Hello, technical question here. What is the optimal size and resolution for posting photos on the site? I searched for some info regarding this but could not find anything in the forums. Perhaps we could start a crash course on posting photos here? The most recent error I've encountered is when I try to upload it tells me the file is too large. Any info would be very helpful! - Maid Heather
Also to add a small detail, the photo I was trying to upload is 3744x5144! So I'm not surprised it failed! I will do some experimentation with sizing. Also what would be an optimal file size?
Update: Well I looks like I successfully uploaded a photo at 2448x3264 taken with a phone. The file size was 5.6MB.
The issue is not usually the resolution as it doesnt matter at all but size usually is. Before uploading you should re codify it or in plain words compress it, i use Gimp (a photoshop alternative) but there are a lot of internet pages that could do, pages like https://www.iloveimg.com/compress-image The photo is pre codec into one of many formats but what happens is the more you "compress" it the more work it will need later to see it, phones are battery powered devices so spending energy to compress more and to decodec (un compress) to see it every time you want to use it is not good, on the other hand space is "free" so the trade is use more space instead of more battery. The same happens on the cloud, CPU power is free since it is every user who is going to "waste" it but space cost money and have consequences on the infrastructure so from a webmaster point of view the roles reversed Since the resolution is so high the loss in quality it is going to be minimal no matter what algorithm is used to codec it again to save space
Yes, great advice! I totally use GIMP and although it is a bit of a learning curve once you get the hang of things it is a very versatile photo editing app. I did some experimenting yesterday with GIMP and as long as you re-scale the image than it should load no problem. Take for example this image I uploaded yesterday of my new pair of shoes. This photo was taken with a professional grade, full frame, 4k camera and the original resolution was a massive 3077x3332!! With GIMP I re-scaled it to a more manageable 500x541 which I think displays better anyways.
I'm not sure if you can do it in GIMP since I have Photoshop, but I always scale down via percentage and keep image constraints checked. I start at 80%, then drop to 60 or 40%. Photoshop has the smart object option which is supposed to prevent image quality loss when compressed, maybe GIMP has something similar. As you've already found out 3.5K is about the max for uploading here. 1.5 to 2K seems the best option really. Shouldn't matter too much as long as you choose the high quality JPEG option.
I shoot in high res, around 3000x4000, and then crop and scale down afterwards. For final images I try to get them around 1000x1000, up to 1500x1500. As Ms Joanne said, for the final save reduce the image quality to 50% or 60%. That gets my images to around 1Mb in size, and they look pretty decent on a screen. I do all this using the built-in Windows Photo program.
Yes GIMP totally has this function and I used it for the slingbacks photo. Brought it down to 80% and there was no quality loss at all. I also tried out Lightbox and I really like its ease of use. For sizing I've found that scaling them to around 750(height or width) gets the photos to a nice display size. Not too big not too small.
I'd say consider your audience, most peoples browsers are on 1366x768 screens, a lot on 1920x1080 screens and a few will be up to the 2.7k or 4k 3820x2160. Given that a bunch of the screen is taken with docks, tool bars and other things, anything over 3000x2000 is wasting space, realistically anything over 1800x900 is probably overkill for this content IMHO.
best is to use the "save for Web" menu item after resizing. Then you get a really small file in a good enough quality. only some kb not MB.