How to Archive/Compress Car Show Photos
Archiving/compressing your car show photos into one file allows for easy sending of your photos to Hot Rod Hotline.
Follow these simple, step-by-step directions to archive/compress your photos.
1. Download and install a free archiving/compressing program called WinRAR:
http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR-32-bit/3000-2250_4-10007677.html
2. After installing, WinRAR will automatically integrate itself into your Windows operating system, giving you expanded functionality.
3. Go to the file directory where your car show photos are stored.
4. While holding down the “Ctrl” key, press the “A” key. This will select all of the photo files in the
directory. All of the selected files will remain highlighted.
5. Right-click on any file. This will bring up a task menu. In the task menu, choose: Add to “[your
car show name].rar”
6. WinRAR will automatically archive and compress your car show photos into a single file and place it into the directory.
Compressing Photos
Before You Start
1. Understand that not all files can be compressed by a significant amount. Compression works by replacing sets of characters within a file with smaller, placeholder characters, resulting in a smaller file size. Not all files lend themselves well to compression, and you may not be able to compress a file much smaller than its original size.
Using Compression Software for Large Files and Folders (Method 1)
1. Download an alternative compression program for files larger than 4 GB. The built-in compression software on most operating systems will cap out at 4 GB of data in a single ZIP file. If you need to compress a file that's larger than that, you'll need to download and install a third-party compression program.
7-Zip is one of the most popular open-source options for Windows. You can download it for free from 7-zip.org/download.html.
WinRAR is a powerful paid program for Windows and Mac that can perform very efficient compression.
Archiver is one of the most popular Mac compression programs that allows you to create archives in 7-Zip and RAR format, as well as its own proprietary format.
2. Adjust your compression settings. With their default settings, 7-Zip and WinRAR will typically compress more efficiently than your operating system's built-in compression software. You can increase the compression even more by adjusting some settings.
3. Split a large compressed file into multiple smaller files. One of the benefits of using a third-party compression program is the ability to create a multi-part archive. For example, you could take a 12 GB folder and split it into three smaller files that could each fit onto a DVD. You'll need all of the parts to extract the original files, so make sure you don't lose any of them.