Embedding pics in story

[techsan]

I hope this is the right forum. I'm writing a story to be included in the "Illustrated" genre, using pictures posted by certain members of Literotica (with their permission). I do my writing in Microsoft Word and once again Word had risen up and bitten me. It allows me to copy and paste the pictures into the story and then format the pictures so that the text aligns around it like I want it to. The problem comes in what the pictures do to the size of the file and problems Literotica has in pulling up my file when I follow the submission process. Say the text file is 35KB, each of the pics is 9KB to 30 KB. After placing the first pic in the story, it balloons to 149KB and after the second one, it jumps to 1,739KB, etc. It gets easier after that and with eight .jpg files embedded the total size of the story is 2.910KB while the original text and eight .jpg files total 176KB.

Anybody know why this happens and how to get around it? Perhaps I am misusing Word or maybe there is a better way to do it...???

 

[Weird Harold]

...Say the text file is 35KB, each of the pics is 9KB to 30 KB. After placing the first pic in the story, it balloons to 149KB and after the second one, it jumps to 1,739KB, etc. It gets easier after that and with eight .jpg files embedded the total size of the story is 2.910KB while the original text and eight .jpg files total 176KB.

Anybody know why this happens and how to get around it? Perhaps I am misusing Word or maybe there is a better way to do it...???

Nope, you're not misusing Word, Word is misusing you, if anything.

MS Word can't store compressed image formats within it's document file definitions. I'm not positive exactly what format it does store them in -- either .BMP or .WMF, I think -- but I do know that the filesize increases match closely to the difference between the same image in the very compressed JPeG format and the completely uncompressed Windows Bitmap format.

There is a better way to do it -- especially since Word's Image formatting is much more flexible than Lit's HTML formatting.

Write the story and identify where each image is to be placed with an easily located marker -- ///image one goes here, right justified/// or %%% Image three goes here, centered %%% or the like.

Attach the images, or upload them to an online host -- like Photobucket -- and replace the image names with the URL of the online copy or attachment.

Submit the story as you would any other story, but with a detailed comment about how the images are tagged ("///" or "%%%" in my examples) and where the images can be found. I'd add a list of the image URLs in the comment to save Laurel searching the document for them when she pulls them into Lit's image directory.

Since the images are from others, you need to also identify who owns the copyright on each image and confirm you have permission to use them.

Also, be prepared for the story to take longer than a non-illustrated story to post -- linking the images has to be done manually one they've been moved to Lit's storage area (they don't allow illustrations linked from other sites) and that means an illustrated story requires more personal attention from Laurel.

 

[techsan]

Thanks...

...for the reply, WH. I'm blown away by the detail you included. Now if I can just take you instructions and implement them, I will be super happy.