New photo upload size limit: 80Kb!
Ellis Walentine
>Hi folks,
This morning I increased the filesize limitation for photo uploads on all our messageboards to 80Kb. I would still prefer that you try to keep the size lower if possible, because we still have a lot of dialup visitors, for whom 80Kb can take a while to download. You can get excellent size and detail in your photos if you strike the right balance between actual size of the photo (height and width in pixels) and the amount of JPG compression you apply. Read the FAQ's again for a more detailed discussion of photo resizing. I have now updated the text of the FAQs to reflect our new file size limits.
To illustrate what is possible within the 80Kb limit, I have edited this photo sent in by Andi Wolfe recently of the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. It is 800 x 534 pixels in size and weighs in at 75 Kb. The trouble with a photo this big is that it doesn't fit into the message window if your screen resolution is set at less than 1024 x 768. You have to scroll left and right to see the whole image.
But, here is the same photo at 37Kb, less than half the filesize of the first photo. As you can see, it is plenty big and detailed enough at 550 x 367 pixels in width to convey the subject nicely, plus it fits in the message window nicely.
Finally, here is the same photo reduced to the same size (550 x 367 pixels) but saved at roughly half the amount of JPG compression of the previous version so its file size is a full 76 Kb -- close to our new size limit. As you can see, there's hardly any benefit to the lower compression; the 37Kb photo loads twice as fast and looks just as good.
I hope you will all continue to refine your photo editing skills. Read the FAQs again and search our archives for past discussions of this topic. In this age of digital media, it's a good skill to have. And, for conveying woodworking questions and answers, a photo is truly worth a thousand words.
Cheers,
Ellis Walentine, Host