Photo sizing - a pet peeve of mine

[Mike Wise]

Lately I've been seeing more and more over-sized photo files on the forums. I can't believe that anyone needs to send a 1.5-3+mp file to show a fish on a standard computer screen. Photos can be cropped and shrunk to proper sizes easily using any photo post-processing software. If you don't own such software, I suggest you download Gimp. It's free, easy to understand and use. FYI, this is the policy on images for the forum:

Will all members posting images please follow the forum rules.​

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Max size in General Forums - 200x200 (pixels)​

Max size in Member Galleries - 600x400 (pixels)​

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There are many reasons for these rules, like them or not they are the rules. I've been pretty lax on enforcing this in the past but lately image posting has gotten out of hand.​

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Of course we want to see your fish/tanks/set-up/etc. But not at the expense of other members enjoyment of the forums so please only post images that follow the above rules.​

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Gary​

 

[slimbolen99]

Mike - are you talking about linking of images, or uploading of images?
When I link an image, specifically to photobucket, they automatically drop it down quite a bit.
When I upload an image, the forum software should be able to limit those file sizes being uploaded.

I'm asking, because when I upload an image to photobucket and link it here, is it causing a problem where the website (apistogramma.com) is being 'taxed' for the bandwidth that the image link is using, or is the major issue the actual physical uploads directly to the site?

Brian

 

[Mike Wise]

I imagine linked images on a photo source like Photobucket don't increase the band width for the forum, but large files certainly slow down opening the source files. Still there is no need to download a 3.5 mb file when a 500 kb file fills a computer screen. I use Photobucket, too, but reduce the size of the file before uploading to the site. For me, anything that takes more than 10 seconds to download gets bypassed.

 

[Melanochromis]

Hi Mike. I support this policy. Unnecessarily large pictures are definitely annoying and putting me off.

However, if I understand pixel measurement correctly, I think 200x200 (pixels) is way, way too small. I do want to see some details of the fish! It would be nice to revise the number a little bit, perhaps limiting the KB instead, like putting a maximum limit at 200 KB or 250 KB for each picture. You can even go lower than that. I've been trying to keep my pictures at 100-150 KB and they look fine enough.