[Graham Lane]

It seems a lot of people have trouble setting the size of their photos - either thumbnails or way too big.

I use Photobucket and managed to preset the size of my photos. Here is a link telling you how to do it. Never mind the content!

Simples.

You will also find it a good idea to add a space line, hit return, between photos so they don't butt up together.

 

[RichD]

That should do the trick. It is possible that Photobucket also applys some compression when it resizes the image and that could degrade the image quality. You might want to compare a picture the has been resized with Photobucket with one that was done with photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop Elements. Somewhere buried in Windows is Paint, which can be used to resize images. I leave my camera set for full sized images and those are 4288 pixels wide. On my monitor an 1800 or so pixel wide picture fills the screen, so when I edit pictures for display I make them 1600 pixels wide. For the pictures that I do for the Internet I normally make them 640 or 800 pixels wide. Once in a while I go crazy and post a 1000 pixel wide picture. degrade image

 

[Graham Lane]

Well my photos are taken on the lowest camera setting (640 x 480) and they look fine, don't they?

 

[Ember]

The only issue with having only a low resolution original comes when you want to use the image for something else, like advertising an event or club.

I have to spend so much time at work explaining to folks why their internet sized photo is not suitable for use on a sign or a vehicle wrap, banner or billboard.

Always shoot your photos at the highest resolution and lowest compression that your camera will handle. You never know when they may be needed for another purpose. Resize or crop them using your photohosting site before posting.

Embs

 

[Graham Lane]

I take high resolution photos too, but only when I think they may be needed for artwork. A 3Mb photo does no one any good except the hard drive manufacturers. The volume of photos I take for my business would fill a hard drive in no time.

 

[Ember]

Then dump them off onto DVD occasionally.

 

[Dopamine]

Er, are DVDs bigger in Australia, Embs?

DVD = 8.5GB roughly (17GB if double sided). That'a a damn small hard drive

 

[Ember]

It's not like you have wait until the whole drive is full Dopamine.

Figured you'd work that one out.

I keep a database with details of each photo and a thumbnail and the number of the disc it's on. I need to be able to retrieve hi-res photos on call.

Even from the point of view of the happy snapper I will always recommend shoot and store in full resolution. You never know when one shot is going to be 'magic' that you want to blow up into a large format print or whatever. Shots can't always be restaged.

 

[Dopamine]

I agree with you that it's best always to shoot at the best possible resolution and quality, but why on earth mess about with dozens (hundreds?) of DVDs when you can have an external drive plugged in to your computer or kept in your pocket?

Take photo, burn to DVD, reference, store. Need photo, find DVD ref, find DVD, put it in the drive, find picture, take DVD out, repeat for the next picture on a different DVD. Seems illogical and time consuming. I too need to access high-res photos daily. It would drive me nuts having 600GB (my commercial library) of images stored on 50 or so DVDs. I have mine on 4 hard drives: my main PC's hard drive, another back-up hard drive permanently plugged in to the PC, a further back-up drive in a safe place at home and one kept off site that's backed-up monthly. However, if DVDs suit you, that's great. I was just surprised to hear someone still recommending DVDs as a storage medium, especially as their capacity is so small.

 

[Graham Lane]

I agree Dopamine. I also use hard drives both as back up and extra storage capacity. It's the videos I take that gobble up the most storage space!

But, back on topic, whether you take high resolution all the time or just sometimes, having them automatically resized on Photobucket, which is completely independent from your own storage system, is always a good idea.

 

[Ember]

The comment was due to Graham's concerns of rapidly filling hard drive.

Even if you have TBs of storage, back up is a must. Or it is for me anyway.

 

[Graham Lane]

Absolutely, but I can't see any reason to take family snaps of a kiddies birthday party in high res.

And back-up? Absolutely essential. I lost all once. Never again. My system, and I mean my whole system, programmes and data, backs up automatically every night while I'm asleep or on this forum.

Oh, and another thing. People take hi-res photos of their property and send us about fifty by email. Doh!

 

[Ember]

Again, what if something happens to the all of the kiddies attending that party the following week, say school bus crash (may the gods forbid). All the parents are probably going to want decent copies of the photos that you have taken at the party. Something like that can not be restaged. Why not make sure that the photos are worthwhile? You don't know when you're going to snap a gem of Miss Four with a facefull of cake or being bopped over the head by Master 5.

Most people don't think to change the settings on their camera. Therefore it is better and safer to leave them set high.

But anyway, that's just my opinion garnered from 20 odd years of photography and working in graphics in some way shape or form. Some of them very odd indeed.

 

[Graham Lane]

Well take em in hi-res by all means and store them on your hard-drive, DVD or PC, but let Photobucket resize automatically on their way to the forum. That way you'll never end up with those irritating thumbnails or a rap over the knuckles from a moderator.

 

[Ember]

Yup. I'll drink to that.