Site Question / Help Size limits.

[steve25805 126,155]

I have just discovered that there is a new file size limit for pics and many of mine - especially screenshots - are falling foul of it which makes uploading them a much more arduous and time-consuming activity, increasing the hassle factor by a factor of 10. In practice this is likely to mean far fewer pics from me because I seriously lack the time quite often and having to resize half my pics greatly undermines my enjoyment of the activity. Can't the file size limit be increased to 3mb instead of 1.95mb? Too many of my pics are falling foul of this new limit. @Admin

[gldenwetgoose 21,498]

7 minutes ago, steve25805 said:

I have just discovered that there is a new file size limit for pics and many of mine - especially screenshots - are falling foul of it which makes uploading them a much more arduous and time-consuming activity, increasing the hassle factor by a factor of 10. In practice this is likely to mean far fewer pics from me because I seriously lack the time quite often and having to resize half my pics greatly undermines my enjoyment of the activity. Can't the file size limit be increased to 3mb instead of 1.95mb? Too many of my pics are falling foul of this new limit. @Admin

A size cutoff of 3Mb would seem reasonable - I'v just had a check of my archive and out of 1500 images, only some 30 of them are above 3mB in size.

[steve25805 126,155]

10 minutes ago, gldenwetgoose said:

A size cutoff of 3Mb would seem reasonable - I'v just had a check of my archive and out of 1500 images, only some 30 of them are above 3mB in size.

I have had to resize about a dozen pics this morning, many of them screenshots from new pay site trailers and similar and generally unseen before. They are typically all amongst my best pics. Their size was all 2 point something. The size limit is too low for most screenshots. If this continues I may have to give up on screenshots as they are too much hassle. This would be a shame since they are often original pics, sometimes drawn from pay sites

[Kupar 13,341]

Thanks for flagging this Steve. I hope I haven't been guilty of precipitating this change and if I have I am very sorry. I have recently posted a few animated gifs that made full use of the previous file size limit, simply because I thought that people respond well to animated gifs in posts. I am aware that they are very large files and inefficient for what is essentially short video content. If I promise not to do it again, could the file size limit be put back up as @steve25805 and @gldenwetgoose suggest? 

[Admin 14,791]

It has been increased to 3MB. I agree 2MB was too low, but I also think that almost any image over 3MB could be compressed without noticeable quality loss. 

Obviously the higher the file sizes, the higher the bandwidth costs and disk space costs for the site. 

However, it's not just about that. Having too many overly large images makes for a bad user experience too; it means slower page loads, and if not on wifi it uses much more data which can get expensive. Not only that, the slow loading speeds affect things like our search engine rankings. 

So I don't think much higher than 3MB should be needed, but we will see how it goes. Anything over 3MB can be run through a free compressor like https://compressor.io/ - you can even try lossless compression, so the quality isn't affected whatsoever. 

If people are finding a lot of their uploads are still being affected, we can review it again, but the vast majority of images should be under 3MB anyway.

[steve25805 126,155]

11 hours ago, Admin said:

It has been increased to 3MB. I agree 2MB was too low, but I also think that almost any image over 3MB could be compressed without noticeable quality loss. 

Obviously the higher the file sizes, the higher the bandwidth costs and disk space costs for the site. 

However, it's not just about that. Having too many overly large images makes for a bad user experience too; it means slower page loads, and if not on wifi it uses much more data which can get expensive. Not only that, the slow loading speeds affect things like our search engine rankings. 

So I don't think much higher than 3MB should be needed, but we will see how it goes. Anything over 3MB can be run through a free compressor like https://compressor.io/ - you can even try lossless compression, so the quality isn't affected whatsoever. 

If people are finding a lot of their uploads are still being affected, we can review it again, but the vast majority of images should be under 3MB anyway.

I think 3mb as a limit will be fine. Very few pics are larger than that so it is not too onerous to resize the few that are. The majority of the screenshots are larger than 2mb but smaller than 3mb.

[Ozabot 63,297]

It seems to me that PNG is not the best format for posting pictures

PNG 2,3MB

JPG 305,5KB

It is faster and easier to convert PNG to JPG than resize normal pictures. Also we'll get faster page loading and less disc space

[gldenwetgoose 21,498]

1 hour ago, Ozabot said:

It seems to me that PNG is not the best format for posting pictures

PNG 2,3MB

 

JPG 305,5KB

 

It is faster and easier to convert PNG to JPG than resize normal pictures. Also we'll get faster page loading and less disc space

I went through exactly that recently in creating video screen captures for about 500 of the Gold Video Gallery images which didn't have any key frame image in the gallery.

My Mac has a neat screen capture utility which will save an area as an image, unfortunately PNG.  Even a standard size video playing in a normal size window (not full screen) gave large files as you've got above.  After attaching 30-40 of those to their videos in the Gold Gallery it was apparent how much that could slow down the page loading.

So I set up a batch process in photoshop which would convert a folder of screen grab PNGs into very compressed (qual 2) JPG images, still very acceptable as images and much quicker to load.  I was getting 3Mb images down to 50-100kB.

So yes - completely agree - although I know and understand Steve's concern that converting each image can be a significant overhead.

[hotwetslut 81]

5 hours ago, gldenwetgoose said:

I went through exactly that recently in creating video screen captures for about 500 of the Gold Video Gallery images which didn't have any key frame image in the gallery.

My Mac has a neat screen capture utility which will save an area as an image, unfortunately PNG.  Even a standard size video playing in a normal size window (not full screen) gave large files as you've got above.  After attaching 30-40 of those to their videos in the Gold Gallery it was apparent how much that could slow down the page loading.

So I set up a batch process in photoshop which would convert a folder of screen grab PNGs into very compressed (qual 2) JPG images, still very acceptable as images and much quicker to load.  I was getting 3Mb images down to 50-100kB.

So yes - completely agree - although I know and understand Steve's concern that converting each image can be a significant overhead.

You can also do a batch convert at the click of like 3 buttons in lightroom as well

[steve25805 126,155]

I uploaded some pics this morning.

Some of them were screenshots and a few of these still fell foul of the 3MB limit. Generally when that happens I find the quickest thing to do is to open the offending image, click on edit, screenshot that, edit the screenshot, and the end result is usually only a few hundred KB. But it is a hassle. In practice when I have the time I will do it. When I am more pushed I am more likely to simply delete the image without sharing. Lesson learned? I should only upload pics when I have sufficient time to spare, or should perhaps resize the larger ones when I find and store them in the first place so they are ready to go.

It is definitely more work and more of a chore but I understand the reasons.

[Alfresco 11,639]

I'm guilty as well.  I don't have a Mac, but even on a PC, if I screen shot an image, it produces a PNG which is larger than necessary.   The problem is that it is fairly easy to take a screen grab, then copy it and past it directly into the post without even saving it, but that leads to a wasteful PNG.   Shame it is not possible for the operating system to have a setting as to what format you copy screen areas in.   Maybe it is?  

Another thought - is it possible to run a macro across the site which would convert PNG to JPG?  I haven't a clue as I don't know about these things, but it would seem like it is something that is not beyond the realms of possibility.

It is one of those situations where technology doesn't actually help itself.   Users want an easy solution and low file size, but practice is that it is either cumbersome to do or a large file.