This is a revision of a previous post describing how to format your picture on Active Rain.
Active Rain updated the blogging platform in several steps over the last few months. The photo editor was changed. Regardless of whether those change were for the better or not, here is how it works now.
1. When you want to insert a photo, go to the end of a line and hit Enter/Return so the cursor is blinking on a new line.
2. Click on the Insert/edit image icon in the menu bar. It's the one with a mountain and a sun/moon in the middle of the second row of icons.
3. In the splash screen that pops up, click on the camera icon at the right end of the Source line.
4. In the Responsive File Manager, click on the +[document] icon to the right of Actions.
5a. If you only have one photo to upload, it may be fastest for you to click on Old Upload and then Choose File and search through your computer directories to find your photo.
5b. You can also click/select and drag one or more photos from your file directories and drop them on the big Drop Files to Upload box.
5c. You can also avail yourself of the (or click) option, which works just like the Old Upload but lets you select and upload several photos at once.
Note: Don't use any funky characters in your photo names or the photos may not load or show up correctly in your post. Only use alphabet or number characters. Spaces are okay.
6. Wait for the green check mark to appear on each of your photos. The check mark confirms that your photos are uploaded.
7. Click on Return to File List. The file manager reindexes all your uploaded photos and the most recent ones -- the ones you've just uploaded -- will appear in the top left corner.
8. Click on the photo you want to insert.
9. Enter a description. This description should be a spider-friendly (Google-friendly) keyword-rich title that relates to or describes the content of the picture and its relationship to your post.
10. Choose your dimensions. The first number is the width, the second the height. Your width should not exceed 700 pixels. Keep the check mark in the box so the aspect ratio -- the relationship between the width and the height -- remains constant if you resize your photo.
Note: You might edit your photos before you upload them so they are the correct size and take up as few bytes as possible. Big pictures take longer to load, and low-resolution photos are just fine for web posts. Since my standard market report has a standard size photo, this is what I do.
11a. Go to the Advanced tab and insert the number 10 in both the Vertical and the Horizontal boxes. This inserts some white space between the edge of your photo and the text in your blog. You can choose other numbers. 10 usually looks pretty good to me.
Note: You can fiddle around with this and choose other numbers by highlighting your photo and clicking on the little photo icon that appears in the top left corner. That brings up the Insert/edit image splash screen again. If the icon doesn't appear, just click on the mountain/sun icon in the menu bar again.
11b. I don't bother with padding or style. You can. But you have to correctly format your html if you are going to mess with the style box and the editor does most things it's worth doing automatically.
12. Click Okay.
13. Click on your photo to highlight it.
14. Choose an alignment from the alignment icons on the right end of the menu bar. Notice how the text snaps to the picture when you align it left or right.
15a. If you choose center alignment, insert a line break (by hitting Enter/Return) after your photo so you don't end up with hanging text.
15b. If you wind up with extra blank lines in your text, delete them. To make sure you are deleting the right lines and don't screw up any other formatting that might be nearby, you should use the source code editor, but if you don't want to do that, just delete normally, see what happens, and fiddle and fix it if it until it looks right.
16. You can move your photo anywhere you want by selecting it, cutting it, inserting your cursor somewhere else, and pasting the photo in the new position.
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