Image Size

[ellery]

<p>Has there ever been a PN poll for monitor viewing sizes.....that is to decide to use say 800 or 1200 wide .....I tend to always use 800 high....<br /><br />My 19 inch current monitor fits 1200 wide just about right to see all the photo once enlarged....but on my wifes laptop (which I often use to browse) - 800 wide is more appropriate...<br /><br />My guess is 1200 wide is more of the time ok....unless more and more people are using 13 or 15 inch laptop monitors...?</p>

[JosvanEekelen]

<p>Don't even think about it. With todays monitors (LCD, etc.) the only right setting is the native resolution. forget all others.</p>

[keith reeder]

<p>If you're asking what size to present your images onine, Ellery, just do whatever you think looks best to you - there's no way to know how people are viewing your work, so there's no point worrying about it.</p>

<p>I've recently started presenting the images on my site at 1200px, simply because <em>I</em> think they look better at that size than at 800 or 1000px - but there's no rhyme or reason to the decision apart from that.</p>

<p>I also know that the bigger they are, the more likely that they'll be "pirated" - it's a risk I'm well aware of, having been the victim of image theft before; but I haven't got such a high opinion of my efforts that I automatically assume I'll be targetted.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>I'm far more likely to be irritated by having to scroll to see a photograph than I am by an image thats too small on my screen. There are surveys of screen sizes that I tend to look at when revising my website, and according to W3Schools.com 90% of people now (2013) use a screen resolving better than 1024x 768. When I first had a site built , making the pictures too big to appear in totality, and keeping the resolution low so they'd load fast were bigger issues than they are today. Right now the biggest issue for me is the risk of piracy.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>What Keith said... for my website I've settled on 900px for the long end, which on most screens will be fine. It's not only considering the most common screen resolution, but also considering the most likely lowest common denominator. These days, for normal (non-mobile-optimised) websites, that's 1366*768 notebooks and 1024*600 tablets.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Should add that according to the latest figures I've found, there are still a lot of displays that can't show an 800 high image without scrolling. May or not bother you. </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>Should add that according to the latest figures I've found, there are still a lot of displays that can't show an 800 high image without scrolling. May or not bother you.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Could you clarify what you mean by that, David. Not sure, but you might have left some denominator out. I have no problems showing 800 pixel high image on my Dell 2209WA, no scrolling required.</p><div></div>

[david_henderson]

<p>Tim the native resolution of your monitor is 1650 x 1050 I believe. So it doesn't surprise me that you can see an 800 pixel high image without scrolling. Some people have less than you do.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Ah, you were referring to old displays. Do you have a link to these latest figures? I'm curious to see how many have a display smaller than mine and at what size.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>I googled it but you might find the following useful</p>

<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/11/move-over-1024x768-the-most-popular-screen-resolution-on-the-web-is-now-1366x768/">http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/11/move-over-1024x768-the-most-popular-screen-resolution-on-the-web-is-now-1366x768/</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.W3Schools.com">www.W3Schools.com</a></p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Seems to be a lot of info on many sources from work done in April 2012 and not much since</p>

[chris_letts]

<p>regardless of the resolution, I have always found it useful to use a 24 inch monitor because that allows 'actual size' previewing of A3 prints.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>David - 1366x768 is a common (if stupid) television resolution, relatively common on cheap laptops, but not so much on desktops. 1680x1050 is pretty common on desktop screens; the nearest thing to a "standard" is probably 1920x1080 (though I hate 16:9 and wish we'd stuck to 1920x1200). Mobile screens are being used increasingly; that's 960 or 1136 (really, Apple?) x 640 for a recent iPhone, commonly anything between 800x480, 960x540, 1280x720, 1280x800 and 1920x1080. Tablets vary a lot, with 2048x1536 (retina iPad) and 2560x1600 (Nexus 10) being the high end, but 1280x720 or 1280x800 being common - 1024x640 or lower is pretty rare in a tablet. I use, occasionally, a 3840x2400 screen for photo editing; my default screen is my MacBook Pro's 2880x1800, and I still often use a 2048x1536 CRT. Quad-HD TV (3840x2160) is coming, slowly, and high end phones are largely moving to 1920x1080. How much of your monitor is taken up by window furniture? (Title bar, application bar, menus, scroll bars...) I can do a lot more pixels if I stretch across multiple monitors, but that's less useful for photos (unless you have overlapping projectors).<br />

<br />

Take your pick of whom you exclude. I would expect a lot of high-end viewers to be able to get near 1920x1080 resolution, minus a bit for borders, so perhaps 1880x1000. 1680x1050 is close enough to the same, especially if you've gone to a 3:2 crop. Who's your target audience? My feeling is that if I'm on a small screen, I'm prepared to scroll a bit, but I may be biased towards not penalizing those with nicer screens. If you're using 1366x768 and are used to watching video on it (the point of 16:9 screens other than saving a bit of money for the manufacturers) then you're used to downscaling already...</p>