Resizing your images

[jeanb]

Nothing turns me off a gallery faster than clicking on a link and finding enormous images. In fact I make a point of not visiting those galleries any more. Though it's not difficult to change the size at which you view, it is annoying when you are clicking through a lot of images and don't want to keep changing the viewing size.

So, before you decide to join the PaDders, please learn how to resize. There are lots of other advantages including using less space, and less likelihood of someone taking your images if they are smaller too.

Whilst the image size is going up with each new camera, it's more important than ever to learn how to use that piece of software that came with it.

[jajlo]

My wireless kept dropping out on me today, didn't get a chance to 'delete' original on todays.. but, since I'm up and running again after a firmware upgrade... (I REALLY hope that does the trick.. )


I usually use that delete option to keep the size at the 'large' and yes.. save's space and time.

[demorcan]

I post my photos screen size so that anyone who wants to use one as a wallpaper may do so. I have been doing this 3 years on Pbase. I do not want to have to keep a smaller size also for the PaD since I have the original in another gallery. But I will put a seperate smaller sized one in a PaD gallery for 2 or 3 days if this is the proper way to do it. But, I am slightly confused since I went to your (jeanb) PaD for today and it was very much bigger than screen sized in original.

[kstuebin]

I'm on dial up and some people save even smaller images at such high resolution that it just takes too long to download. I have been told that when viewing on a monitor there is no advantage to saving a image at the highest resolution and it certainly appears to be true to me. I know most people have broadband these days but there are still some of us in the dark ages. I resize my shots to 800 x 600 and save at 8 in PS.

[sloopsailor]

Sorry, so many were full size, I had thought this was the preferred posting size. I will back mine off.

[demorcan]

I do mine at 1024X768 or at 800X600. Most photographers I have known use 1024X768 as their screen size. Many casual users still use 800X600. Teh 1024X768 does give better details. I do not post photos at full size. But, I can see a difference between a fullsized one and a resized smaller one. When I resize, I lose some of the details in small things such as tree limbs. A large photo viewed at screen size is not the same as a resized photo viewed at exactly the same size. I have been experimenting with the various resizing parameters and have not been able to get it to resize and show the same as a full sized viewed at same resolution. I have not uploaded a fullsized one to see what Pbase does on resizing to the other sizes. I can see the diffrerences in photoshop, etc. Close ups which have less details in them easily resize very small with no significant changes. Besides resizing, compression also greatly efects the d/l time for dialup users. I currently use a 9 to 1 compression ratio unless is greatly effects the quality of the photo.

Prevouisly the photos I had posted here were mostly viewed at Steve's digicams in the photo forums and I was following their guidelines the users there came up with. There were more professional photographers there, so thoes guidelines may not be the best for Pad.

I am welcome to any comments or suggestions. The purpose of posting here is to allow people to do them. Anything I can do to make that easy and enjoyable to the viewer is desired.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Wayne

[brother_mark]

Wayne, I think your file sizes are fine. I resize most of my images to between 800x600 and 1152x864, which is my screen resolution setting. I compress at 12:1. Yeilding 500kb to 900kb files. After uploading I recompress on pbase for sizes between 50kb and 150kb, usually. I'll not be changing that. I have also loaded some 2048x1536 size images for some people who have requested large files whe an image contains lots of details, but then I "save for web" in PS Elements which loses the exif info and compress on pbase for a large looking image and reasonable file size.

[shecodes]

I resize even smaller to 600 pixels wide at the most. I always have the original, but for the purposes of sharing photos, 600 pixels wide is enough.

If I were to make my pictures available to use as wallpaper, I'd put them for download somewhere else.

For resizing I use a program called photocleaner that resizes, sharpens, and does some correction. It's pretty inexpensive.

[twalker294]

I resize my 10D pictures to 25% in PS CS. That makes them 768x512. Sometimes after I resize I'll decide to crop a bit, so some in my gallery are a little smaller than that. I then shoot for a 100k file size which usually ends up being somewhere between level 8 and level 10 JPG. I have 785 images on Pbase and they are taking up 75 megs of space. There is no need IMHO in putting anything over about 100k on the internet unless you are trying to demonstrate pixel level picture quality.

Todd

[i_fly]

Hello there
I guess I'm one of the PADers jeanb is referring to, as I download my pictures in rather large version, probably bigger than most of you do. That does not bother me for two reasons:

a) The average size of my downloaded picture is some 250k, despite being some 2400 * 1700 pixels in screen size. Those 250k are no more than I see for many pictures downloaded in a very small screen size. Thus, I don't find that I'm waisting any more bandwith than many of you, yet I leave you the possibility to look at the very detail of my work, if you want to ( see item b)

b) I guess that most of you use Medium or Large size as a default while browsing the galleries. Those options yield downsized versions of my originals, smaller both in bytes as physical screen volume. ( large meaning some 800*600 pixels, less than full screen view for most of you, and just some 40 -50k in disk /memory space.)

Thus I fail to see the problem jeanb is referring to, unless you opt for original size as default while entering a gallery. But I do agree with her in that there are ways to greatly decrease the disk/memory size in bytes of many of the pictures that are downloaded in very moderate or small screen size. If people are not going to show their work in larger than medium or large size, then it is of no use to opt for a more bytes than, say 80 -100k

JMHO

Happy shooting to all of you

Pall Gudjonsson

[jocke_w]

I'm not the part of the PaD thing but this discussion was too interesting...

So far you have only been talking about the screen size, 800x600 and 1024x768 etc, but there is another important thing to consider, the screen resolution. Cameras and printers use 300 dpi (dots per inch) as their resolution. Monitors can only show 96 dpi or 72 dpi for older monitors. That's why pictures are blown up on the screen when using a resolution higher than 96 dpi. They are actually shown magnified at 3.1x.
I downscale most of my pictures to 96 dpi for the web. What happens when downscaling is that the picture gets its natural size on the monitor! So when you look at your 96 dpi version on the monitor you see how the 300 dpi version will look like printed or developed! I really like the idea of knowing that you're looking at the natural size and not something the computer has made up because of its shortcomings...
http://www.pbase.com/jocke_w

[twalker294]

JockeW,

DPI has NOTHING to do with anything except printing. Please read here for more information that will dispel your incorrect notion:

http://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html

Todd

[lou_giroud]

What is writen here is somewhat surprising. If you set your last view to a picture on any page to be seen in "Large", all the pages will open in large, so what is the problem. Saying to be disturbed by the big size of a picture is bullshit and non-sense. This also proves that all you are interested to see is the picture and what it looks like. But, professionals and better informed people welcome this "big" size pictures they download to see what the real quality of the picture and by there the one of the camera is. Everyone should sometimes upload a full size picture to give just an idea about the quality of a camera.
This for sure can only be found in a full size picture.
There is one only valuable reason to up reduced pictures and that's space saving. I do my medium and normal size pictures in a reduced size without the exif file to save space on my account, but for sure not to make pleasure to picture viewers. Also, a picture in full 3000 size without exif file takes just the same space as a reduced 1/4 size with an exif file, so one more reason to remove the exifs and post larger size.
As allways the logo is ; "So many man, so many opinions"

[brother_mark]

Todd,

The link you give is absolutely correct. BUT you don't understand something, a file saved at 300dpi in PS will be larger in bytes than the same exact file saved at 72dpi in PS in bytes. The image will indeed appear exactly the same to the screen viewer, but the file's size will be greatly reduced, if saved at 72dpi. (The article mind you was about necessary scan sizes and how different dpi scans would result in different size prints, but the same screen size (pixels).)

Hence the suggestion to save at a 72dpi size. You will retain the images full pixel dimensions, BUT not the amount of space it takes to store. Try it. I just did. I opened a 2.1mb (compressed) file of film scanned by my lab. I saved it first just as I opened it but at an image quality (or compresion rate) of 12. It (file A) is now a 3.5mb file. I re-opened the original 2.1mb file and used the automate function in Photoshop Elements, selected to convert the image size only changing the resolution from 150dpi to 72dpi. Not the pixels, just the dpi. I saved the file, same 12 quality compression. The new file size--369kb!! So, while it is absolutely true that dpi has no effect on screen resolution it does effect file size, as in bytes of space the photo takes up. Since jeanb would like smaller file sizes for downloading, the suggestion by jocke_w to save at a lower dpi was correct. I'll be polite and stop here.

Pall I love your original sizes. I don't always look at them, but they are great fun sometimes. And John's too.

Mark

[procyon_g]

There is one point that no one has mentioned yet. If you resize your photos before uploading them you will have more control of the quality of the default sizes. The resizing that pbase does automagically, is kind of a "one size fits all" approach that may cause a loss of image quality. Depending on the amount of detail and color in the image, you can change the amount and kind of USM and compression to create a smaller image that is not noticeably different in quality from the original. When you do that, you give the viewer the best chance of seeing what you want them to see. I can understand if you don't believe me. I wasn't sure this was true until I tried an experiment myself. I took one of Pall's wonderful landscapes in the original size, resized it to 800x600 myself and applied just the right amount of USM (making no other changes). Then I compared it to the default large size generated by pbase. My version of the resized image was noticeably clearer and had more depth than pbase's version.

I'm not belittling what Slug and crew have done -- in fact I think their work is miraculous when you consider all of the photos and photographers that have images here. But if you want to display your best images in the best possible way to the most number of people, you might want to consider resizing them yourself.