Photo size

[troj]

JWFilips posted some good info. He's also accurate that GIF isn't the best format for photos. It works, but JPG is generally better for photos.

Some general guidelines when posting photos to any forum:

1. Crop and resize the photo to what's needed. Modern digital cameras produce huge images -- the files from mine are between 12 and 24 megabytes each. A lot of phones also produce very large images, but not as large as most cameras.
2. You're best off saving your photos as JPGs. GIF is better for charts, graphs, etc -- things with large areas of solid colors, lines in them, etc.
3. A general rule of thumb is that photos for posting in a forum don't need to be larger than 1024 in any direction, and often smaller than that. The exception is if you're doing something that needs to show fine detail, where higher resolution is needed.
4. Try to limit file size, as well -- typically when you save a JPG, it wants to know quality. Medium quality is sufficient for online purposes; you only need high quality if you're sending it to someone who's going to print it and they want a quality print. If your program lets you specifiy DPI, select 72 for online use.

What you're trying to do is accomodate two things -- one is storage use by whomever is physically hosting the image. We don't mind you uploading images here; for many, that's the easiest. If you're comfortable with Imgur, Photobucket, etc feel free to use them. But don't feel like you have to. The second thing you're trying to do is save bandwidth. Bandwidth not only for whomever is hosting the image but also those viewing the image. People on mobile are usually not on unlimited plans, so bytes add up. People on slow connections don't have as nice an experience with really large images due to the time required to download them.

At the end of the day, our goal is the best experience for everyone involved in the site and we want you all more focused on discussing cast bullets than worrying about bits and bytes. We recognize that everyone's technical knowledge is different. If you know how to adjust image sizes and don't mind doing so, we'd appreciate it -- we all benefit from it. If you're not technical, that's okay -- do what you know how to do, but whatever you're doing here, have fun with it!

If you've got questions, feel free to ask. If I don't get back to you, bug Brad and he can let me know -- I'm the family IT nerd, he's the family bullet guy. I'm IT support here and you guys all know a whole lot more about casting and shooting than I do.

-Kevin

 

[smokeywolf]

I too would like to see a maximum preferred file size for photos.

Meant to post this a couple of hours ago. 1545 hours now.

 

[troj]

I too would like to see a maximum preferred file size for photos.

When I post images to forums, I typically try to keep them under a megabyte. Usually that's not an issue.

That said, I tend to focus more on dimensions and image quality and I end up with the images in the range I'm after based on that. The tools I'm using also readily allow me to tweak based on those settings (I'm using PhotoShop which is way excessive for this application, but it's what I have so I use it).

-Kevin

 

[Rick]

Microsoft Office is fairly common and it has a good photo editing function. That's where I almost always resize my pictures, it's just to easy not to use it. It also does several other functions quite easily such as cropping, rotating, color & brightness etc.

 

[Ben]

Kevin,

Thanks for the guidelines and clarifications.
That clears the fog for me quite a bit.

Best,
Ben

 

[williamwaco]

I guess I am a glutton for punishment. I load all mine into Paint and reduce them to 350 to 400 pixels then upload them direct.

 

[Mike W1]

IrfanView is a free download that lets you easily resize pictures and lots of other things that I haven't explored. So far when I've wanted to put text into a picture Paint is easy as is cropping. I've made it a habit to use IMG out of PhotoBucket as some sites only store just so much and then they start deleting automatically. Real nice when you're trying to look at an old thread somewhere and the picture's gone along with most of the useful info. Also prefer the JPG format as it also makes it easy when viewing to zoom in on something.