Hey guys. It seems to me that pictures being loaded currently are a massive size. The result is that is taking an age and a half to get to see what has been loaded. Frequently I am now just giving up. Can we get back to posting pictures around the 640 x 480 size which will load quickly and keep everyone happy??? ANYWAYS Here's hoping everyone on the forum has a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS and that Santa brings a surprise Japanese maple to delight the senses :)
I moved this from the Maples forum, where it was originally posted, so I had a look there for what would have led whis4ey to post it. In this posting, The Japanese Maple Garden Four season photo tour | UBC Botanical Garden Forums, there is a jpg at 623kb, which I think is larger than photos used to be resized to. And there is a png file at 2.5mb. @Daniel Mosquin, png files are not resized? Could they be? And for the jpg, is it that below a certain size, the system doesn't bother with a further reduction? I suspect I might have asked this before. I moved the posting because I don't think it's the 623kb filesizes that are making the viewing slow but rather the possible server issue that we have been talking about in this forum since we moved to this system, and the discussion about that should not be in Maples. Just now, I clicked on that huge png file and it came up quickly and the expanded size also came up instantly. @whis4ey, it's the filesize that makes a difference, not the photo dimensions. I used to run the line that it was better to let the system do the resizing because it did a nice hefty reduction while keeping the dimensions nice and large so people could see the details. Lately, though, I've been using Picasa to export/resize to 1024 pixels because it's fast, the quality is fine, and the uploading is then so fast.
The photo dimensions and the file size are connected I posted a pic (pendulum Julian) ... 180 kb. I loads quickly and at sufficient clarity to be useful and enjoyable. Most of the other pics I see are 6,7 and 800 kb and one I saw was a few MB. For me it has spoiled the fun of viewing spectacular Japanese maples in fellow enthusiast's gardens
I'll have to look into PNG resizing. As for resolving the image issue, I've heard back today that the additional server should be set up by the end of the day. That means I then have to do the tinkering with it when I find some concentrated time. I'll be moving over the database management to one server, and then tuning this one for file delivery / script processing. We'll then see how it goes.
Large pic size is often very helpful, even essential, with things like identification queries where one wants to be able to see the maximum possible detail in a photo. It enables one to zoom in to study details of e.g. pubescence on plant stems that are impossible to see in small pics. I don't see why we shouldn't allow posting of the full size photos, which from my camera come out at 4000 × 3000 pixels – that's 40 times more detail than can be seen in a 640 × 480 thumbnail pic.
