Transparent Background

[+4cycle]

Now that HQ doesn't allow pictures to be hosted on third party sights, How to I load a picture with a transparent background to a new cache I'm creating and have the background remain transparent?  I've tried PNG and GIF pictures with transparent background, when when added to the new cache page I'm creating, the background is no longer transparent.

 

Thanks in Advance,

Cache On!

[+Hügh]

On 1/20/2021 at 5:05 PM, 4cycle said:

I've tried PNG and GIF pictures with transparent background, when when added to the new cache page I'm creating, the background is no longer transparent.

 

The issue is images are transcoded to the .jpg format upon upload. As you might know, jpg/jpeg doesn't support transparency, and so the background gets dropped.

 

On 1/20/2021 at 5:05 PM, 4cycle said:

How to I load a picture with a transparent background to a new cache I'm creating and have the background remain transparent?

 

You'll have to upload the image to one of the approved hosts (Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive) and reference it on the cache page.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Hügh

[+thebruce0]

On 1/24/2021 at 10:55 PM, Hügh said:

The issue is images are transcoded to the .jpg format upon upload. As you might know, jpg/jpeg doesn't support transparency, and so the background gets dropped.

 

I guess the important question is: Is there a reason why this must be done, that images get transcoded without notice to JPG, for native hosting on geocaching.com?  

[+Hügh]

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

I guess the important question is: Is there a reason why this must be done, that images get transcoded without notice to JPG, for native hosting on geocaching.com?  

 

(As is with a lot of things...) Money. The lossy compression that JPEG supports allows for more images to be stored at a lower cost.

 

Then again, we do pay them a lot of money in Premium membership fees every year... can't they afford to host larger files? AWS S3 is cents per gigabyte, per month.

Edited February 1, 2021 by Hügh

[+barefootjeff]

18 hours ago, Hügh said:

20 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

I guess the important question is: Is there a reason why this must be done, that images get transcoded without notice to JPG, for native hosting on geocaching.com?  

 

(As is with a lot of things...) Money. The lossy compression that JPEG supports allows for more images to be stored at a lower cost.

 

Then again, we do pay them a lot of money in Premium membership fees every year... can't they afford to host larger files? AWS S3 is cents per gigabyte, per month.

 

This was answered by a lackey in another thread and the reason given for the transcoding is to recode all images as progressive jpeg so it looks pretty for people using slow connections.

[+Hügh]

7 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

This was answered by a lackey in another thread and the reason given for the transcoding is to recode all images as progressive jpeg so it looks pretty for people using slow connections.

 

Ah! Good to know.

 

Still... "waiting a few extra seconds for an image to load" isn't (in my eyes) enough to outlaw (in this specific case) transparency, but also things like image-based puzzles (based on the colours of the pixels), etc.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Hügh

[+thebruce0]

On 2/1/2021 at 4:46 PM, barefootjeff said:

This was answered by a lackey in another thread and the reason given for the transcoding is to recode all images as progressive jpeg so it looks pretty for people using slow connections.

 

If that's really the case then would it not be better simply to limit the file size of embedded images? If you want to embed a huge GIF or PNG, require it be added as a link, or uploaded to the gallery so it's only loaded by choice. That, as a web developer, I can absolutely see as a feasible solution. But with the idea that puzzles based on such media are allowed, this process breaks it without the CO necessarily knowing. Especially since you can host on an external server/provider and still embed such huge images, which is "bad thing" for slow connections.  It almost comes off like a futile virtue signal on hq's part to transcode such images only when hosted on their server because of 'slow connections' when they ultimately can't really control it because they allow 3rd party hosting to serve the image it as the CO intended... =/ 

[Darwin473]

On 1/21/2021 at 10:35 AM, 4cycle said:

How to I load a picture with a transparent background

 

One possible option (not sure if it'll help because I'm not sure what part of the transparency is important for your situation) is to give the image the same background colour as the website. It isn't a pure white, if your background is #F1F1F1 then it'll match the cache page. Not sure if it's the same on the app, and it probably won't be the same on third party apps. But it's one option.