Pictures in logs

[+ThePropers]

As I was uploading photos today, I wondered why we are limited to 125k or 600 pixels wide. Both of those make pictures woefully small (600 wide is pretty small given today's resolutions) or woefully low-quality (125k...really?)

 

I find myself trying to take photos off my digital camera and make them at least 800x600, but even then trying to keep it under 125k requires me to save it as a quality 2 or 3 in photoshop, which make it ugly as sin.

 

Ugh. What are the odds the image size requirements could be upped? I understand there's the whole bandwidth and storage thing, but even allowing a 200k or 250k photo would help out tremendously. With that, I could probably at least get an 800x600 photo at a decent quality uploaded, or maybe even a 1024x768 photo (at a lower quality) loaded.

[+txoilgas]

As I was uploading photos today, I wondered why we are limited to 125k or 600 pixels wide. Both of those make pictures woefully small (600 wide is pretty small given today's resolutions) or woefully low-quality (125k...really?)

 

I find myself trying to take photos off my digital camera and make them at least 800x600, but even then trying to keep it under 125k requires me to save it as a quality 2 or 3 in photoshop, which make it ugly as sin.

 

Ugh. What are the odds the image size requirements could be upped? I understand there's the whole bandwidth and storage thing, but even allowing a 200k or 250k photo would help out tremendously. With that, I could probably at least get an 800x600 photo at a decent quality uploaded, or maybe even a 1024x768 photo (at a lower quality) loaded.

I think this hobby is about hiding and finding caches and not photography. Bandwith is a continuing problem here so excess bandwith usage is not in everyones best interest. Why not put a link to a page you manage so everyone can see your large files.

[+ThePropers]

I think this hobby is about hiding and finding caches and not photography. Bandwith is a continuing problem here so excess bandwith usage is not in everyones best interest. Why not put a link to a page you manage so everyone can see your large files.

 

While I see your point regarding bandwidth (as I pointed out in my original post), I will have to disagree that this hobby is just about hiding and finding caches, as sharing experiences plays a big part of my enjoyment of the hobby. Otherwise, why bother having the picture thing at all? Everyone would just be logging "found it" if it was really only about finding caches.

 

Actually, I have an idea! Gimme one sec....[cue muzak]...ok I'm back

 

I just hosted my own image and then put HTML into the notes field to link to one with better quality:

 

View Log

 

Notice how crappy the image looks? Now, notice the "click here for full sized version" link. Genious! Ok, it's not exactly genious, but it does get the job done, and that much better looking image is only 260k. I had to save it at a little lower quality than I normally would have (a 7 in photoshop) to prove a point, but with me hosting it myself, I could save it any sized/resolution I see fit.

 

I'd much rather not have to go through that whole headache of course, but I suppose it's an acceptable workaround, if the image size can't be upped on the site itself.

 

Edit: Just noticed that doesn't show up as a link on the cache page, only when viewing the log on it's own separate page. Oh well.

Edited December 18, 2006 by ThePropers

[+fizzymagic]

I find myself trying to take photos off my digital camera and make them at least 800x600, but even then trying to keep it under 125k requires me to save it as a quality 2 or 3 in photoshop, which make it ugly as sin.

I really usually don't have much trouble getting my 800x600 images under 125K unless there is a lot of high-spatial-frequency content in the image. And then I just adjust the quality until it looks as good as it can. For what it is (a photo accompanying a log) it seems pretty good to me.

 

Over-sharpening your images will cause the JPEG compression to work more poorly; you can often improve the apparent quality for a given file size just by running a mild softening filter over the entire image before compression.

 

One particular setting that can mess things up is the chrominance subsampling. You should always use 2x2 1x1 1x1 subsampling for uploading images to the site. When I got Paintshop Pro 9, they had changed the JPEG encoder to make 1x1 1x1 1x1 the default, which results in images almost twice the size without much of an improvement.

[+Team Perks]

I have no problem uploading my photos at 800x600 quality. I generally pull them from my Flickr account (which automatically resizes during upload and does a pretty good job at avoiding compression/resizing-related quality problems) and upload them to my GC.com gallery. They typically hit between 90-110K in size so they display just fine.

[+ShadowAce]

I have well over 2000 pictures in my gallery. Now if GS.com let me keep these at 1meg images, it would be sweet but also useless.

 

If you resize them yourself before you upload them you can have a much larger image.

 

That is an image I uploaded to a log by resizing it before uploading it.

 

Heck even this:

was uploaded to this log:

Bartolo Mountain log

 

It takes a bit more time, but in photoshop I open the image and resize it to 12"x.... and save ti as a JPG of 7 quality then I upload the image. Much faster upload and it is nice and large.

 

You can make a batch command for Photoshop that will do the resizing for you on an entire folder of images.

 

Hope this helps.

[+ThePropers]

I have well over 2000 pictures in my gallery. Now if GS.com let me keep these at 1meg images, it would be sweet but also useless.

 

If you resize them yourself before you upload them you can have a much larger image.

 

That is an image I uploaded to a log by resizing it before uploading it.

 

Heck even this:

was uploaded to this log:

It takes a bit more time, but in photoshop I open the image and resize it to 12"x.... and save ti as a JPG of 7 quality then I upload the image. Much faster upload and it is nice and large.

 

You can make a batch command for Photoshop that will do the resizing for you on an entire folder of images.

 

Hope this helps.

 

I must be doing something wrong, but I'll be the first to admit I'm not a photoshop expert..

 

My images are typically about 3 or 4MB (using my 8MP camera). Assuming a landscaped photo, I resize it to either 1024x768 or 800x600 in photoshop. I save it as a "3" (low) quality but it's still usually over 150k. If I tried to save it as a "7" it would be a lot bigger.

 

Take the picture I posted above. That's saved at a 7, it's 768x1024, and is 265k. I just resized it to 600x800 and it's still 162k. Granted, that one would be able to uploaded since it's only 600 wide, but if it was landscaped (800x600) I wouldn't be able to because of the 125k limit....without it being resized automatically anyways. I have to reduce the quality to a "4" in order to make it under 125k...which makes it look pretty lousy.

 

Although your second picture you posted is both over 600 pixels wide and over 125k (it's 186k), so how'd you get it onto the site? Shouldn't that have been resized automatically?

 

Of course your first photo is 600x800 so it can be uploaded but if it was landscaped (800x600) it wouldn't work because it would be both over 600 wide and over 125k (133k).

 

Am I misunderstanding the size requirements?

Edited December 20, 2006 by ThePropers

[+Ambrosia]

I have a hard enough time with my patience to just upload the pictures to the site (I am so behind). If I had to resize each one before submitting I would never post them.

 

So basically I just put them on the site, and let gc.com resize them. They seem fine to me, I guess. I really couldn't spend the time and energy to resize them myself anyways, so they'll just have to do.

 

This recent one doesn't look so bad:

 

 

Edited December 20, 2006 by Ambrosia

[+Jamie Z]

Can I suggest using Irfanview or Easy Thumbnails to resize your images?

 

Irfanview is, in my opinion, one of the best free pieces of software out there. It's amazing at resizing, rotating, and all that. You can change the compression of the image in 100 increments. My 800x600 pics usually come out to around 100k.

 

Easy Thumbnails is only slightly less slick. It's big advantage is that you can change the parameters of the resize and see the before and after pictures realtime, including the disk size. That is, take your 4mb picture, resize it to 800x600 at 70% quality, and you can look at the image and see how big it's going to be. If it doesn't suit your needs, you can alter the controls until it looks good and fits under 125k. Easy Thumbnails will let you resize a whole bunch of pics at the same time. Very easy to resize all your shots from one day, and they all come out looking pretty good.

 

Jamie

[+ThePropers]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have been playing around with Photoshop and still have problems getting acceptable quality under 125k, so I will try them out. Keep in mind this is more of an issue with photos that I would like to be in landscape dimensions (800x600) as opposed to portrait dimensions (600x800).

 

However, for TPTB, is there a reason we can upload a 600x800 image but not an 800x600? I mean, it's the same sized image, but just rotated 90 degrees. It seems a bit silly to limit it to "600 wide" but as tall as you want. I would think a better limit would be "either 600 wide or 600 tall"

 

Also, can someone please tell my how ShadowAce (from his post above) got this image uploaded to a cache? It's both over 125k and over 600 pixels wide. Again, I fear I may be a bit confused on what is allowable, but the wording is not that clear to me either (probably because of the word "largest"):

If your original image is under 125k or 600 pixels wide, the largest image will not be resized.

 

was uploaded to this log:

Bartolo Mountain log

Edited December 21, 2006 by ThePropers

[+Isonzo Karst]

please tell my how ShadowAce (from his post above) got this image uploaded to a cache? It's both over 125k and over 600 pixels wide

 

It's not much over 125K.

I never worry about or even reference width/height in pixels - just try to keep the file at ~ 125K. The site will accept files that are somewhat larger than that.

[+ThePropers]

please tell my how ShadowAce (from his post above) got this image uploaded to a cache? It's both over 125k and over 600 pixels wide

 

It's not much over 125K.

I never worry about or even reference width/height in pixels - just try to keep the file at ~ 125K. The site will accept files that are somewhat larger than that.

 

Well, it's nearly 186, which is about 61k over which is nearly 49% too large. That's hardly "not much over 125k"

 

It's also 1615 pixels wide, which is 1015 pixels too wide.

 

I am not pointing fingers, I just want to know how that was able to be uploaded so I make sure I understand what the limits really are.

[+Knight2000]

Sorry to drag up an old thread but i was kind of concerned with the same issue. We have been uploading our 5mp pics and they have been being resized small. I was wondering how that worked or the limit on size. I see this above.

 

I also use Irfanview. Is there a way to resize a group/file of pictures instead of resizing them one at a time using Irfanview or any other photo software/website?

[+thedeadpirate]

[+ShadowAce]

Sorry to drag up an old thread but i was kind of concerned with the same issue. We have been uploading our 5mp pics and they have been being resized small. I was wondering how that worked or the limit on size. I see this above.

 

I also use Irfanview. Is there a way to resize a group/file of pictures instead of resizing them one at a time using Irfanview or any other photo software/website?

 

Camera is set to 2mp.

 

I use Photoshop and make the image 900 pix wide x .... then I save it as a jpg with a 7 settings on quality. It normally allows me to do a fairly decent upload size

[+Isonzo Karst]

knight2000 thank you for asking the group resize question and GeoBain, thank you for answering it. I have IrfanView, haven't been using it much, but that feature alone has my full attention.

[+Prime Suspect]

Sorry to drag up an old thread but i was kind of concerned with the same issue. We have been uploading our 5mp pics and they have been being resized small. I was wondering how that worked or the limit on size. I see this above.

 

I also use Irfanview. Is there a way to resize a group/file of pictures instead of resizing them one at a time using Irfanview or any other photo software/website?

Picassa seems to have a much better resizing algorithm. It's a (free from Google) photo organizer / retoucher / web publisher. You can use the batch export function to perform the batch resizing.

[+StarBrand]

Its not free but does the best job of any program I have ever used.

 

http://www.trivista.com/products/asmallerimage/