When viewing the galleries I find it hard to give a critique on some images due to the small 600 x 450 size.

Would it be possible to allow an image size of 800 x 600?

I notice some of the images are over 300kb which seems excessive for such small images and even 200kb is plenty for a quality 800 x x600 image. So server space does not have to be increased, maybe a limit of 200kb would be more useful thatn 600 pixels?

I really feel this would make the galleries much more interesting and may result in more comments, as people would get a much better impression of the images reall attributes, particularly the sharpness of the image.

What do others think of this?

Totally agree!

Well thanks Gaz. I can't believe that yours is the only comment on this issue.
The more time I spend here posting and commenting in the galleries the more I find this to be a major issue.

I often save the images and enlarge them to 1280 x 960 so I can get a better idea, but that is not fair in some ways as it makes the technical issues like shrpness and detail worse. But it gives a better aesthetic impression of the photos.

I often find I have to recrop my photos to get any impact with such a small image, otherwise the detail is lost and the subject becomes so small as be insignificant, and yet even an 800px image will give a reasonable impression of the original.

Is it just me? and Gaz?

What about the rest of you?

The 600 pixel limit is there to preserve the Gallery Layout at smaller screen resolutions. PhotographyBLOG works best at a minimum of 1024x768, and I think 800 pixel wide/high images may disrupt things. There's also the increased loading time of each photograph to consider.

Having said that, if enough members like the idea, then I can certainly raise the size limit to 800 pixels instead of 600.

I might be wrong, but I would have thought members that upload their images to the blog would have a more substantial internet connection than dialup, so possibly increased loading time might not be applicable now, although it is still something to be considered.

The increased limit to 800 would be in my opinion a bonus to the blog, it certainly would open up a whole new world to certain types of images eg landscapes. I often find cropping and resizing landscape images to 600, I lose a lot of character from them, so I don't bother uploading them.

Maybe a justification would be if an increase to 800 was allowed, the 800 should be the whole image and not waste resolution with framing, this then would show the whole image off and would be of benefit to both the photographer and viewer.

Might be worth starting a poll Mark maybe.

Cheers

Gary G@zz@

Hi , lonesome dialupper here, I too think the site would benefit from changing the limit from 600 to 800 max. but please ,please could the file size be limited to 200k ! Some images at the moment are coming in at 350+ and quite often I find myself skipping over them ,which I hate doing.

Cheers Jogi

Due to popular demand, I have changed the size limitation to 800 pixels wide/high

You're a Gentleman Mark, thank you, hope you had a good birthday whilst you were away.

Gary

My birthday fell on the first day of PMA - had to get up at 6.30am to make an 8.00am press conference! And then spent the rest of the day working. It's a hard life...!

Wow Mark that was so fast. Thanks a million for the change and to all of you who backed me on this, I am sure we will all benefit from this change. I noticed it when I just logged on tonight and it blew me away, the photos just look so much better, although I am an old bloke going a bit blind.

I am also on dialup, and I have a megabite limit per month, but I don't care about that. I just really enjoy this website and I think you are doing a fantastic job Mark. There are some really great people here who really seem to do their best to help others and contribute to the site.

Once again, thanks.

'nother dialup dude, here, so viewing not speedy, but larger images are better.... cheers!

Yes, presumptuous gazmaster! I'm a dial-up person, and I suspect many viewers to this site are, too. The larger size hasn't been a negative as far as downloading time is concerned and a bonus as far as quality is concerned ... 700 max size may be a happy medium. Certainly works on other sites. :smile:

"I might be wrong, but I would have thought members that upload their images to the blog would have a more substantial internet connection than dialup, so possibly increased loading time might not be applicable now, although it is still something to be considered".

DP the above is my get out clause from being presumptuous
I did admit I might be wrong, and I did say increased loading time is still something to be considered
Oh well back to my 10Mb unlimited broadband connection, sorry couldn't resist, now I know I'm being fascesous (sp).

Being serious though, 800 has improved the quality of the images although sometimes when images are over 400k in file size, then I can imagine dialup users having a few problems, it's not necessarily the pixel size of the image that is the problem, it's the actual size. The 800x600 version of the Bald Eagle I uploaded has a footprint of 71k, and imho it hasn't ruined the definition and clarity by compressing it that low, obviously if the image was being viewed at full size and it was compressed that's when problems will occur.
Bottom line is, I feel, don't overdo the image when saving, make sure it is below 200k and then there wont' be any problems.

G@zz@ The Presumptuous

I am on a CDMA dialup with a 1Gb a month limit, it's very unreliable but the best I can afford.
I am very happy with the new size limit although I have found a few images recently that were 700 to 800kb.
This can take while when my connection is a bit slow but the real problem is it eats up so much of my monthly limit.

Some high detail images do need a bit larger file size I tried reducing one in photoshop and below 450kb it did loose some fine detail. But this is the exception not the rule. 200 to 250 is plenty for most image s to remain perfectly shrarp.

I think we need to try and educate evryone on why and how to reduce image size, I have found a number of people have asked how when I have suggested that they could reduce an image a bit.

I do it through the photoshop "save as" because it retains the EXIF. Unfortunately if you use a web optimiser it seems to strip the EXIF info. If someone doesn't have photoshop or similar editor though it may be a good option.

PhotoRazor seemed the best of four that I looked at.

PhotoRazor it has variable quality settings.

These ones don't but are still very good.

PIXresizer Very good

[url=http://www.scrammit.com/software.htm]PictureGirdle[/url Image seemed to loose a fraction of sharpness compared with the other two

This one seems a bit more complex to use and offers many other features.

Power Batch Good quality but not as easy to use.

All are free software.

WARNING you will loose the EXIF info with all of these optimisers

I think the problem is that people are not changing the resolution of the photo. To print a photo you need a resolution of about 300 ppi, but to view on screen you only need about 75 ppi. The human eye will not be able to notice the difference. You can make this change in Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro etc, when you make the image smaller. Advantages from doing this are, freeing up more space in your gallery AND it means that your photo cannot be pirated at any decent resolution.
Donmac