Never get tired of seeing your very green and lush backyard, Woody and those Dogwoods are super! We've had enough rain for the most part, but now that we're getting into the hottest part of the summer, we'll see. The forecast looks miserable with 5 days in the 90s coming up for us, starting Sunday. Hoping maybe they'll be wrong about a day or two, that would be nice. At least we are not supposed to get temps in the 100s. I guess they are having a dangerous heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.

It's been lovely the past two days. In the 60s and 70s and 50s at night with a great breeze. I'd take this kind of weather every day.

Rain and heat in the forecast here for the weekend and next week. The rain will be welcome; the heat will not be welcome!

I have seen posts that comment/complain about Houzz cropping the picture. I just realized that it happened here - click on the 4th picture and you will see that it was a ’portrait’ (i.e. taller than it was wide) picture that Houzz shows as ’landscape’ (i.e. wider than tall) in the post! Very annoying!

I don't usually have that problem, but I have seen it. I always thought it had to do with the size of the photo you use. I tried one of my photos from the spring just to check and it works the way I expected and expands larger when you click on it. I set the size when I export to large out of possible choices of small/med/large and full size, in my Apple Photos program.

I just tried to post a reply but it didn't appear...! I'll try again....

I take pictures with a relatively large number of pixels and then save the pictures to a file size of 640x480 or 480x640 pixels (depending on whether the picture has a landscape or portrait orientation). That gives me a good balance of file size and picture quality. If I need to make the files smaller, how small do they need to be? Does Houzz provide guidance on that? If so, where do I find it?

I did a bit of experimenting on file size so, to complete that test, I'm posting different file sizes of the same picture here to see what happens....

original picture from camera - 1200 x 1600 pixels 574K:

size I normally save at 480 x 640 pixels 93.8 KB:

smaller file (1) 300 x400 pixels 39.8KB:

smaller file (2) 200 x 267 pixels 19.3 KB:

smaller file (3) 100 x 133 6.07KB:

Now let's see what happens when I post these....

Interesting that it is only the smallest of these files that shows the entire length of the alley that shows in the picture if I look at it on my computer, but if I click on that picture in the thread to enlarge it, the enlarged view is not really enlarged and you can't see the image very well! I think I'll stick with my usual file size but be more aware of the limitation that Houzz imposes and comment on which photos might need clicking on to enlarge them to see the full view. Or perhaps I'll just stop posting photos!

On my iphone I have found that cropping the pic just a bit both side to side and top to bottom gives me this…

tj

I don’t have a cellphone so don’t use one to take pictures.... Can you tell me the the file size and number of pixels in the picture you just posted?

Unfortunately I know of no way to tell.

tj

Woody, I like the way your mind works. [g] I sometimes dream up experiments to figure something out, but you are way more prone to do it than I am. lol

Okay, so the photo I posted above I looked up the size and it is 1280x854 - Resolution 300x300 - 188KB

So, it would seem that my photo is smaller than those you resize to. I have no idea why your photo posts differently than mine. I use a camera and not an iPhone as well. It's a mystery.

pm2 - thanks for posting the detail on your picture size. What Houzz is doing with them and why is definitely a mystery - yet another annoying thing on this site! I’m also finding typing comments a problem when using my iPad. It seems to often not keep up to my typing (and I type slow), the autocorrect line on the iPad screen shows all the words run together, and other problems. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. This is the only site where I have that problem! I think Houzz must have incompetent IT people! Grrr... I'm feeling cranky this afternoon after messing around here! It has tuned a pleasant activity into an annoying one! I'd better go away and do something else....

Woody, you are not alone, lots of people have left after complaining for a long time about one technical issue after another. I also have trouble wtih making posts from my laptop and sometimes it accepts my post and sometimes it doesn't. I have gotten into the habit most of the time, of composing my message on my Text Edit program then copy/pasting it to Houzz. I get some notifications and lots of times I don't. Very inconsistent. I have even stopped considering it Garden Web any more because for whatever reason, they seemed to want to remove that name from our experience. They made it so difficult to go to the GW dot com site and sign in and then you would respond to a thread and end up back in houzz. After awhile it was just easier to go to houzz dot com and be done with it.

I seem to remember reading that they have had money problems at some point and have dropped the number of staff multiple times So, really, I've made my peace with it for the time being because I come here for the relationships with gardeners that are over a decade old. I fully expect it to deteriorate to the point of being forced to find other garden discussion forums. I am dipping my toe in the facebook forums where there are many groups that are tailored to the area you are located in, or the type of gardening you do, etc. Some groups are not at all useful, and none of them have what we have had here when it was GW, but, I've found a couple of groups that are made up of local people who garden and at least it is supplemental and I'm exploring.