Discussion thread for Building Photo Challenge

[lloydslights]

Simone, is that the Singaporean triple tower building?  I saw a TV show recently which showed the construction of the site.  Three teams built the towers "in a race".  Apparently,  the bridging across the top was an engineering feat.

DEB

[ten*teeny*tiny*toes]

I love your work tende.

This word crop... ploise explain...are we only seeing snippets?

Public Holiday mode here = home brew, which is pretty stupid because I have to work tomorrow 

[tende60]

Crop.... the more I look at that word, the more stupid it looks.

Yes, sometimes snippets. If I left the whole picture in at times we'd be seeing a lot more than needed!

Best thing with home brew, never gives you a headache or hangover...

We're up at 4.00, so I am off now.

Your pics are great, keep doing what you are.

[ten*teeny*tiny*toes]

I am sure pimpy would like to see more! much more lol

I'm up early too, just gonna watch House Rules and I will be in bed before 9.

[chuk_77]

mine come straight from the camera and I choose large. The only time i run it through PS is when i get an error message and then I save for web and i just adjust the size until the computer is happy with it, then it lets me load it here.

many of the pics load slow. Basically boris/simones until recently and PH's pics take forever.

I get bored easily and if the photos take forever to load, i tend to hit the back button. Bad me

[boris1gary]

---

@chuk_77 wrote:

mine come straight from the camera and I choose large. The only time i run it through PS is when i get an error message and then I save for web and i just adjust the size until the computer is happy with it, then it lets me load it here.

many of the pics load slow. Basically boris/simones until recently and PH's pics take forever.

I get bored easily and if the photos take forever to load, i tend to hit the back button. Bad me

---

yes, I did post a long one today, I did resize it in paint but then posted it and walked away, I don't mind the big ones but do try and remember to make them smaller - i have a terrible memory though. 

[cq_tech]

---

@ten*teeny*tiny*toes wrote:

I'd like some help understanding the size and clarity of the photos that people upload.

I do understand the medium, large and fullsize options, its not about that - I've regretted medium everytime btw. I think large is best but sometimes ebay seems to do things to the pics?

I guess I want to know how people keep the clarity and have photos that load quickly for everyone.

Do 3mb photos need reducing for faster loading (in consideration of others) ? I look at size that way , pixels are a bit beyond me.

And how best to reduce those photos larger than the 3mb that exceed ebay upload limits? I saw someone mention using paint?

---

I did some extensive experimentation a couple of weeks ago and discovered that the maximum size that displays on the page is 812 pixels wide, regardless of the size your image is when you upload it, although it won't be accepted at all if it's too big. The largest image I was able to successfully upload was 2592*1944 pixels in size. Anything larger was rejected as being too large. A normal 4:3 aspect photograph is automatically resized down to display at 812*609 pixels.

I then posted that same image at the 4 available sizes of Full, Large, Medium, and Small and the results were as follows...

Full Size = 812*609

Large = 600*450

Medium = 400*300

Small = 200*150

Seems to me that it would be far more descriptive if they named the different sizes in the drop-down selection box as full, three-quarter (¾), half (½), and quarter (¼) based on the original image size as it gives users a much clearer idea of what to expect IMO.

In order to retain the maximum resolution and clarity, the image should be saved in either a JPG or PNG format, but if your paint program has this function, make sure that you don't use any more than 15% compression on JPGs as they start to become a bit lossy otherwise. MS Paint is fairly basic but does an adequate job if you have nothing better, but don't use BMP (bitmap) format. Make sure that if you resize, you save your image as a JPG file instead.

Most halfway decent paint programs will allow resizing and as there is little point in uploading anything much in excess of ebay's maximum displayable screen size of 812*609 pixels, to prevent them from loading too slowly you should resize them down to around 1200*900 pixels.

BTW, try to forget about image size in megabytes as it's irrelevant. You need to start thinking in pixels only as that's what counts.

If you need or want a good, easy to use paint program, I recommend that you go to http://www.oldversion.com/windows/paint-shop-pro/ and download one of the many available versions of Paint Shop Pro as being older versions there is no charge. I use (and prefer) version 5.01 but they recommend version 9.0 which is slightly more complex and a lot larger in size. The latest version they carry is version 12.50 but at 318Mb I see no need for it when 5.01 is only 17.4Mb and does an equally good job for what I want. They have other paint programs as well if you prefer something else.

It's probably worth saving the above information for future reference in case you forget. 😉

[this-one-time-at-bandcamp]

OK, here goes..........

When I take a picture with my DSL camera, it records it in RAW at 3888x2592 pixels, at a resolution of 240 pixels per inch.  I remove the media card from the camera, insert it into a card reader attached to the computer.  I open CS4 Bridge (photoshop) and examine each photo.  Those that I choose to use, get pulled from Bridge and brought up in Photoshop for processing. If they are HDR images, I run them through Photomatix after processing in Photoshop.

Once I'm satisfied with the result, I save the image(s) in various folders on an extenal 2TB harddrive, usually after I have, by using Photoshop, brought them down to about half the size, simply for memory considerations.

Let's say I have selected an image that I want to upload into Community Spirit.  I load it first into Photoshop, where I decide what size to make it..........the maximum acceptable size on this site is 3.072 Megs.

Generally I want the image to be 900pixels in width, that way I can use  "large" formatting.  On the photograph thread, I used 810 pixels in width and selected "full size" formatting. 

As far as cropping goes...........I often snatch a bit of an image of special interest to me..........

This, for example is a nice picture of Ashland Creek..........but by cropping, I get this result...

[tcmsecretuseid]

Thanks band. I load my pics directly from the media card into my mac also. 

I am using aperture and iphoto right now to fiddle with my photos. I don't have photoshop, and so I am very limited in what I can do. 

I often just take a screen shot of my photo to post here. 

Cropping does prove to be a very useful tool. 

I do need to learn how to set my rebel to raw, and utilize its potential. 

[cq_tech]

To t*t*t*t, it's important to remember that if you're likely to be doing any cropping, it's essential to leave your original image as large as possible so that you don't lose any resolution when blowing up the cropped portion of the image, like the excellent results above.

[this-one-time-at-bandcamp]

I do need to learn how to set my rebel to raw, and utilize its potential.

Simply turn your dial to "M"..........you will see the word RAW on your screen.  But remember, your images will use a lot of the media card's memory  By turning my dial from "M" to "full auto"  with the card currently in the camera, I go from 63 images in RAW to 142 L-fine images........