Righto I am after input onto what size images we should allow to be uploaded onto the forum. Normal internet images should be around say 20kb. This allows speed and reduces badwidth. What is teh feel ??
Some images that have been uploaded are over 50kb which is pretty big for the forum.

Brad could you please convert these kB into Pixel.... ie. 600x 400, its what I am familiar with. Ta.

It isn't quite that simple. I will post a picture at each size below, that maybe the easiest way..

Glen,

an average 640x480 image at Q=50 will take about 20 kb. If Q (quality) goes up to say 100%, it'll can take upto 900 kb.

The problem is that we get charged by the MB, so image size is measured for Brad in $$$ per MB. This is one of the reasons of why we had to move.

The larger the image size, the better the quality or the more pixels you have, but realistically, please when you're resizing your images in Photoshop or Office Photo Imager (or whatever), please limit them to about 640x480, in JPEG format, with Q=50. This will result in a small, fast loading image that still looks pretty good.

Andrew

If you look at the photos you can see the quality difference in them. Look close at the number plates for a good comparison. A few of the other forums I play with limit the imgaes at 50kb so when guys post pictures which people may like in better quality they just e-mail the owner and get it from them or visit their website.
Some of the images floating arounf the forum are like 4-600kb which means if two people look at them we have blown over a MB of bandwidth. It also slows things right down.

The bigger the better, but if it helps the forum, the I say limit to 50kb.

For the sake of showing whatever it is we want to show, I think the first image is adequate (20kB)...as you say if some one wants more detail or better quality they can ask for an email with the better pic attached.

Better this way than using up excessive bandwidth .... my two cents!

Being not super computer literate, maybe have a post to simply state how to limit them....eg. I use windows XP but even when I open the pic in paint, and use image attributes I can't figure out how to reduce the size of the file??

Cheers
Alan

I usually get my pictures hot off the camera at 1600x1200 and use the WinXP Powertoys Resizer (thanks Andrew) to reduce to 640x480 which nearly always comes in under 60Kb, but is always nearly always over 50kb.

I guess I can use a custom setting to reduce to 600x450 to get under 50kb, which is fine by me, but any less and I don't think the pictures will be worth posting.

I understand that pictures take up space on the server, but I'd like to keep them as close to 640x480 as possible; I think it's a nice compromise size. 50kb seems like a fair limit, if you (Brad) have the space.

Hi

I use MS Image composer to fix image sizes, it also has a "save for the web fearture" that realy reduces the file size of images.

1302Steve

Th esimple way is to open the picture in paint and go to the stretch/skew comand and reduce by percentatge. Any nutter can do it :jesus

Since time is money and money ain't free I have set it at 50kb. I will now be going through and removing any images over this untimll we get the hack sorted to stop you uploading anything bigger.
I will say sorry in andvance for deleting people pictures.
Some are silly though I just deleted 14 images that were over 500kb ( 1/2 MB ) in size........ these were in popular topics so every time the topic was open they would of been downloaded.
We will review this is a few months and if possible will bump it up to 70kb.

To give everyone an idea of how fast we're chewing traffic, we've already used 290 MB of data since going live. That means we're on track to using 75 MB per day, which is just far too much.

Hopefully, we can reduce this by careful image manipulation. But the 50 kb limit will soon be imposed programmatically.

howdy - i'm gunna grab the soap box for a sec...
I know of a host that DOESN'T charge for outgoing bandwidth.. therefore... if 500000000000000 people view a 20meg picture on one day... you won't get charged a cent. I thikn that is a better option.. but i still say keep the cap on the 50kb - it makes sense.

edit: sorry just to add to this, i'm finding out prices and such at the moment.. so i'll keep buggy boyz informed. also i think the idea of having the image as a link and not just shown straight away is genius... i just don't know how to do it any light that can be shed?

Yianni.

[Edited on 4-11-2002 by vdub2c]

The link thing is on automatic and seems like a great way to limit our bandwidth as it has already halved it.
In relation to free bandwidth... if they provide a full sweat of support and their prices are cheap then I am happy to look at it.
As a guide $25 per month for say 200mb with unlimited bandwidth would be ok. We need at least 200mb of space and about minimum 10GB bandwidth a month. If they have unlimited I would be very suprissed and bandwidth is what guages all traffic and what most people pay by. Anyway keen to know so keep me posted.

I would be happy to limit my image sizes but simple don't know how. We have lost photoshop some how although all the accessories are still there. Go figure.

When I do try to limit it in paint I end up with a tiny pic in the top corner of a huge page. Will have a play tonight and see if there is anything on the web I can download to edit images easily.

My Bro is a bit of a tech geek so if he's home I'll get him to talk me through it.

I don't want the site to cost a fortune but I think it still need to be useable as well with a mix of linked images and the option of uploading. Most of my images are ~100 k as this is what my camera classes as email size with snapshot being about 325. Their is an option to resize the quality and size of the pics but once their out of the camera that it, you can't change it through that program anymore.

Might need to set up two folders perhaps on my PC. A desktop quality folder and a posting quality folder and download them from the camera twice.

The Bronze

Ok I see the value of the link thing. I wonder if we could have pics under 25K
shown & greater than 25 k linked.
It is just that I prefer to see the image as I am reading without having to set up extra windows.
Looking at a few pics , I prefer the quick loading of the 20K pics, the detail is fine, and I enjoy having them shown - not linked.

That sounds like an excellent idea to me!! I don't know how adversely it would effect our bandwidth though, but Brad might have an idea.

If it is deemed to be reasonable, can we go one step further and upload the way we do know, but have some sort of code written so that we automatically get a thumbnailed link (<25k) to either a larger pic hosted on Brad's server (<50k) or an even larger pic hosted externally (such as muchos)?

I know, I don't ask much!:jesus