posting pictures - sizes and resolutions

Hi. I've been searching on the forum to see if there are any guidelines concerning recommended resolutions and physical sizes of images posted on the forum. Because my connection is relatively slow it is quite noticeable that some images take ages to download whereas others of a similar physical size are quick - indicating different resolutions or amounts of compression. If there aren't already any guidelines is this something that might be beneficial. I was thinking particularly in the competition category as perhaps some photos that are deemed to be 'soft' or to have 'noise' are due to them being compressed rather than there being any fault with the original. Perhaps posting lower resolution photos so that pages load a bit quicker with a hyperlink to the original hi resolution image should someone want to see it.

Finally, if some guidelines are established, could they be made a sticky so that they are easy to find?

Cheers,

Steve

Resolution is irrelevant to viewing on a screen. I usually resize photos for screen viewing to 800 pixels on the long side. This way anyone viewing your picture will be doing so at 100 %

We have a fairly loose guideline IIRC of a max of 800 pixels on any dimension, but not, AFAIK, on the actual file size. The reason for this is not so much for fast downloads, but to allow the picture to be viewed without having to scroll the browser to see it all (and also to see other posts on the same page, which can be quite annoying).

The trouble is, internet download speeds can be so incredibly variable that it would be very difficult to pick a suitable file size - I find a variation of at least a factor of five even between peak and off-peak periods.

If you're using a modem to access the web, then you're going to be stuck with slow downloads in many situations, not just looking at pictures.

Sorry not to be more help...

I think he means JPEG quality, which can have a large effect on file size, even for given pixel dimensions.

It's all made more complicated, though, by the fact that different online gallery sites apply different auto-image optimisations, irrespective of how big the file you upload is.

Yes, sorry, that was what I meant. I'm still trying to learn the correct terminology for different things so thanks for clarifying that. I'm assuming of course that everyone posts images in JPEG format rather than TIF or something else.

I prefer 600 height for portrait shots, and 700length for landscape shots.
Personal preference though, even from switching 1024x768 to 1680x1050 resolution.

Oh, and I use full quality
Otherwise people will be like
"Your images are really noisy, use a lower ISO"
"Your images are really soft, that lens is useless"
Or something

Pictures sized already for ePHOTOzine would be ideal.

72ppi
Max 1000 ptxels on longest size
200K file size

would load quickly. Maybe 1000 pixels is a little wide for some, but it's manageable and saves resizing specially.