I spend a good portion of every week struggling with slow internet connections while I wait for my photos to upload. Until Winston the data-carrying-pigeon stops in West Africa or the universe decides to smile on the West African web needing community, I’m likely to continue with that struggle.

Here’s a few things that I do to keep myself from poking my eyes out and injuring everyone around me in a hair pulling out screaming fit of internet hating rage.

(Okay, that still happens *sometimes*.)

FIRST – make a copy of the file, then resize it

Unless you’re trying to send a photo to print on a billboard, chances are your camera has more megapixels then you need. So, first create a new copy of the file (just in case you want to print a billboard later on), and resize it. For internet use – blogs, Facebook, emails to friends and family – your photo doesn’t need to be much more than 400 – 600 pixels across.  The photos I post on this blog are 600 pixels, and this is bigger than standard blogspot size. So, if you’re uploading a 4,000 pixel photo to blogspot, it will be resized to about three hundred pixels and all the waiting for an upload is for naught.

On a Mac, go to Preview –> Tools –> Adjust Size. On a PC, it’s a similar process if you use the default windows application.

Changing this photo from 4,000 some pixels to 600 reduces the size from 3.4 mb to 87 kb. Makes it much, much, much easier to upload.

SECOND – for files form 1mb to 5mb

Attaching a file to an email means you’re waiting for your email client to utilize your bandwidth to upload the file, while the interface of your email client is taking up part of said precious bandwidth. If you use an online file  drop like SendSpace.com or YouSendIt.com, the interface takes up less bandwidth than a typical email client. So, it will go faster and be less likely to error-out. On the front page of sendspace.com, just enter your email address and your recepient’s email address, and choose the file. You and the receiver will get an email confirming that the file is ready, and follow the link and download. Most of the links expire after seven days, so make sure the receiver downloads it right away.

As you can see from this screen shot, I’m FLYING at 1.56 kb/ps!

THIRD – for big-ass files

If I’m sending photos out to a magazine or for other forms of print, I have to send very, very large files. I generally send about 50 mb per assignment, so I end up sending out several hundred megs per month. Hence the hair pulling and eye poking.

There’s really not any way to send big files on slooooow ‘net without using an FTP. That stands for file transfer protocol, which is a fancy way for saying sending a file directly to someone’s computer. They look more complicated then they are, and while it takes a bit of time to get used to them, after awhile you’ll want to send everything via FTP because really, it’s the best way to prevent self-inflicted injury.

I use FileZilla.