Image Upload Problems ...

[+Rich in NEPA]

Does anyone know what happened to the benchmark website?!

 

I was entering BM logs late this afternoon and uploading photos. Everything was working fine until I started uploading the photos for my last log: LY1158. The file size for each of the three photos is well under the 125KB limit (actually I double-checked and they are 121KB, 120KB, and 120KB respectively) yet the site insists on resizing them from 650x490 pixels down to 600x452 pixels. I even deleted my original log and tried doing it all over. (A frustrating experience on painfully slow dial-up.)

 

So, is something messed up with the site, or are changes being made that we don't know about at this time? Could someone at GC.com please check on this situation and respond?

 

Thank you.

[+Colorado Papa]

So, is something messed up with the site, or are changes being made that we don't know about at this time?  Could someone at GC.com please check on this situation and respond?

I'm not with GC, but everything looks good to me. Your photos appear to have uploaded just fine.

[+Rich in NEPA]

Thanks for looking, CP, but I think you missed my point. If you check the properties of these photos (right-click your mouse on one of them, then click "Properties"), you'll see that the image dimensions are 600x452 pixels. What I'm trying to upload are images that are 650x490 pixels. Earlier this year Jeremy gave us the option on the benchmarking site of not having images downsized if they are less than 125KB. This option has been working fine up to yesterday afternoon. Something had to change with the way the site handles image uploads.

 

This is what it says on the upload form: “If your original image is under 125k or 600 pixels wide, the largest image will not be resized.”

 

I just tried it again this morning. Same problem.

 

Cheers ...

[+Zhanna]

Rich, I just saved a series of a particular test photo, increasing the compression value by one each time. I ended up with files of sizes 122K, 121K, 119K, 115K, 110K, 108K, and 107K. I then uploaded all of them and checked to see at what point my original dimensions were preserved. It wasn't till I got to the 108K version that it appeared on the site with the dimensions of 650x490, even though that's how they were all uploaded. Every file larger than that was resized down to 600x452. In the past, photos uploaded at 650x490 have displayed at their proper dimensions as long as the file size was under 125K. Obviously that's not happening right now.

 

What's going on? Would someone look into this?

 

Zhanna

[+Rich in NEPA]

 

Oh, my! Is this some sort of new feature?! Check out LY1158 for example, or any other BM page, and make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom. I never saw this before. Does anyone know what it's about or what it's for?

 

I just knew something had to have changed, or it is just plain messed up.

 

Oy!!!

[+Colorado Papa]

This is what it says on the upload form: “If your original image is under 125k or 600 pixels wide, the largest image will not be resized.”

 

I just tried it again this morning.  Same problem.

Check out the latest post by Jeremy.

[+California Bear]

The extra stuff at the bottom looks like something that was put in while developing the page to enable the programmer to see what the server was returning in response to various requests on the page. No doubt someone was debugging the page and inadvertently left the trace information on the page when they moved it from the development environment to the production environment.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Rich in NEPA, Zhanna -

 

Are your uploaded pictures missing some of the view (cropped), or some of the resolution?

[+Rich in NEPA]

Are your uploaded pictures missing some of the view (cropped), or some of the resolution?

BDT, you could say they are missing resolution. They are being downsized, not cropped. What starts out as 650x490 pixels ends up at 600x452 pixels. Same image, only smaller.

 

This becomes a problem whenever there is a lot of detail or textures in the image, such as a woods scene. When you make an image smaller you have to throw away details. (Essentially it's the same kind of problem whenever you need to increase the amount of JPEG compression in order to lower the file size. Image information is permanently lost. So, it's an inverse trade-off when trying to keep files small and download times shorts. More detail requires higher resolution, such as going from a 2 megapixel to a 3 megapixel camera since it gives you a larger dimensioned image. Also, the more detail in an image the more compression is required to maintain a specific file size. If an image contains mostly large smooth areas such as blue sky or water, etc., then much less compression will still yield a smaller file size.)

 

Hopefully Jeremy is aware of the problem by now and that the fix is a simple one. I'm holding off entering any more BM logs and photos until he's had a chance to work on it.

 

Thanks much for your interest.

 

Cheers ...

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Yes, this is what I had figured. I would think it is a big problem if the pictures were being cropped, so I figured I'd ask which it was.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I'm uploading some pictures now. I've got a bunch to upload. So far I have found this:

 

Picture: One AH8732 area

Original Dimensions: 1024x768

Original Filesize: 125.2K

Uploaded Dimensions (Netscape): 1024x768

Uploaded Filesize (Netscape): ?

Uploaded Dimensions (Explorer): 549x412

Uploaded Filesize (Explorer): 107.8K

 

Picture: Two AH8732 disk

Original Dimensions: 1024x768

Original Filesize: 197.2K

Uploaded Dimensions (Netscape): 600x450

Uploaded Filesize (Netscape): ?

Uploaded Dimensions (Explorer): 549x412

Uploaded Filesize (Explorer): 77.1K

 

Picture: Three HW0224 area

Original Dimensions: 1024x768

Original Filesize: 204.6K

Uploaded Dimensions (Netscape): 600x450

Uploaded Filesize (Netscape): ?

Uploaded Dimensions (Explorer): 549x412

Uploaded Filesize (Explorer): 74.9K

 

Picture: Four HW0224 disk

Original Dimensions: 1024x768

Original Filesize: 169.9K

Uploaded Dimensions (Netscape): 600x450

Uploaded Filesize (Netscape): ?

Uploaded Dimensions (Explorer): 549x412

Uploaded Filesize (Explorer): 67.9K

 

Observations:

 

1. It seems that Picture 1 was only marginally above one of the 2 limits (125K) and a lot above the other limit (width=600px), and was therefore not resized. The rest were above both limits and therefore resized by the GC Site.

 

2. I don't think looking at "Properties" in a browser is a reliable measure of picture size on the Site, since it seems to depend on the browser. I downloaded picture 2 from the GC Site with Netscape and its size on my hard drive is 600x450 75.3K. A download of picture 1 with Netscape resulted in 1024x768 105.3K.

 

4. The browsers seem to do more 'resizing' than the GC Site.

 

4. My version of netscape won't tell me the picture filesize.

 

5. I find that I can't get really excited about the resizing done by the GC site.

[+Rich in NEPA]

BDT, I'm using IE6.0 and don't have any other browsers installed so I can't speak for Netscape, etc. When I view your Pic #1 and check properties, it shows 1024x768 and 107.8KB. For Pic #2 it shows 600x450 and 77KB. I've always found the Properties information to be 100% accurate with regard to any images the browser (IE6 in my case) is displaying. I can, however, see the immediate difference on the screen between a 650x490 image and a 600x452 image.

 

One issue (problem?) with the current GC.com sites that you might not be aware of is that whenever you upload an image, it is always resampled by the site software and what is stored on the server is not the original image that you uploaded. It is processed first, then saved. It is not a simple file transfer where the image is "copied" from your computer to their server. Even if it is not resized dimensionally, it is always given a new JPEG compression and it results in a new file size. (Jeremy stated that this upload process was implemented to conserve disk space!) I find this process to be just as unacceptable as the downsizing aspect because every time a JPEG image is opened and resaved, precious data is permanently lost and your image quality suffers.

 

If I go back and look at all of my old BM logs, those images are exactly the same—pixel for pixel and byte for byte—as the originals. This means that in the "old days" of both the geocaching site and the benchmarking site, all images were indeed a simple file transfer from my computer to their server.

 

I don't believe that the browsers are doing any image resizing, particularly in my case because I have the auto-resizing option disabled. And this would only affect images that are larger than my video display area (1280x1024).

 

I concur with your sentiments that the image manipulation being done by the site is horrendous and unnecessary.

 

Cheers ...

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Rich in NEPA -

 

Thanks for the information on Explorer's auto-resizing switch. I disabled the feature and sure enough, the image became huge. I'm not much for panning pictures so I turned it back off.

 

Actually to be more clear, my feelings on the GC Site's resizing of pictures is:

 

1. I don't blame them for establishing a limit (such as 125K) on picture sizes.

 

2. I have no idea why they'd re-size the dimensions of any picture if it was less than 125K. I don't know what the point would be, especially given the browser's limiting capability (the auto-resizing switch).

 

3. Although I state #2 above, if I uploaded a picture that was 650x490 and it was re-sized to 600x452, I really wouldn't care. The difference in resolution is too minimal, in my opinion.

 

If such a re-sizing of pictures below 125K is an irritant to some people, I hope the Site discontinues doing it for their sake, unless there's some other really good reason for doing it.