Please PLEASE downsize your images

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi All,

ive just gone back to work on my ship and we have limited internet speed, can your all please downsize your images? im sure somone on here will tell you the ideal size but from observation those set about 900 along the long edge will load well those above are a lot slower! tini pix downsizes them all to around the 700 mark anyway i think.

iv had to bypass all threads with these larger images. I must admit i havnt been down sizing whilst im at home but i now truly understand how slow large images can be to load even on our 4Mbs connection, can you imagine anyone on dial up doing this???

[dubaiphil]

OK shipmate - just for you....

[Mark von Kanel]

LOL thanks Phil, dont think it will catch on but it did load very quickly!

[Colin Southern]

Hi All,

ive just gone back to work on my ship and we have limited internet speed, can your all please downsize your images? im sure somone on here will tell you the ideal size but from observation those set about 900 along the long edge will load well those above are a lot slower! tini pix downsizes them all to around the 700 mark anyway i think.

iv had to bypass all threads with these larger images. I must admit i havnt been down sizing whilst im at home but i now truly understand how slow large images can be to load even on our 4Mbs connection, can you imagine anyone on dial up doing this???

Hi Mark,

Umm, no.

900 is too small to evaluate on modern 1920 x 1080 monitors; I like to suggest a minimum of 1200 x 800 - personally I make mine around 1600 x whatever these days. If that's compressed using Photoshop to around 10 out of 12 on the quality setting then that should produce a file size in the 400kb to 500kb range - which should load over a 4Mb/s connection in around 1 to 2 seconds.

4Mb/s is awfully quick for a satellite connection though -- all the vessels I look after have 150 kb/s units (with one using a Sailor 250 kb/s unit). If they're taking ages to load then something isn't adding up somewhere. 4 Mb/s is about what I get at home and it's fine.

TinyPic limits file sizes to 1599px.

Just to rub it on though, I recently upgraded my work connection to fibre ... read about it and weep

[pnodrog]

I only ever try and vote on the monthly competition at work where I can use the fast broadband connection if I manage to get some spare time.

[DanK]

Mark,

Some of us just link from other sites and let this site resize. I link from Smugmug, and I actually don't know what size the images end up on this site.

Dan

[Mark von Kanel]

Fair enough,

Actaully Colin we can receive up to 10 Mbs but its stupidly expensive and we only do it if we have to sling tv as to the image quality i belive Donald said in a previous post some where that he resized to 1200 across the long edge to post images here to save people download time.

When i view image info the slow loading images were at abbout 1500-1800 pix across the top (slow ones) and the fast ones are at about 900 but both appear to have been resized somewhere so i dont know why some are so much slower than others maybe not evry one is using tiny pics.

Ill just bypass the slower postings.

[Manfred M]

Mark - on the other hand, I prefer larger images that I can zoom into using Lytebox to examine the images in detail.

I find the images that most people post frustratingly small, and frankly I don't have a super-speedy internet connection (around 3MB/sec).

[Mark von Kanel]

Ok i thought id have a little experiment! 2 images the first down sized to 1600 along the long edge (this is the max allowed by CIC according to the upload guide) and the second not downsized at all to see if the loading times are different.

1600 long edge



not downsized

[Mark von Kanel]

Ok now thats interesting, the downsized image 1600 long edge is loading a lot quicker that the non downsized but the image info is saying that they are a similar size could the download time on the non downsized photo be tiny pix or CIC reducing its size on upload?

If so then my request holds true posters should downsize their images, but i got the size wrong! 1600 long edge works fine and i think Manfred they come out big enough!

[DanK]

Mark,

Since number of us use Smugmug, I just checked on what it does. it allows you to specify a size when you create a link to an image. I generally use "X large", which is the largest I allow the site to show so that people can't take my full sized images without my permission. This images are 964px × 768px "(scaled to 700px × 558px)". I think the parenthetical expression must describe what the browser is doing to fit them. I checked, and the sizes are identical on the smugmug site (at that size) and here. So using that procedure should create images that are OK for you and others with slow connections.

Dan

[Mark von Kanel]

Thanks Dan personally i just use the tini pix as the site recommends, but as you can see above there is a lot of difference between a correctly downsized image uploaded and one that hasnt been downsized even though the resulting image appease to be approximately the same.

It matters not peeps will either down size or they wont.

Id hate to think how long it would take on one of Colins 150kbs boats

[Geoff F]

When I check the Exif details of that full sized image, Mark, it is 1600 on the long edge; which I think is the max size acceptable to Tinypics. Which means they have auto sized it.

Sometimes I do get very slow images even on my direct phone line, although broadband here is only around 6 at most. And when this site is busy it does seem to slow down even more.

[FrankMi]

Although I haven't checked into what the IQ difference is, in Photoshop CS5 I can save a 1600 x 1000 pixel image at a quality of 0 to 12 which for the image I just tested is 55k to almost 1 MB.

I usually save my images at 1600 x 1000 or smaller to load to CiC using TinyPics with whatever image quality that keeps the image size at about 500KB or less. I do see images posted at CiC that take quite a while to load but I haven't taken the time to find out their file size. Perhaps, within reason, it is more of an image quality (file size) issue than a pixel size issue?

[dje]

Although I haven't checked into what the IQ difference is, in Photoshop CS5 I can save a 1600 x 1000 pixel image at a quality of 0 to 12 which for the image I just tested is 55k to almost 1 MB.

I usually save my images at 1600 x 1000 or smaller to load to CiC using TinyPics with whatever image quality that keeps the image size at about 500KB or less. I do see images posted at CiC that take quite a while to load but I haven't taken the time to find out their file size. Perhaps, within reason, it is more of an image quality (file size) issue than a pixel size issue?

Yes it's the file size that affects load speed. The file size is dependant on pixel dimensions and jpeg quality setting (and image content) but I would say that quality setting is the one to watch to keep the file size to 500KB or less.

Dave

[wilgk]

Hi Mark,

Umm, no.

900 is too small to evaluate on modern 1920 x 1080 monitors; I like to suggest a minimum of 1200 x 800 - personally I make mine around 1600 x whatever these days. If that's compressed using Photoshop to around 10 out of 12 on the quality setting then that should produce a file size in the 400kb to 500kb range - which should load over a 4Mb/s connection in around 1 to 2 seconds.

4Mb/s is awfully quick for a satellite connection though -- all the vessels I look after have 150 kb/s units (with one using a Sailor 250 kb/s unit). If they're taking ages to load then something isn't adding up somewhere. 4 Mb/s is about what I get at home and it's fine.

TinyPic limits file sizes to 1599px.

Just to rub it on though, I recently upgraded my work connection to fibre ... read about it and weep

Well that just confirms the return hop across the ditch should be in my retirement plans!
We get around 4Mbps download & less than 1Mbps upload..... My folks in Rangiora were getting 8Mbps download when I was there recently as well.
Botheration!

[dje]

Well that just confirms the return hop across the ditch should be in my retirement plans!
We get around 4Mbps download & less than 1Mbps upload..... My folks in Rangiora were getting 8Mbps download when I was there recently as well.
Botheration!

Oh Kay, ye of little faith ! Surely you know that the National Broadband Network (NBN) will lead us all to internet utopia

Dave

[Colin Southern]

Ok i thought id have a little experiment! 2 images the first down sized to 1600 along the long edge (this is the max allowed by CIC according to the upload guide) and the second not downsized at all to see if the loading times are different.

1600 long edge



not downsized

According to Bridge, they're within 1 pixel of being the same pixel dimensions, and about 20% of the same file size - so I wouldn't expect any significant download time differences.

If folks would only tell Photoshop to save at a quality setting of 10 instead of 12, they'll get their entire files in the 400 to 500kb range at more than adequate pixel dimensions, and visually it'll be the same at 12/12 quality setting.

What WILL make a difference to download though is where they're hosted - some use TinyPic - some Pbase - some facebook - some FlickR - some others.

Unfortunately, download speed is more a function of the bandwidth available on all the routers the traffic passes through; case in point - I have a "50mb/s upload speed" and yet my Carbonite backup uploads at about one half of one percent of the theoretical maximum. Google drive varies from around 18 seconds for 100MB to minutes to sometimes a couple of hours. Unfortunately it's governed by the weakest link in the chain

[Stagecoach]

Mark,

Having spent an entire career at sea I went from the days of Telex, and radio if it was of dire importance, through to finally 24 hour internet by SAT in the final year so fully understand your frustrations. Captains in the cabin next door streaming the Archers in the afternoons to some of the lads downloading video versions of the magazines that were kept in bunk draws just some of the frustrations encountered

For info from one that values IQ presented on screen my standard is 1200 px width of which I adjust to ensure a file size as close above to 300KB as possible and by Tinypics. On the rare occasion that I go larger, say 1400 px width I have found 400K is adequate.

Grahame

[Mark von Kanel]

Having spent an entire career at sea I went from the days of Telex, and radio if it was of dire importance, through to finally 24 hour internet by SAT in the final year so fully understand your frustrations. Captains in the cabin next door streaming the Archers in the afternoons to some of the lads downloading video versions of the magazines that were kept in bunk draws just some of the frustrations encountered

Ahh but Grahame as im the ETO on board i control who has what bandwidth at what time , if naughty captains piss me off their connection mysteriously slows down......

According to Bridge, they're within 1 pixel of being the same pixel dimensions, and about 20% of the same file size - so I wouldn't expect any significant download time differences.

yeh it puzzled me as well why the non reduced pic was loading a lot more slowly but it is what it is so i just slow everybody else's connection down when im surfing...