Thread: The way this site handles pictures could really be improved.

It'll be interesting to see if Instructables is still around to celebrate its tenth birthday...

Current stats on WWF: nearly a million posts, over 14,000 active members, at 7.30 on a Wednesday morning, nearly 700 users online.

Understandables: 20 total views, at least the last 7 were generated by this thread...

Originally Posted by joe greiner

Jumbo pictures add very little value here, and at most other sites too.

The larger the image, the more detail is visible, which can be of imense value. I usually give up on most illustrated threads here because the images are so small and I can seldom see what the poster is describing.

Originally Posted by BobL

I actually do think that the picture policy does needs some attention. Maybe not in the way that HH says but having posted 1,219 attachments that takes up 52.14 MB, ie I'm averaging 43 kB per picture. All of my pictures are 800 x 600 or close to it or approximately 10 pixels per byte.

Since download speed is not proportional to image size but file size and 100 kB is the max file size, why shouldn't someone be permitted to upload a 1000 x 1000 provided it comes in under 100 kb?

Hear hear!

[Devil's advocate] Even if some members do still have small monitors and dial-up connections, should the majority be held back by the lowest denominator?

While I think the original post could have been phrased much more pleasantly, what I read as the main point was that on this board, the responsibility for complying with the technical limitations lies with the user.

The suggestion was that this responsibility could be moved to the software that runs this board. IE - wouldn't it be nice if you could just upload, and the *software* would resize the pictures to comply with the chosen and agreed specs for pictures on this board.

Just wondering if anyone has counted the number of posts where the poster has been unable to post pics, or had to be instructed how to, or redirected to another site in order to resize their images.?

Cheers,
Andrew

Originally Posted by Woodwould

The larger the image, the more detail is visible, which can be of imense value. I usually give up on most illustrated threads here because the images are so small and I can seldom see what the poster is describing.

WW - the thumbnails can be difficult to see, but I usually find sufficient detail in the pictures once I double click on the tumbnails and open them!

[Devil's advocate] Even if some members do still have small monitors and dial-up connections, should the majority be held back by the lowest denominator?

ISTR that within the last few months Neil posted stats showing that the "minority" is in fact very large (almost a majority and certainly more than the % of the vote that any winning party in UK elections has received since 1900.

However, once it is clear that dial-up has dwindled to a very small minority of active users, I agree that this justification for image restrictions will have much less weight. As against that there is the issue of storage of uploads and that is where the Boss will have his final say (unless someone is offering free storage....)

BTW I also agree with BobL's suggestion.

By keeping to the normal size image does not impede the users that have dial up etc, we have a lot of people on our mailing list that are unable to recieve our small newsletter because it takes too long to upload because of dialup. Yes there is still a lot out there and yes they do eventually go to broadband if they feel the need.


If you have a photo shop on your computor use that to bring the size down and if you want to highlight a particular part of the photo just crop and save . We dont need extra high resolution to see what is going on as woodies we like to see the overall project with a description of how it was made.

As proven the other day I cant remember the persons name but he had 4 glorious pictures of boxes that were nice and clear and everyone could see what detail he had and he kept those under the limits.

Maybe there is room for further change. I seem to remember there was a size limit of 100kb for photos, and I got used to that with the basic photo program I was using. Then suddenly the parameters changed, which is 800 x 600 or something, and I can't remember the number of times I've attempted to post photos, had them rejected. Endless resizings later I'll get lucky.
I'm not overly good with the settings on digital cameras, or computers for that matter, and most photo/imaging software is way over my head. I'm in awe of the few folk here who manage to imbed multiple photos within their post, and mysteriously not go over the size limit!!
I'd much prefer it if there was some program in place that automatically resized things to an optimum. How hard, or how expense to acheive that I have no idea.

Cheers

Originally Posted by arose62

The suggestion was that this responsibility could be moved to the software that runs this board. IE - wouldn't it be nice if you could just upload, and the *software* would resize the pictures to comply with the chosen and agreed specs for pictures on this board.

That would be nice but the people who pay to host the forum have to pay for the bigger upload and then waste server resources processing the image making response times slower for the 13999 other people who do crop and resize their images..

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...powertoys.mspx

Originally Posted by Jim Carroll

We dont need extra high resolution to see what is going on as woodies we like to see the overall project with a description of how it was made.

Who are the "We" Jim?

I don't think it's unreasonable to have 800 x 600 as the standard size for images. That would suit everyone - even the majority.

Originally Posted by Jim Carroll

By keeping to the normal size image does not impede the users that have dial up etc, we have a lot of people on our mailing list that are unable to recieve our small newsletter because it takes too long to upload because of dialup. Yes there is still a lot out there and yes they do eventually go to broadband if they feel the need.

Once again people are confusing Image size with File size. These are not directly related. I can squeeze some of my 800 x 600 images to under 30 k and still retain a high degree of clarity. One trick to doing this is to use a mono background. eg this file is only 28k.

This one is magnified x 2 so is equivalent in resolution to 1700 x 1200 on the original. The bigger one shows the apricot wood grain a bit clearer but surely it would be nice to see a bit more of it?


Here is a recently posted picture of 443 x 336 pixels with a file size of 72 k

Same picture at almost double the number of pixels (800 x 600) but only 68 k

Of course it does not look as sharp because without access to the original I cannot make the picture any sharper than it actually is but that would not change the file size by much.

If you have a photo shop on your computor use that to bring the size down and if you want to highlight a particular part of the photo just crop and save . We dont need extra high resolution to see what is going on as woodies we like to see the overall project with a description of how it was made.

Sorry I disagree, When Derek posts pictures of a new tool I want to see the whole tool and every detail in detail. What happens is some people end up posting multiple picts to be able to show this detail. As I said

As proven the other day I cant remember the persons name but he had 4 glorious pictures of boxes that were nice and clear and everyone could see what detail he had and he kept those under the limits.

That was probably because there was no significant amount of fine detail to see.

At the very least portrait shots should have the same pixel number rights as landscape shots so the limit should be raised to 800 x 800 pixels.

Originally Posted by m2c1Iw

You forgot the

Maybe he thought he had to resize them.

Originally Posted by Woodwould

The larger the image, the more detail is visible, which can be of imense value. I usually give up on most illustrated threads here because the images are so small and I can seldom see what the poster is describing.

Originally Posted by Woodwould

I don't think it's unreasonable to have 800 x 600 as the standard size for images. That would suit everyone - even the majority.

Aren't you contradicting youself here? Current limit is 800x600, yet you say you usually give up because the images are too small?

When Derek posts pictures of a new tool I want to see the whole tool and every detail in detail.

Try Ctrl+

Originally Posted by silentC

Try Ctrl+

Huh? since when does ctrl+ generate new pixels that are not present in the posted picture?