Uploading Images to Dreamwidth

[soc_puppet]

Hello again! With Tumblr's latest brush with implosion, it seems the tutorial writing bug has bitten me again. Today, I'm finally going to talk about uploading and sharing images on Dreamwidth!

Dreamwidth has given all users a certain amount of image storage to use: Free users get 500 MB, Paid users get 1.5 GB, and Premium Paid users get 3 GB.

There's two ways to upload images directly to Dreamwidth.

The first option has a fair number of steps, but it's the one I know the most about and the one I'm best able to help with.

Option one: In the navigation section (found in your profile or on the site’s home page, among other places), click the Create tab, and select the "Upload Images" option. It'll look like this:



You've got a couple of options for uploading images directly here! You're probably already familiar with this interface, but just in case: If you click the 'Browse' button, a little pop-up window will appear where you can search through your folders and click on individual files to upload. Once you have your files selected, click 'Open' on that window, and they'll be uploaded to Dreamwidth. Alternately, you can open a folder on your desktop directly, then click-and-drag any files you want to upload into the large box that says "or drop images here". You can upload multiple images at once with either method. Keep in mind that images larger than 5MB can take a while to load, so you may want to stick to one at a time with those!

Once you’ve uploaded your images, they will appear on the Upload page below the uploading field, like so:



Here, you can see several optional fields that you can fill out:

Title

Short description

Description

Filling in the descriptions is a very conscientious thing to do*, because these fields will automatically tell screenreaders used by blind people and others what the image is about! The short description I entered for the above image is, "A screencap of an image successfully uploaded to Dreamwidth, including information fields to fill out". This description has all of the important information about the image in it; while I could go on about the size of the information boxes or the relative size of the image, that's less important than the general content of the image. Since I'm talking about uploading and sharing images on Dreamwidth, I included the information relevant to that.

Next to the Title field is a drop-down menu for the security level of the image; this allows you to choose who you want to be able to see the image. For example, if you only want to share it with your access circle, or if you want to share it with a specific filter, you can select them, and then no one else will be able to see it!

At the bottom of the fields to fill out is a field with an image link. If you’re using HTML, then you can copy that link and paste it into an entry; then, when you publish the post, the image will show up where you pasted the link! (Note: Using the HTML provided here will automatically make it a thumbnail of no larger than 100x100 pixels.) You can find out more about how to post an image in Rich Text Format (the kind of entry-making where you can highlight words and select an option to bold or italicize them) by checking out this link. Note that you can use images from any host for this, not just Dreamwidth links, but you need to actually find a different image host to use if it's not Dreamwidth.

To edit any of the image's data fields later, like the title or the description, or to delete the image, visit the Manage Images section. If you don't need to edit anything about the image (except maybe the size of the thumbnail** you want to share), go to View Images.

* I know not everyone can create image descriptions, even all sighted people (I know someone who has a visual processing disorder and has trouble making image descriptions because of it, and I can't imagine it's easy for dyslexic people, either, etc), but if it's the kind of thing that would only take a few extra minutes, then it's considered polite, IMO.

** When talking about images, a thumbnail is a smaller version of an image that you can click on to see a bigger version. Using a thumbnail can be polite if the image you have is actually really big and detailed, but you don't want to take up your reader's whole screen! If an image is wider than, say, 800 pixels, I would recommend this. It's possible that your reader's screen will automatically re-size the image for you, but I like to play it safe.


The second option is to post an image by email, which I have to admit I haven't tried myself yet.

For Option Two, the first thing you need to know here is that it's possible to post to Dreamwidth by email; silvercat17 wrote the tutorial I used to set it up, but you can also use Dreamwidth's official FAQ entries about it over here. If you post an entry by email, you can attach an image as a file to the email, and it will automatically be uploaded to Dreamwidth and included in the post! It won't necessarily have any particular title or description included, though, so you may want to visit Manage Images to edit that.


And those are the basics of uploading images to Dreamwidth! Culturally, Dreamwidth users tend to either share larger images as a thumbnail, or to put them under a cut (Dreamwidth's "Read More"), but otherwise this should cover what you need to know.

But maybe I'm wrong about that! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments of this post, and I'll do my best to clear things up (and then edit the post to include the information). You can also check Dreamwidth's official Media FAQ and see if your question is answered there.

Edit: With thanks to teres for the help!

I'd also like to note that you can share images on Dreamwidth that are hosted elsewhere, but not all image hosting sites have the same positive attitude that Dreamwidth does about NSFW art. If you do a lot of art and not all of it is NSFW, you may decide to host your SFW art elsewhere, and save your Dreamwidth storage for the stuff you can't host elsewhere.

Comments

[soc_puppet]

Thanks for the tip about Imgur! I hadn't heard about that. I'll add a note in the post.

Do you know how Postimages feels about NSFW art?

[fabiadrake]

Thank you for adding the note! I don’t know what their stance is, unfortunately.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I suggest looking for newer hosts run by and for smut artists. They're getting sick of people kicking them off other platforms, so artists and writers of adult material are trying to set up their own alternatives.