+Mark 42 Posted December 5, 2003 Posted December 5, 2003 I'd like to see a link to the "Upload an image" page (URL Below) which is also where you can get to your images to see them and arrange them or find the URL to use in a post on the forums. http://www.geocaching.com/upload/account_images.asp Also, It'd be nice if paid subscriptions included a larger image size allowable (maybe 250 k or thereabouts?).
+Team GPSaxophone Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 Didn't they raise it to 125k? Good point about getting the links to the pictures, now you have to go to 'My Cache Page', Change my account info, enter the upload pictures area, then you can see the list!
+Navdog Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 I'm all for image quality, but what is the advantage of 250K images?
+Team GPSaxophone Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 what is the advantage of 250K images What the difference between 1 megapixel resolution and 2.5?
+Prime Suspect Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 what is the advantage of 250K images What the difference between 1 megapixel resolution and 2.5? The difference would be the volume of angry comments you would get from dial-up users.
+Byron & Anne Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 I'm all for image quality, but what is the advantage of 250K images? For some of us that are stuck with slow dial-up connections one heck of a long wait time for the picture to down load. And not much gained in what I see. Large pictures viewed on computer monitors gain very little. Large pictures printed on large paper, now that's a different story.
+bons Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 what is the advantage of 250K images What the difference between 1 megapixel resolution and 2.5? On a web page, no difference other than loading time. Using some decent software you should be able to make almost any image look crystal clear and still keep it under 50K. It takes practice and some software knowledge but on the other hand, a 50K picture is within reason (barely) for a dial-up. Where you really want those megapixels is in printing and in having better raw data to do your editing off of. But your final web presentation doesn't need to big that big simply because the bandwidth isn't always there.
+4agers Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 Ideally GC.com could have a user put in their profile how to display pictures and provide the thumbnails at that resolution. i.e. 320x200, 640x480, etc... Then you would have the option to click on the image to download the full res version.
+mustanglx Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 I use Photoshop 6 to resize all my photos. The average size of a photo I take with my 3MegaPixal camera is about 1.2M. After I resize it down to 300-500 pixels wide and lower the image quality a bit the size of the photo is about 50-80K. I to have dial-up service and I have to admit that it is a bummer when the photo on a page is over 200K.
+Mark 42 Posted December 6, 2003 Author Posted December 6, 2003 Every now and then I find a map, or some image that has text as part of it, and even just jpeg compression can make text illegible. Freedom is good when used responsibly.
+bons Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 This is a case not for bigger .jpg files but for .png support. If it's a map it's likely that the number of colors are minimal and they're uniform. Because of that 8 bit .png images are probably going to be better detailed and a lot smaller. PNG has better compression that gif, less patent problems, and when done at 8 bit (which is the same resolution as gifs) are almost always much smaller in size.
the 5 little bears Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 I'm all for image quality, but what is the advantage of 250K images? For some of us that are stuck with slow dial-up connections one heck of a long wait time for the picture to down load. And not much gained in what I see. Large pictures viewed on computer monitors gain very little. Large pictures printed on large paper, now that's a different story. dial up what's that?
+hmarq Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 This is a case not for bigger .jpg files but for .png support. If it's a map it's likely that the number of colors are minimal and they're uniform. Because of that 8 bit .png images are probably going to be better detailed and a lot smaller. PNG has better compression that gif, less patent problems, and when done at 8 bit (which is the same resolution as gifs) are almost always much smaller in size. You're absolutely correct on all counts. But browser support ain't there .... IE6.x still won't render and alpha channel properly. PNG is just another great idea whose time has yet to come. People use GIF because it works and the patent issues haven't been pushed to user level enforcement ... if GIF usage were pursued the way RIAA pursues mp3 downloaders, PNG would have been adopted a long time ago. Just my $0.02
+bons Posted December 6, 2003 Posted December 6, 2003 For transparency, yes there are problems, but since were talking about maps, transparency really isn't an issue anyway. For non-transparent images support has been good enough for me and a number of comic strips. For animation and transparency, gif is probably still the way to go.
+Right Wing Wacko Posted December 7, 2003 Posted December 7, 2003 This is a case not for bigger .jpg files but for .png support. If it's a map it's likely that the number of colors are minimal and they're uniform. Because of that 8 bit .png images are probably going to be better detailed and a lot smaller. PNG has better compression that gif, less patent problems, and when done at 8 bit (which is the same resolution as gifs) are almost always much smaller in size. You're absolutely correct on all counts. But browser support ain't there .... IE6.x still won't render and alpha channel properly. PNG is just another great idea whose time has yet to come. People use GIF because it works and the patent issues haven't been pushed to user level enforcement ... if GIF usage were pursued the way RIAA pursues mp3 downloaders, PNG would have been adopted a long time ago. Just my $0.02 Actually, the compression patent that hogtied .gif files has expired and should no longer be an issue.
+Prime Suspect Posted December 7, 2003 Posted December 7, 2003 PNG has better compression that gif, less patent problems, and when done at 8 bit (which is the same resolution as gifs) are almost always much smaller in size. There are no patent problems with GIF. Those patents have expired.
+bons Posted December 7, 2003 Posted December 7, 2003 From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html : We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, but it does not expire in most of Europe until 18 June 2004, in Japan until 20 June 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004. We are still searching these databases for the IBM patent.
+Mopar Posted December 7, 2003 Posted December 7, 2003 This is a case not for bigger .jpg files but for .png support. Ewwwww, NO! png support is sooo iffy it's not funny for those of us using older PCs/browsers. Netscape 4.8 barely supports it, and IE5.5 totally hates it.
+Jeremy Posted December 7, 2003 Posted December 7, 2003 To answer the original question, we do plan to have a personal gallery area where users can see their personal photos, edit them, and make them available for view in their gallery (or not). In addition, I personally would like to see it so eventually we can store the original image for you. However I am not happy with the current storage mechanism for images, so we need to rethink how we store them before we can allow a feature for larger images. For those who request that images are smaller for dial-up users, the thumbnails and display size images will remain. It would be an additional "original" type that would allow for larger sizes. A dial up user would know far in advance whether they should download a particular image.
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