Any Photographers Out There? Whats the perfect image size?

[everydaysushi 0]

Me again. I'm about to build a new site to house my photography/portfolio, and I realize that the same thought always occurs when I'm about to get started. What's the perfect image size? I'm talking specifically about sites that house a lot of photography/images.

 

My first sites had rather large photos, because I thought bigger was better. With digicams getting better resolution and spitting out bigger and bigger pics, it seemed reasonable. But it was annoying how the scrolling bar would appear on the right when the image reached "page-capacity" so I scaled down the size. Now, I'm at about a 400x600 pixel size happiness (see below). But is that still too big?

 

And while I've got your expert attention on the subject, I assume most photo sites have functions that allow you to "slideshow" through them... (ie. next/previous). Does anyone have suggestions for how I could set that up, WITHOUT having superior knowledge in advanced scripts (I can only write HTML). It seems to me that I'd have to use some Java or something for that... have some kind of numerical sequencing system IF NEXT=TRUE, THEN X+1, X being the picture, pictures numbered 1-10. Ok I just made that up, but you get the picture (HAH!)

 

But really, I need help.

 

Notice from microscopic^earthling:

Moved to Desgning > Photography

[Yoicks 0]

I can't help you in terms of the slideshow issues, but in terms of the size...I think you're about right. The resolution of choice (for most people) is now 600x800...so, assuming the picture is basically the only thing that's of focus on the site...it's good. It would even work for people using archaic monitors! How exciting.

[hashbang 0]

Hey Mate,
I get around with a camera a fair bit too. I have heaps and heaps of picts which I am just now begining to organise and put online. Like you, I knock my picts down to a max of 600 px (one side). I have found the photoalbum scripts available under Xisto cpanel to be pretty good. I tried out coppermine and gallery. Both worked well. Gallery had a cool slide show feature.

Currently I am using tikiwiki and organising mainly family picts in their image gallery module. This requires next to zero knowledge of html. Just uploading picts. If you are going to use tikiwiki, let me know. There are a few tweeks you can do to prevent problems later on.

You can see my image galleries here just click on the Image Gallery link on the right side.

the BB wouldn't let me post/insert my pict here due to dynamic tags but I though you may want to see one of my landscpae picts ... desription is underneath on the site: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/tikiet=0&imageId=52

cheers
hashbang

[Mastermund 0]

600x800 is a good size, though I would definately recommend that you keep some sort of original on your computer (or, if not plausible, a less scaled down image) just in case something happens to the result. If you're doing so already good for you When your original itself is digital you can't afford to lose it.

[Rudy1405241475 0]

Mastermund is right about keeping your originals. Also you must take into account that the larger the file the longer it takes to render on your page. You can use a "graphic optimizer" really a compressor to make the file smaller in storage size.

[rdkr 0]

I have had the same issues. There are still a great deal of people who only have a dia- up service so you need to keep your images small, about 150k per page so it loads fast. I have made all my images linked to larger files so if people wish to see a higher res they only need to click. You also need to think about bandwidth of your host, photos take up a lot. Still getting the hang of it all. Only been a web builder for a month now. Site is running to about 110mb with 500 html pages.

Richard,

defaultsite

[everydaysushi 0]

Thanks for all the help. Good to know I'm not alone on this. Anyone have any opinions/thoughts on watermarking images? I mean, just to protect yourself so they're not stolen or anything? Or... making the image less-than-desirable quality? Sucks because that's destroying your own image, but sometimes you want control over what you're displaying all over the web... Or am I just being paranoid?

[r3d1405241470 0]

make it a flash sites and all images load in a single swf a time. its a bit harder to leech and watermark images seems sux and too selfish

[everydaysushi 0]

make it a flash sites and all images load in a single swf a time. its a bit harder to leech and watermark images seems sux and too selfish

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ah great idea. only problem... i don't have flash making software. is there any i can get freeware or at least cheaper than like the $400 Macromedia charges?

[NilsC 0]

Anyone have any opinions/thoughts on watermarking images? I mean, just to protect yourself so they're not stolen or anything? Or... making the image less-than-desirable quality? Sucks because that's destroying your own image, but sometimes you want control over what you're displaying all over the web... Or am I just being paranoid?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How about fingerprinting your images with Steganography, that way you can see if any of your pictures are used on othe peoples webpages and I think (since I don't know) Steganography are using whitespace in your datastream to hide the fingerprint and don't degrade the quality to much.

 

Is there a way of interleaving picture data or when you load the picture one color is set to transparent. While looking on the website picture looks OK, when picture is downloaded onto users computer the color set to transparent will show and make the picture grainy (not sure if this is a correct assumption).

 

Reverse watermarking that are supressed while you view it online but when picture is downloaded it shows up because they don't have your algorythm....

 

Lot of assumtion on my part here but it may be possible if wee look around to find something like this.

 

Nils

[heimcomputer 0]

OK

when you display images on a webpage you must remember that it may be displayed

with different display resolution *(1600*1200/....../1024*768/800*600/....and so on)

as with different browsers and different operating systems etc.)

 

So when you design a webpage with or without images

you have to consider this when making layout.

You can have images in all kinds of resolutions

whatever fits the situation and the webpage and the image

 

resolution is not the only thing that is importat

resolution is the pixelwidth/height

filesize is the bits ofcourse

and quality

this verry important element which depends and is a result of the relesionship between the other two elements(rez/filez=q)

 

this is a limited discription of the facts but its sufficent for this

explanation

 

when viewing images people tend to want to be able to actualy see them

this is the only thing you realy have to worry about

when making layout

-what people see

but displaying images in general

filesize should be way under 100k on pages with other images and or other elements like text etc.

in general keep images around about 10k or 20-30k

depending on what kind of image

only reason for this filesize issue is bandwith and storage

maby it will be solved better some time in the future?!

 

But when displaying images alone

or if you want to keep and option for the user to see the image in higher resolution

you can have whatever resolution you would like to give away

in general for viewing images on a computer screen

image resolution 1024*768 is sufficiant but if you would like make able for print

you should consider higher resolution

 

*****************************************************************

PROTECTING youre IMAGES:

 

I dont like the idea of protecting youre images

if you have gone as fare as display them you may aswell give them away

let them have them if they want

or maby you shouldnt have displayed them in the first place

but you should maby consider what resolution of the image you give away

if it is images that you plan to sell, then maby it is not

a good idea to give away high resolution copys of the images

but forgett about watermarking youre images and such

it ruins the image

thats my opinion anyway

 

*****************************************************************

 

but there is lots of options available for making a web image library/gallery

just google

but if you want to make one youreself but dont know that much about html and

all that confusing stuff

Flash is a good way to go

Flash mx 2004 and Flash mx 2004 professional

I know has a template for a simple photo/image library/gallery

 

Im gonna say some more about image quality

when you use a digital camera or scan images from paper/film

you always(almost) have the choice of filetype

the standard for displaying photo on web is the verry much known jpeg/jpg

(the jpg is just because of windows rather wanting 3 character file extension)

jpeg is a image format which compress the image

in most cases jpeg compression is lossy

You may have heard of different image filetypes

jpg / tiff / psd / png / gif / raw....

lamost every filetype has the option to compress the image

but not all have the option to make lossless quality from original

jpeg usualy does not have the option for lossless imagequality

but that is not the intention of jpeg

jpeg was made for compressing photo

when jpeg compressing - the program in use will try to find a pattern

in the image considered and make 'lossless to the eye' compression of the image.

 

remember you can set option for what jpeg quality

when saving an image in most progs. usualy 1-10

(and 6 or 7quality is sufficent for nice web display)

 

tiff and psd and so on are

formats for editing and printing images of high resolution

 

png and gif and alike are

formats for graphic and or images with ~one color parts and straight lines

 

gif and jpg = the two formats to consider when displaying on the web

 

when it comes to storing youre images you should consider other formats

but using digital cameras u usualy get jpg format

this is because that is what most people want

and in most cases it is sufficiant quality

on some (i couldnt say all) cameras there is an option for

saving youre images in raw or tiff quality

this is when you want to get the best from youre camera.

but then the filesize ofcourse

 

any way you have youre images ->

when storing them and editing resaving them in differnt programs

(like photoshop) you should find a way to rename the images so you can go

back and forth in the history of an image.

 

so rounding it up:

display the images in the resolution they deserve

dont be cheap about youre images

and good luck with youre image gallery

[kraizii88z 0]

I like to use Coppermine, it has a lot of functions to resize, whatever your images, so you don't have to worry about that as much

[chris1234 0]

photo shop can make you a very quick and easy gallery that looks good, the images are only upto 450pix i think, anyway takes about 5 mins thats all.chris

[everydaysushi 0]

photo shop can make you a very quick and easy gallery that looks good, the images are only upto 450pix i think, anyway takes about 5 mins thats all.

chris

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

PHOTOSHOP?? I've never heard of Photoshop helping to make galleries... can you tell me how? Thx!

[chiiyo 0]

Hmm. I display photos too, so I'll give a few tips:Yes, 600x400 is a good size, if you're displaying photographs taken in the traditional 35mm aspect ratio. This is because even the 640x480 people will be able to see your entire picture without scrolling, though if you're aiming to target those people make sure your webpage design allows for 600x400 picture without adding more pixels on each side of the photo (like if you have a 100 pixel width banner next to your photos the people using 640x480 won't be able to see your entire photo at once).Usually I even add a white border around my photos. It gives it a rather professional feel. Around 10 pixels around is quite nice. The background of my webpage is black is I have a photo surrounded by a white border and then by black. That's how they display photos in professional galleries anyway.I find that by showing my photos at such low resolution is already some type of protection against people stealing my images. A picture at 600x400 (including the white border!) does not print well on 4R medium (I know, I work at a photo developing shop), and so long as nobody prints out my work and claim it's theirs, good enough for me. You might also want to save the picture using Photoshop CS's save for web, I usually save my pictures at JPEG High quality which brings the size of the photo down to around 50-60KB, and still look pretty decent.If you have Photoshop CS, look under File>Automate>Web Photo Gallery. I've never actually tried it before, but it looks like you can specify your photos and Photoshop will design a template for a gallery, HTML files and all.