Image sizing

[seabob4]

Rick, CB, what are you guys setting the image reduction to?  On Melba Toast's thread, I'm having to scroll across a good ways on a 19" monitor.  Scott is using 78% on a straight copy from PB (1064 X 840) and no scrolling necessary...

[RickK]

When you upload directly to our gallery the image is reduced to 640x480.  If you link from an external source, like MB does, I opened it up to 1100x1100, per member request.
For a 19" monitor the normal resolution is 1280x1024.  Should fit pretty well within that.  Maybe you zoomed your browser in when looking at something and didn't zoom it back out?  Something changed on your end or you would have brought this up long ago.

[seabob4]

Nah Rick, nothing changed, there have been quite a few threads where the pics cause a lot of scrolling...just never said anything about it.  So if it's at the members request to have their pics that large, oh well.  

This is for the members.  In all honesty, if a thread has pics that won't fit my screen, I pretty much don't look at them.  An 1100 X 1100 pic is not going to show that much more than a typical smaller sized pic.  Something one might want to think about for those of us with smaller monitors...

[RickK]

The setting is for the members that use Photo Bucket and left the settings there at it's max of 1024x768 - Melba and Aaron are just a few of a long list - so no matter what orientation they took their pic, 1100x100 will cover it and it is only a slight bandwidth penalty for us.  The bandwidth since we moved has not been an issue at all, in fact the site has not had an issue.
If the members want us to store their pics, which is totally fine, then I scale them back so we don't have to buy a bigger package from the host.  We still have a few years worth of additional 640x480 pics before we need to upgrade.

[Capt. Bob]

Something one might want to think about for those of us with smaller monitors...

I see Rick beat me to it but it's still worth repeating.

It's not the monitor size SB. I'm viewing with a 15" on my laptop and the pics fit fine. You need to crank up the resolution (if both your graphic card and monitor allow).

What is the native resolution of your monitor(s)?
I'm running the laptop at 1366 x 768. That's its max setting (it's 6 year old technology :( ). If I ran it at say 1024 x 768, I could not see the documents I work with on this little screen without excessive scrolling. Yes the fonts are very large but that's what glasses are for and I need to fit as much information on the little screen as possible to do my job and remember, this is old tech. If I had a newer device, I'd crank it up even more.

Everyone knows you have strong opinions about the Photo Gallery (PG) and your love for Photo Bucket(PB). I fully agree that PB is a much more robust environment for storing/editing and sharing photos but the fact remains, it requires a user to manually downsize (if they so choose) to say 640 x 480 before posting. Since we can't control that, we allow third party types (like yourself) more leeway in posting. While that puts the onus on them to consider those members who may be using older technology when viewing the Forum, it also allows them to post (within the limits Rick stated above) what they feel gives the best view of their project.

That stated, the PG auto sizing is indeed 640 x 480 which is why I push to use it whenever members post pics. That insures that all can see the pics without unnecessary scrolling. Below is the perfect example.



Like so many members do these days, this photo was taken with my cell phone. Its native size was 1.9 MB and resolution was 3264 x 2448 (which is pretty primitive by today's camera phone standards). Uploaded directly to the Forum's PG, it is auto-sized to 640 x 480 making for e-z viewing. Still, the fine print is not that easily seen on my laptop. It will look better on my home screen with a higher res. Had I posted first on PB then posted here,(assuming I can only view it on the laptop) I might have chosen to leave it at a larger size in order to read it better. It's a crap shoot for sure. That's why the options exist.

The real problem here may indeed lie with the attempt to try and please everyone which is never going to happen. We offer two options in that effort. That's more than some and less than others but the bottom line is this....

Members who suffer ESS have three choices:
Increase screen resolution.
Hope that all members will use the PG to post pics.
Live with it as best they can.

[seabob4]

CB, I adjusted my res to max, which indeed did eliminate the scrolling but at the cost of reducing the font size...which for me is no big deal, my vision is going the way of being far-sighted, so I'm good at basically 2' away from the monitor.  

As far as resizing in PB, I quit doing that on Scott's site, just copy and paste my original image, he's got the reduction set at 78%, which worked perfectly in the lower res setting...no scrolling, and no re-sizing...

[RickK]

Windows 8 with a touch screen monitor using pinch technology is the answer     It's a bummer getting old, I agree and a I'm a little older than you.
Good lord, when I was in college it was a 9" monitor, then an 11" (still using 8" floppies, then 5" then .... - I know you younger members are saying "huh?") - man o man, where has the time gone and look at the technology innovations we have to think about keeping up with now. At least it's a choice  8)
I built a super computer a few years ago and while it was outdone in a few months by new technology, I think I built it with a 10 year performance tolerance.  It's a smoker, too bad I use the family room PC 90% of the time    (The family room pc is a pc I bought as a refurb online for my wife for $400 - a smoker too- hey, if Gran can upgrade from a 386, a miracle can happen anywhere     )
Anyone can upgrade their world for a few hundred bucks these days.