[Leica] Size Matters! (was Re: Anthony' photos)

["Rodgers, David" <david.rodgers@xo.com>]

Doug,

I made the mistake early on thinking that larger files would look better.
After much testing I came up with the same thing as you. A 600 pixel long
direction image in 24 bit color and with appropriate jpg compression ends up
being around 50K-70K. Takes a while to figure out how to tweak things. But
once you get there, you don't gain much with a larger file. 

I have megabandwidth. If something is slow to load I know the bottleneck's
on the other end. At first, I didn't realize that images don't pop up
instantly on everywhere. Then I worked with my laptop on the road via an
analog line. What an eye opener. I've learned to me more careful with my
assumptions. 

I've had conversations off-line with numerous LUGGERs on the topic of web
presentation. One person, whose site is phenominal,  said he learned a great
deal when he began to view everything through several different monitors.
I've found that most helpful, too. I now use 3 monitors. It's amazing how
different an image can look. I've tried to work toward a happy medium. 

Still much to learn. This web stuff is still pretty new. I see lots of
commercial sites that take way too long to load. Lots of web sites, but few
really good ones. 

Dave  


- -----Original Message-----
From: Doug Herr [mailto:telyt@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 5:06 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Anthony' photos

Mxsmanic wrote:

> Doug Herr writes:
>
> > I enjoy looking at them but the time to download
> > the files is exhorbitant for those of us with
> > slower modems and I run out of patience.
>
> I sympathize.  At the same time, though, one of the things that bothers me
the
> most about many online galleries I've visited is that the images are so
tiny,
> and so compressed, that it's hard to even see what they contain.  It's
really
> difficult to do most photos any justice in 300x200 pixels, and I think a
lot of
> people go to far in reducing their images.  Sure, it downloads fast, but
you
> can't even see what you downloaded once it's there.

I'm not telling you what you should do with your online gallery, but on my
own, most
of the image files are 600 pixels in the long direction and they're about 50
to 60k
in size, 24-bit color.  I agree, 300x200 is too small to see what's going
on.

Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com