How to size digital image for fast loading website?

[35mmdelux]

<p>I am digital image challenged and wanted to know how to size an image for fast loading on my website? I am presently running verdana typestyle, which fast, and I don't want the image to slow down the loading.</p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

[daniel flather]

<p>Did your camera come with any software? It should be able to size an image. I size my images to 600*400 for my website, and they load fast.</p>

<p>Look at the software that came with your camera. link us to your web site.</p>

 

[daniel flather]

<p>You can open an account at www.flickr.com, upload your images, and use the free editor to size your photos. Flickr is free (they have a pay account, but you won't need it). </p>

<p>That is an easy and quick solution for you.</p>

[35mmdelux]

<p>Maybe I worded it wrong? I use Gimp software and have the ability to resize the image -- dimensionally and pixely-- as desired. The photo needs to have some quality about it. The final product needs to be about 1/2 size of a post card.</p>

<p>Will a 600*400 photo have visual quality?</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Are you talking about <em>printing</em> the image, or just displaying it on a computer screen?</p>

[daniel flather]

<p>This was shot at 1/60 f8, tripod, handheld softbox with canon 580exII flash. 600*400 is a good image size for quick viewing.</p>

<p><em>Will a 600*400 photo have visual quality?</em></p>

<p>Yes and no. It's a good web size, but not good for printing.</p><div></div>

[35mmdelux]

<p>Just for displaying on the screen, not for printing. One or two portraits on the page.</p>

<p>Thank you all.</p>

[tonycooper]

<p>Go to some of the photography sites and look for images that look like they display properly in your estimation. Cruise through some of the links in this forum and open the sites. Cruise the SmugMug sites. Right click on the images and go to Properties. This will tell you the size of the image you are looking at. You'll probably end up with images that are between 600 and 800 pixel on the longest side. <br>

You can, however, embed a link to a larger version of your image with a simple HTML code so the site has one image that downloads, and a link to a larger version with your image host.</p>

 

[35mmdelux]

<p>great! thanks all.<br>

Paul</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>I tweak each JPEG individually for maximum compression without going overboard into artifacts, posterization and other problems. Some photo editing programs will let you preview the effects of JPEG compression (as well as PNG and other formats) before saving. My old copies of Corel Photo Paint 8 and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 do. The preview screen enables magnification too, for pixel peepers, but generally speaking if the preview looks good at 1:1 magnification, it'll look fine on the web.</p>

<p>Some photos, lets say typically anywhere from 600x400 to 800x600, can tolerate a 75%-80% quality setting before unacceptable compression artifacts are visible. Others, especially those with either large expanses of blue or red, or those will very fine detail (especially multiple diagonal lines), will tolerate no less than 90%-95% quality before blocky compression artifacts and posterizing set in. My JPEGs in the above specified dimensions may range from as little as 30KB to as much as 300KB, depending on the unique characteristic of each image. When an 800x600 or so JPEG begins to approach 200-300KB in file size, I'll usually reduce the dimensions to get a larger file size with high quality, rather than either overcompress the larger JPEG or, worse, force viewers to wait for a needlessly large 1024x768 2MB JPEG to load.</p>

<p>None of the popular freebie photo editing packages I'm aware of allow JPEG compression previews. Not IrfanView, not FastStone, not Picasa (unless the most recent version is different). Few, if any, of the simpler low priced photo editing programs do either, so it's a trial and error process. If I do have to use Irfanview for batch processing I'll review the subsequent JPEGs and may individually redo some to either get a smaller file size or to minimize artifacts.</p>

[johnw63]

<p>A very good method is the thumbnail ( a rather small picture ) that loads on your page, quickly, then when you click on it a much larger photo is loaded. That's how the gallery, here at Photo.net works. It's just a matter of including a link to the large version, within the photo placement on your web page.</p>

<p> </p>

[markci]

<p>Well a typical monitor is 1024x768 these days. So whether 600x400 is "good enough" is neither here not there. It's as good as you're going to be able to do if you're displaying them 2 per page. </p>