is getting longer than I thought it would be getting…..
   
   Photos can be posted in three different places:
   
   a) in an album you created for your own photos
   b) in a group album (special subject, competition album, News-page album), or
   c) on a message board
   
   Short explanation:
   
   Album is for "many" photos, one pages through them one by one (or sees 12 thumbnails at a time),
   Message Board is for wanting to get a reaction (advise, comment, critique, etc.) to one or two photos. Posting 10 or 12 or more photos at the same time on a message board makes little sense, because it will take a long time for them to become all visible (see file size above), and many members have slow telephone connections and give up before actually able to see (and comment on) your images. There are the lucky guys with the fast ISDN, ADSL and cable connections, but what about the rest??
   
   a) Your own album is meant for the other members to page through YOUR photos, maybe comment on the overall impression or on a particular photo, the reaction is always different. Sometimes there is no reaction at all, in which case it might be advisable to start a new item on the "General" message board where you "advertise" the fact that you have started a new album, etc.
   
   b) This ought to be clear, only the News-page album might need extra explanation. The managers of this group would like to show different images - taken by members - on the "What's New" page (front page, Welcome page) and need new photos from the members for this purpose. Photos for the welcome page can only be posted from within an album. That's what the "News-page" album is for. If you feel that you'd want to see your photo on the front page (sorry, there is no guarantee that it will actually be chosen, but if you never put one there because of that, than there can really never be one of yours, right?), please put it in that album, thank you.
   
   c) When you are posting photos on the message board (you get a quicker reaction by the other members to a photo there compared to an album), either for comments or for joining an existing thread about a particular subject, you can do two things:
   
   aa) You can post that image directly from your computer's drive (in which case your storage space will be reduced by the size of the image, right?), OR
   
   bb) you can post it from within an album where you had posted that photo previously (even on another group if you belong to more than one group!), in which case NO additional memory will be deducted from your allocated storage space.
   This means, if you are planning to add an image to an album anyway, it's always better to add it to the album first (no matter at which group) and – if you so wish – post it on a message board from that album (that album need NOT be on the same group as the message board where you want to post that image now).
   Of course, if you have no intention of putting an image into an album but still want to show it on a message board, by all means go ahead and post it from your computer, the file size will be deducted from your memory allocation.
   
   Don't panic, 3MB will let you post more than 60 photos of 50KB size (see why it is important to pay attention to all this??). If running short of memory one can do two, sorry, three things:
   
   A) re-join that group under a different name (this makes having another e-mail address necessary, MSN does NOT accept a second application as a member with the same e-mail address of the first application), or
   
   B) delete some photos from either albums or message boards, that frees exactly the memory those images have taken up……, or
   
   C) buy extra memory from MSN. I have no idea how this works, but there are members who know, just post a question relating to this on the message board and you will receive answers…. (that, of course, goes for ALL questions).
   PedroPhotoza.