How big should an embedded image be? Give your opinion.

Jumping off RCs question about how many pictures should a review have.
And G0OSE’s comment about too large an image size, sucking up time and bandwidth.
Over at CPF, images are not to exceed 800 pixels max.
Is that too small?
Not everyone has 200mbs downloads…
A thread that takes forever to load, better have something I really want to see to put up with huge images.

So, Three Questions.

How wide in pixels is your display?

Where do you notice image degradation?

How big is big enough?

Open in your normal browser window.

All the Best,
Jeff

400

500

640

800

1024

1600

2048

24mp

1600 is the sweetspot between quality and loading time for me. Anything else is better viewed off site imo due to loading times - remember a lot of people use phones.

macbook pro 17”, they all look the same quality image to me, and fit within the width of the post (image is about 5x7”). This was fixed by Barkuti’s effort some time ago.

I don’t see a big difference after 1024. but I have bad eyes.

We are talking about image quality vs load time, not fit ( I believe Jeff? ). They all fit as he has limited the display size.
In a nutshell the images above all sized the same, after 1600 there is no benefit unless you full size it, by downloading, or viewing off site (right click - view image).

My monitors are set at 900p.

One is at 1600 x 900, the other is at 1440 x 900.

When I resize large photos, I usually make them a maximum of 1600 pixels long/wide, and I save them at 90% jpg quality.

The images will look fine on a monitor that is 1080p, but they might not look good at 2160p.

Im using a 27’ 1440p screen. It looks almost identical between 1600, 2048 and 24mpx. Unless Im zoom in 300%. The 24mp took almost 2x longer to load.

My monitor is 2560x1440. I think the 1024 image is acceptable and 1600 is the sweet spot.

Personally I’d prefer smaller thumbnails that just link to the full image. I don’t want to be loading a crap ton of images when I open a thread but I also don’t want a thread without images. Thumbnails give me a good idea of which images I want to see and then I can choose to open just those in full size.

If bandwidth is a concern, a more aggressive image compression can be used.

For example, the 2048px image you posted is 522kB. You can compress it down to the size of the 1024px one (183kB) without losing too much detail.

Of course, the issue IS it makes no difference if you store it off site and still use the full size image, but resize (on here) limited - it STILL loads in the WHOLE full size image - this, and this alone is the issue.
To combat it you need to resize the image on your pc and post THAT on here, then LINK it to the FULL size image in off site in storage - then this site doesn’t have to load in the huge size.
Sadly that means hosting 2 versions - 1 to view here, and another, different URL for the full fat one.

It takes more work, but at least in my reviews I put a smaller pic (actually smaller in filesize) as a teaser, but clickable to a larger size.

Eg, [review] Skilhunt M200 flashlight with high-CRI LH351D!! .

Any pages that take a long time to load (because of pix), I just back out and don’t bother reading anything. I hate having a page pinwheeling forever while huge pic after huge pic loads and keeps shifting the display so you can’t even f’n read a word before it shifts the viewscreen again.

Posting a fullsize 24Mpx pic but doing the whole “width=50%” thing does not help, as it’s still loading the huge honkin’ pic anyway.

This exactly. I could live with the pics being a bit bigger though - but yes exactly what you said/did Lightbringer.

They’re just teaser pix, to let someone view at a glance what they are without taking up half the viewscreen, more if they’d wrap.

“Oh, that looks like the box, light, and all the come-with crap… lemme look to see if there’s a clip in there…”

That kind of thing.

If it’d be beamshots where you’d want to see ’em at 100% by scrolling up/down, sure, but I can’t take beamshots to save my life. :laughing:

I hate taking photos, in general.

I have been on psych meds since 1995, and one of my meds made it so that my hands shake a little bit all the time.

I am no longer on that medication, but my hands still shake.

So I have to take 4 to 5 photos of each item to get at least one good photo.

It is really annoying.

I usually keep images to 1608 width and 99%. It’s only polite :smiley:

I just hit reverse with a post/ thread full of huge file size images, wastes my data too.

Yep.
All the images are sized to take up 95% of the frame. I’m just linking to different size images from Flickr.
These are different res. that Flikr picks for download options.
I upload to Flikr at 1280p. My uphill speed is way slower and I don’t want to grow old and die waiting on full sized images.
Then I link to that or smaller in my POSTs. Depending on how wide I want the image to be.
Usually 1024. Sometimes 800 if I’m doing part of the frame or side by side.

I’ll do another run with them all sized to say 600 pixels (?) using the BLF software.
To see how they look.
But as you say, the linked size will still control the amount of data being pulled down (I believe)
All the Best,
Jeff

640x480 cause I browse forum on smartphone and this ancient engine can’t handle mobile browsing.
Mike

  • 27” 1920x1080 - though I occasionally view things on my second monitor, a 21” 1080P that is portrait style.
  • 1600 is the first (smallest?) of your images that doesn’t look like steaming hot garbage to me.

I think the best solution to this - and unfortunately, it’s a lot of effort for the poster - is to use a low-ish quality “thumbnail” image that is itself a link to a high-quality version.

I got old and shaky, then came down with a nerve malady that made it worse.
Using a fast shutter speed or tripod for daylight is my trick.
Or for my indoor shots (which is mostly all I do here). I use off camera flash.
Nothing like a 1/5000 second pop to freeze things.
All the Best,
Jeff

Many photo hosting sites automatically generate links to smaller size images, so you only need to load the high quality one. For example, this is how it works with imgur:

Say this is the original:
https://i.imgur.com/iHUBVGb.jpg

Adding ‘h’ (huge) at the end of the file name reduces the image to 1024 width:
https://i.imgur.com/iHUBVGbh.jpg

Adding ‘l’ (large) reduces it to 640 width:
https://i.imgur.com/iHUBVGbl.jpg

Adding ‘m’ (medium) reduces it to 320 width:
https://i.imgur.com/iHUBVGbm.jpg

Adding ‘t’ (thumb) reduces it to 160 width:
https://i.imgur.com/iHUBVGbt.jpg