Reducing the size of a photograph

Gary, this will only spoil the picture if you want to print it. If you are going to post it online, a size more like 800x600 or 640x480 is better, with a resolution (dpi) of 72, since your computer screen can't go any sharper than that in reality (but printers can, so keep a full-size, high res copy for printing).

 

[ 08. October 2002, 05:21: Message edited by: Gary Lewis ]

 

This original started out at 2048 X 1536 pixles at 5.01MB and was downsized 100 times to about 50KB. at 640 X 469 Pixles. I think the detail is still pretty good considering.

My camera won't take a picture smaller than 1024 X768 which is fine for my 19" monitor screen. But I guess some people are still using 15" screens.

But I think it is all smoke and mirrors as anyone looking at this picture is looking at it from Ricks IPS or whatever where the picture is stored, aren't they?

You should see the original at 5.01 woo woo woo for detail.

 

I use Adobe Photoshop 6. Gary, again, the detail is lost on a computer screen. I can save that image to my computer and then increase the size again.

As for monitor size, it is a combination of the monitor and video card that determine what size your screen is. Once thing to remember though, is that you have all of the TB stuff going on around your photo, so somebody running at 1024x768 will still not see your entire photo due to TB's borders and such.

Anyway, a 5.01 woo woo woo file is the equivalent of 5.01*1024 (number of Kbytes in a Mbyte) or 5130.24 Kbytes. A dialup connection at BEST does 56.6 Kbytes per second, so loading that picture for a dialup would take 5130.24/56.6 or 90.64 seconds ! You want to wait a minute and a half for a picture?

On the other hand, at 50K, it takes about a second to download and view the picture. 1/90th the time.

For those who are interested, and I warn you you must be on a Broadband connection (or be willing to wait 3 minutes for the picture to download - it took me 15 seconds, and I probably have one of the fastest connections here), here are two links to the same picture. The first is the original scan, roughly 9 woo woo woo (35mm slide scanned at 2400 dpi). The second has been re-sized and reduced to 72 dpi for online viewing.

Large-size photo - 3000x2000, 2400 dpi, 9 woo woo woo

Small-size photo - 750x500, 72 dpi, 101 KB

[ 08. October 2002, 18:10: Message edited by: Harron ]

 

Thanks, the background photo of the mountains is off a photo taken in Waterton Nat'll Park about 8 years ago. The photo was scanned into Corel Photo Paint and then was added to the picture of the N scale Mikado.

I use Corel Photo Paint 8.0 to downsize while saving photos and JPEGing and Adobe 6.0 to crop the originals. if needed. There was some kind of photo wizard software involved also to sharpen edges and lines, but I can't remember if that system was in Corel Photo Paint 8, or Adobe Photoshop 6. It might even have been in Adobe Photo Delux 3.1

I don't post photos much on websites, so I'm new at posting and downsizing to this degree. Everbody I send pictures to on email can handle up to 1.5 woo woo woo and are on cable connection so I usually sends photos in the 300KB range.

Anyway thanks to all for the help on how to post pictures and to Rick for letting me use his website, so now I'll be able to add my photos easier.

 

Another interesting feature of this downloading photos is:

The first download of the 9MB photo took about 25 sec. for my system.

All times after that, the picture loaded instanly?

 

This is part of an ongoing experiment that Ironhorseman and I are trying. He sent me a neat shot of Yreka Western 19 blowing down, I processed it, and sent it back to him as an email attachment. When Bill got it, it was still in original megabyte size. I'm going to post the 97k version that I sent to him. Let's see what happens.