Are you talking about posting a photo from Flickr to this forum? (So that in order for me to do that, I must convert my raw files in Bridge, resize, upload to Flickr and THEN ......to get here or the gallery on the Forum pages?)
Is there an easier, cost effective way?
You can technically "attach" images by using the additional options section, but the size is restricted so you won't get much of an image regardless. It can get expensive real fast to host images and pay for the bandwidth. The forums aren't really so much for posting images. Linking to them is absolutely fine though. Links as often as you want. It doesn't have to be flickr, wherever you have your images at online, you can link to them by just clicking on the Insert Image button above and entering the URL.
The gallery will be used for contests and the format of the images will be determined by the Board Member running the contest. You wouldn't be able to upload RAW images regardless. They'll always have to be converted regardless of where you upload them. With the gallery, after awhile we can go back and delete the gallery of entries and just leave the winner to preserve space/bandwidth at some point in the future as it becomes necessary.
In terms of the process, if you have Lightroom you can export directly to Flickr using a plugin. As far as cost effective, it doesn't get any better than "free".
