KameraKev
Established
I just wanted to see if I could attach a thumbnail while the gallery was down.
Congrats! It worked, but posting pics in this forum is a completely separate thing from posting them in the Gallery. I'd suggest this 2897x2671 pixel image is too large to be viewed in either location, so you might bring it down to 696x642 or so for easier viewing. 
KameraKev
Established
Hi Doug,
I'm a novice to posting photos, how do you reduce a photo in size, do you simply crop it, or do you use a program like winzip to compress it?
Kevin
I'm a novice to posting photos, how do you reduce a photo in size, do you simply crop it, or do you use a program like winzip to compress it?
Kevin
Hi Kevin -- Cropping, scaling, and compressing are three quite different things that all result in smaller files.
Cropping is of course slicing off uninteresting bits from around the edges of your picture. It results in less subject matter being visible. Sometimes this is a good thing, but is a waste of film resolution; if possible it would have been better done by moving closer or using a longer lens in th first place. If you have a tilted horizon and need to rotate the scan to line things up, you'll have to crop off some around the outside to align the borders.
File compression just restructures the image file to make it take up less room on the hard drive, and for faster up/downloading. There is "lossless" compression like .zip and .sit where the file is restored after decompression to be exactly like it had been before compression. But the degree of picture compression is modest. You won't use this compression for picture uploads in RFF, since to see the pics we'd have to download and decompress them... They won't display online.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), file extension .jpg, is a "lossy" compression because some internal data is discarded in compression. Each time the JPEG file is opened and re-Saved the compression algorithm tosses more data. After a few cycles the degradation is visibly noticeable in the picture. Better to edit your pic as a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) or PSD (Photoshop Document) and then when totally done at the end save a copy of it as a JPEG for upload. This is a great format for the 'net because file size can be small yet with excellent picture display quality.
Scaling is what I suggested to reduce the displayed size on screen. It's analogous to making print enlargments. A big print shows off all the detail and sharpness your picture has, but a small print is much easier to carry around and show. What we mostly want to see on our computer screens are pictures small enough to conveniently fit in the window without having to scroll around. I downloaded your large picture to my desktop and opened it in a graphic editing program so I could see it all at once, at a smaller scale.
You wouldn't want to make all your viewers do that for each uploaded picture, and it's unnecessary. Scaling reduces the display dimensions of your picture by using fewer pixels to show the whole image. This is "lossy" in the sense that fewer pixels is lower resolution and means less detail... like a wallet-size print. Your photo editing program has a Scaling feature, and you'll want to make sure it's set for Proportional Scaling so it's scaled the same both horizontally and vertically. Then when Saving the result, you don't want to over-write the larger original, so "Save As" a copy of the file with a name variation or to a different directory. I have a special directory/folder for these smaller display pics that I draw upon for uploads and discussions.
What size is best? There's a range... Larger shows better detail but you'll want to stay within most viewers' window size. Maybe 600x800 or so would be a good max, figuring that some of us are using monitors displaying 768x1024 pixels. The RFF Gallery allows for up to 1100 pixels wide, I think. Going smaller makes for faster response from the web site and is less usable by someone who might want to steal your pic, but obviously is less impressive to see. It's disappointing to click on someone's picture thumbnail only to see the "full size" is scarcely larger than the thumb!
The large Photo.net forum, like RFF, allows for pictures attached to message thread posts, but limits them less than 512 pixels wide, and in addition the JPEG compression must be adjusted so the file size is under 100k. This is a pretty reasonable size I think, and I've been mostly making mine fit these limits for compatibility in both forums.
Cropping is of course slicing off uninteresting bits from around the edges of your picture. It results in less subject matter being visible. Sometimes this is a good thing, but is a waste of film resolution; if possible it would have been better done by moving closer or using a longer lens in th first place. If you have a tilted horizon and need to rotate the scan to line things up, you'll have to crop off some around the outside to align the borders.
File compression just restructures the image file to make it take up less room on the hard drive, and for faster up/downloading. There is "lossless" compression like .zip and .sit where the file is restored after decompression to be exactly like it had been before compression. But the degree of picture compression is modest. You won't use this compression for picture uploads in RFF, since to see the pics we'd have to download and decompress them... They won't display online.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), file extension .jpg, is a "lossy" compression because some internal data is discarded in compression. Each time the JPEG file is opened and re-Saved the compression algorithm tosses more data. After a few cycles the degradation is visibly noticeable in the picture. Better to edit your pic as a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) or PSD (Photoshop Document) and then when totally done at the end save a copy of it as a JPEG for upload. This is a great format for the 'net because file size can be small yet with excellent picture display quality.
Scaling is what I suggested to reduce the displayed size on screen. It's analogous to making print enlargments. A big print shows off all the detail and sharpness your picture has, but a small print is much easier to carry around and show. What we mostly want to see on our computer screens are pictures small enough to conveniently fit in the window without having to scroll around. I downloaded your large picture to my desktop and opened it in a graphic editing program so I could see it all at once, at a smaller scale.
You wouldn't want to make all your viewers do that for each uploaded picture, and it's unnecessary. Scaling reduces the display dimensions of your picture by using fewer pixels to show the whole image. This is "lossy" in the sense that fewer pixels is lower resolution and means less detail... like a wallet-size print. Your photo editing program has a Scaling feature, and you'll want to make sure it's set for Proportional Scaling so it's scaled the same both horizontally and vertically. Then when Saving the result, you don't want to over-write the larger original, so "Save As" a copy of the file with a name variation or to a different directory. I have a special directory/folder for these smaller display pics that I draw upon for uploads and discussions.
What size is best? There's a range... Larger shows better detail but you'll want to stay within most viewers' window size. Maybe 600x800 or so would be a good max, figuring that some of us are using monitors displaying 768x1024 pixels. The RFF Gallery allows for up to 1100 pixels wide, I think. Going smaller makes for faster response from the web site and is less usable by someone who might want to steal your pic, but obviously is less impressive to see. It's disappointing to click on someone's picture thumbnail only to see the "full size" is scarcely larger than the thumb!
The large Photo.net forum, like RFF, allows for pictures attached to message thread posts, but limits them less than 512 pixels wide, and in addition the JPEG compression must be adjusted so the file size is under 100k. This is a pretty reasonable size I think, and I've been mostly making mine fit these limits for compatibility in both forums.