Faster loading images for all, please read.

[turkey]

HI Folks,

we are a fairly picture heavy forum and we all love loads of images, "the more the better" to share our builds and also to see and take inspiration from others hard work.

With this even on broadband some threads here take a while to load, for thoes on 56k (and as we attract rural folks we do have modem users even now) and also for thoes on mobile or tablet devices which is an every increasing percentage of web viewing.

Almost everyone is using external hosts and its great to see pictures being resized when oversized, but its not just the pixel count of the image but the data within the image that you can alter for supprisng forum and browser turbo charging results, ok maybe not for high speed broadband but I suspect mobile and modem users will see a night and day difference to their performance and I doubt anyone would notice the differnece in image quality.

as a visual image example I have taken a random photo, I will not directly display here as its 3.4 meg , I have used picassa and exported it in a couple of different ways, the first is just a straight export and resize to 800 pixels, which you can see directly below, now this image is linked to the full image should you want to click through to see the very large one. The image you see here is now only 265KB which is only 7% of the original file size


This image below exported from the same original image and the same 800 pixels wide but I have chosen the minimum quality setting for the image, this has dropped the file size to 75KB which is only 28% of the normal resized image and a tiny 2% of the original image.



If you look closely you may see the loss in detail but I suspect as its on a forum and you cannot easily zoom it will be really difficult to tell.

Given the really sizable reductions in image size and gains in loading speeds for mobile and modem I would urge folks to use these for images they link, if you are save you can upload the original and the resize to an external host and then link back to the full image as I did in the initial post if you wish.

Finally this image is again a minimum quality crop but I altered the lighting with Picasa to show simple things it can do, you will notice it not looks like it was a sunny day rather than overcast and can actually see into the oven a little more. This is great for revealing slightly lost detail in images if they came out a little dark. There are many more things you can do such as straighten images and remove red eye and such, it really is a very useful free tool, and thoes who like thier images but want an easy to use tool I would recomend it.



it would be great to know peoples feedback on the image quality of the last two pictures and f they can tell the difference from the top simple resize, and if they noticed the last two pictures load quicker than the fist one. For thoes with pesky broadband caps this will also help you use more data so really is a win win for everyone.

[spinal]

Being one of the offenders, I probably shouldn't talk... but - I can see the difference between the images quite a lot.

Pixelation on the leaves behind the oven, the mesh on the outside edges and the brick joints... No difference in loading times; by the time I opened the thread all three images were loaded...

but then again, I work with computers all day and have a reasonably large screen (and a very fast connection )

On the positive, if viewed at laptop-screen size (1024 width of screen); the images are pretty similar with little difference between them... Can't comment on speeds as all my systems are connected to the same 50mb connection...

M.

[turkey]

dont worry you are not the reason to post this, poor old bob soldiers along and I have tried to use my mobile not on wifi and you do notice the images then (although being in London mobile speeds are not bad), I have looked back at some of my images and they are on the large side also. I really like image and video compression and the like so I can see the differences but its always easier when there is something to comapare against, but was not setting down a gauntlet

I have no idea how this setting in picasa would take some rippled water with refelctions or lapping flames, both of which are a compression nightmare, but I think the pay off is worth the odd pixelation sacrifice.

I also fail to notice loading times thanks to BT infinity line which really rocks if your a net nerd and actually feel the need for fast downloads. I think nothing of downlading Gigs of data but I think we should try and think of thoes less connected especially as it is only a drop down box whilst they are resizing which folks will need to do anyhow.

I hope you would agree in general tho that the smaller image is perfectly fine for showing the content matter which for us is usually rather large lumps of masonary

I had a quick look and the 76KB image would take 10 seconds on a 56k Modem in a perfect world and 37 seconds for the regular resized image at 266KB which is quite a while in my opinion now I am used to instant.

On the flip side I also hope this can help 56k users get thier images to a size they feel they can actually upload them, I know bob took a couple of hours to upload an image or two a week or so ago so hopefully this will help him

PS

Aug 8, 2012 15:02:52 GMT spinal said:

if viewed at laptop-screen size (1024 width of screen

such pokey screen resolutions should be outlawed (along with not providing cheap reliable broadand)

[minesamojito]

Hi guys, I'm guessing I'm one of the main culprits here, as I do like my pictures on the large size.
I also import the code straight from my blog as I've had nightmares using hosts, image shack, I'm very busy, with work, family, cooking and blogging, and don't have a massive amount of time to play around with images just for on here, and I do really feel for those who don't have a faster connection speed, I've had a play at reducing my food pics file sizes and to be honest they look naff, and in which case I'd probably rather not post the pics, if it really is going to cause people problems, then I could just put a link in, but it would be a shame as it means the recipes and content isn't going on here too.
Sadly it's the way things are going, file sizes from cameras are getting bigger, as DSLR's are improving, I already reduce mine by quite a bit to post online, and it would reduce the visual impact if I were to post thumnbails.
I love sharing my pics here and would be gutted for that to change, I'm willing to compromise somewhat, but feel that pictures tell so much about cooking that they are incredibly important part of inspiring people to cook outdoors and in their wood ovens it would be a shame for this forum to lose that ability to inspire?
Just my two penneth.
Cheers
Marcus

[cannyfradock]

Marcus

Whatever you do don't stop posting those pics.....I may not reply to all of your posts, but try to see all your posts.

Turkey has been helping me lately with on-line links to improve my computer literacy. I have a Picassa account which I stopped using 2 years ago due to my ignorance of an image host site. After reading Turkey's post lots of things now make sense and shall try to start using Picassa again.

Some forum's block members from posting multiple pictures....or multiple posts, but for US I think this is part of the make up of sharing builds etc.....

I'm still learning........

Terry

[Fat Bob]

Thanks for thinking of us peasants with dialup.

The last picture finished downloading first, then the first, the second seems to have fell asleep a quarter of the way down the picture.

As a retired polymath design, repro and printing etc I can see the difference, the last pic has the midtones knocked back but it does show what is interesting the inside of the oven.

Not much pixelization for me - I use a hi-res flat screen monitor on the PC and have an old school very expensive colour balanced monitor on the Mac (have to do things on the Mac while the PC grinds away on the www).


It does sound complicated to change the pics, I have Photoshop and can do what I want. But while I know about print I know very little about web design.

The middle pic hasn't loaded after 15 minutes.

Keep up the good work - I recommended someone in France to visit the site, they were asking on an expat site for clay to build a cob oven.

Good twenty minutes now and middle pic still not loaded!

Never mind have some beer from my favourite French brewery Gayant - this beer is only 6.5% and I found it in Lidl and a 75cl bottle was 1.50 Euro so I bought all they had... Sadly only seven case.

[spinal]

Aug 8, 2012 16:14:17 GMT turkey said:

I hope you would agree in general tho that the smaller image is perfectly fine for showing the content matter which for us is usually rather large lumps of masonary

Aug 8, 2012 15:02:52 GMT spinal said:

if viewed at laptop-screen size (1024 width of screen

such pokey screen resolutions should be outlawed (along with not providing cheap reliable broadand)

Fully agree on both points!

That said - it's not an ideal world, and I do remember being thrilled when I got my 33.6k modem (a "leonardo" brand Italian knock-off as the US robotics one cost an arm and a leg at the time) and subsequently submitting a 2 hour recording to college over that (uploaded for a day and a night...) so more than happy to try to help any dial-up users!

M.

[turkey]

Hi Marcus,

that was not my intention at all, perhaps I did not explain my post fully, it was more exploring the extremes as to whats possible very easily. Each image is different and I have yet to fully test Picasa out to see how it deals with complex images with fine detail.

But as background information. Jpeg is a lossy compression so every time an image is saved or created the algorythms used have to make a call on the quality level, your DSLR will also be doing this, you may have low, medium and fine options for Jpeg quality for example. Space is cheap so unless you want to burst loads fine is always best.

For web display the images are resized, you do this very well and I am not saying anyone should make them smaller than you already do, but I was exploring the fact that some tools expose this jpeg quality setting and what difference it can make to an image, and also on the file size.

For a build diary (where i was mostly aiming my discusion) we are photgraphing large brick objects with little fine detail, and often uploading many images per post, and with so many posts per page its not unusual to have say 20 images to load. For these sorts of senarios I would say trimming the quality down is helpful and will not take away from the images or their intention.

For a thread that is likly to have a single or pair of images obviously this is not as inportant, but would still be interesting how the images come out. From my quick tests the main difference is there is not extra detail to allow a person to zoom into the image, which they cannot easily do on the forum.

I think there needs to be some guidance but mostly in the form of help for folk getting their images online as it is a cause of trouble for thoes who have never posted a digital picture online before.

Please fell free to make and comments on the sizes and such you feel is best for images and we can try to nail down a guide and I will use thoes as the sizes within the guide.