Posting images on the forums

oceanfroggie

oceanfroggie

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[ QUOTE ]
Images should be no more than 400 pixels wide, or if you are using photobucket or similar to host your images please use theri smallest size option

[/ QUOTE ]Sorry Dan but that's incorrect and frankly rather a daft size for an internet forum in 2008. Standard sizes for photo's nowadays on such sites is 700px or 800px wide minimum. The smallest screen res in use today except for a tiny minority of ancient PCs is 1024x768 and most PCs sold in the past three years have a min res of 1400x1050.

Sorry but a limit of 400px wide is unuseable and forumites won't tolerate it. They only thing wrong when accessing YBW when not logged in are the VERY annoying drop down vertical banner adverts form the mags - very cheap and "red topish". Sort your adverts out. The photo blogs posted by many after interesting cruises and weekend trips provide ybw with some of it's richest content and would not work with 1999s sized images. Other boating forums I use are optimised for photo's of 800px wide minimum.

Others agree - See here: http://www.ybw.com/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/1879166
 
100% agree!

Most people would just like to upload the images directly from their cameras without going through the process of re-sizing. If people are forced to go through that rigmarole, you will see far less interesting content!

Most cameras offer extremely high resolution images giving great detail, which it would be such a shame to miss out on. It can be a little annoying when you have to scroll, but to be honest, I would rather have the detail! IMHO anyway! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Sorry. Piccies do need resizing. 12mp cameras are producing images 4000 pixels wide!
When a pic is that wide the scrolling bars appear and you have to scroll across the screen (almost 4 times as wide as the monitor) to read text and find the reply buttons. If you can't see the whole image at once it loses most of it's impact. (Lots of pictures would benefit from some cropping as well, but that's a different matter)
If you can be bothered to upload an image, resizing shouldn't be an issue. Some cameras (Nikon P5100, for example) will resize in-camera and save the smaller image as a copy.
 
Upped to 600 pixels already! You're right, 400 is too small. I will be interested to see the comments about this, but I would think 600 is big enough. If not, I will look at our other options, and hopefully its a short-term measure anyway.

Unfortunately a lot of people browse but are not logged in - maybe this will encourage people to do so!

Thanks,
Dan
 
Photobucket's 'Large' setting of 640x480 is probably sufficient, however we still lose a lot of detail, and cruise reports will still take a hit - we've been fine for years like this, don't know what's changed /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
 
I think 800 x 600 would be a sensible maximum size, and the vast majority of users will then not need to scroll across the page, which is a PITA.

Can't the site reject anything over that size?
 
Hi Garry, I agree with the spirit of what you say but photo's posted on BBs do still need resizing for 3 reasons:

1. They fill the available screen viewing area nicely on the majority of PCs
2. Scrolling horizontally especially to read text because of an over sized photo is a PITA
3. Their file size is small and so both uploading and downloads are fast

With low cost modern camera's having anything between 6 and 10 mega pixals, posting straight off the camera is not really an option. As a rule I resize all my photo's to 772px wide as that fills the screen nicely on most bulletin boards viewed on pc/mac screens at 1024x768 resolution which is the smallest you'll find nowadays. If you post originals straight off the camera it could be a pain in terms of download time not alone for you but folk viewing.

PS: On my new 10mpx camera I have set the image quality setting back down to 5mpx. You can't tell the difference and it takes a fraction of the amount of storage space on disk. 5mpx is good enough quality for publishing. 10mpx only useful to professionals doing portraites, or blowing up prints to massive sizes (eg: 1metre by 2meter prints).
 
Hi Dan. Thanks for your response. Generally most BBs and pc screens are equiped to deal with 800px wide (length doesn't matter), but I have always resized mine to 772px wide as they nicely fill YBW and the other BBs I'm a member of. 800px or 772px wide also gets the file size nicely down below 150k so download times are quite good both for viewers and upload time for posters when submitting to photo hosting sites.

On a 1024x768 lcd panel which is now the very smallest screen size in use, that leaves a sensible 224px available for vertical banners (ie 20% of width), nav panels and avertising on one or other side.
 
Agree 100%. Some other bulletin board products such as vBulletin handles this very nicely by allowing only the offending post display beyond the screen size, but all other posts remain within the screen boundry so text can be read without the need to scroll. Not sure which web BB software ybw is using, but suspect it's an earlier product compared to market leaders such as vBulletin, etc.
 
Yip, I agree I think 800 wide would be better than 600, pictures need to be large for certain details to be seen, but not too large, that it cause the page to be scrolled left and right, that really is a pain in the arse!

Al.
 
LakeSailor,

I suppose I have to agree....

Images that large would be a problem. I suppose I'm used to resizing them myself before posting them, although I would say that 400px is far too small. Perhaps up to 1024....

It's just a shame to lose all that picture quality...

The answer is perhaps to provide a link to a hosting site, of which there are many, or put them on your own site if you have the wherewithal to do it and link to that one!
 
800 is far too wide I think, it makes the text really difficult to read, quite often I will miss a thread as someone has posted a picture far too wide and ruins the whole page.

If they ever change the forum software, I have noticed some will automatically thumbnail the image and expand it with a click or even 'mouse over'.. Dan? If people use photobucket which is a popular means to host images, photobucket will give you simple to use code for thumbnails, why is this such a problem?

One forum I use presents photographs in a really nice way, see here and click on the second image down, could something like this work on the YBW site?

If it is so important that people see your full size images why not direct them to your album, if you are not willing to resize?

Yes it is 2008, but many of us use laptops and even in 2008 laptops are still restricted to resolutions, no I am not willing to buy a monitor just to see a silly sized photograph in a thread. As many people who go sailing have laptops as often they are taken on board, this particular interest group may never catch up with this er, real world.
 
[ QUOTE ]
As a rule I resize all my photo's to 772px wide as that fills the screen nicely on most bulletin boards viewed on pc/mac screens at 1024x768 resolution which is the smallest you'll find nowadays. If you post originals straight off the camera it could be a pain in terms of download time not alone for you but folk viewing.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is all very well, but even on 1280, as I have, with my favourites panel showing which I prefer, 772 is still right on the limit.

Newsprint is in columns and novels are written in such a way to make the reading experience more comfortable, reading across 772 is still too wide, it is like a magazine without columns.

600 or below gets my vote.
 
Personally I dislike forums with 'click the thumbnail' display properties, it takes far too long with a lot of pictures - 800 pixels wide doesn't create a horizontal scroll bar or run any text off the page, looking now at my 15" laptop and desktop screen.

I don't get the bit about laptops, I've tested my Sony Vaio that is about 5/6 years old, Inspiron 1720, Dell XPS and Compaq and the sizing remains the same on every single one /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

I think the issue here is with non-members moaning about being unable to read posts when not logged in due to the giant advert advertising subs that covers the text, but it's IPCs job to change the website around that, it seems to be being made our problem, regardless of our other problems that you migt have, like having to scroll across to read text...

I can only say from my point of view, but for me on all my screens, I have no issue when it comes to reading a thread unless the image is over 800 pixels, which is very rare.
 
Fair enough, but my laptop is only in 1024x768 mode because I prefer the larger text then when in 1400x1050 mode. 800px wide appear fine for me in YBW without any need for scrolling and I can read the text fine.

How does an image like this on the forum appear on your laptop?

This image is only 772px wide and it should fit within the screen space without need for horizontal scrolling. I'm on a smal laptop 1024x768 res.

DSCF1329.JPG


The example site you gave the link to, imho as a web designer wasted far too much screen real estate space without content. Up to 50% of the width was used up by the two horizontal panels each side of the content. On ybw 600px wide imho is too small, and most of the best photo logs we've seen on here over the past few years have been between 700px and 800px wide without any difficulty. I don't see what the issue is as long as folk stay BELOW 800px wide which means none of us have to scroll sideways to read text or view pics.

Tis a mystery Ted! What's all the fuss about /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif Cheers

PS: I agree folk who post massive photos unresized direct from camera should be "keel hauled" /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
I agree about that forum, but I do particularly like the way it handles photographs.

Chris, you say it is too slow, did you look at the link I sent, like this board that one does not host the images, but automatically limits their width but will expand when clicked.
 
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