Official Luthiers Forum!

1. What is the ideal KB size of an image for a website?
2. What percentage of internet users are still on 56K Dialup?

There are some among us very web-savvy. I just visited a OLFer's website with huge photos. The site, while well-done otherwise, refused to load the pics, due to their size. It did at least have links to higher-res images and for that I'm thankful.

I'm afraid I'm guilty of using rather large file sizes for my photos. Not necessarily large photos, but for my site, I have minimized the compression on the jpg images, which results in large file sizes. I really can't stand the fuzzy/blurry edges of compressed jpgs, which is why I've done this.

I suspect -- heck, I know! -- my site will be slow in terms of image loading for folks on 56k dial-up. At least there's quite a bit of info for them to read there while they're waiting.

Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

Hesh, I think your site is very nice.

I do think that a site that is going to be very picture heavy should at least give the option of thumbnail images. My (new) fiancee still uses dial up and curses the slowness of it every time.

_________________
Joe Breault
Merrimack, NH
Perpetual novice

The file size should be as small as you can make it with the software you have before a detectable degredation occurs.

Here's a shot of one of Hesh's beautiful guitars from his web site. The shot on the left is 140k (I reduced it from 165k to get it past the forum software). The one on the right is actually more vivid and detailed than the original photograph, but is only 30k. All it takes is a copy of Photoshop and a little practice.



John Watkins38915.6825694444

_________________
John Watkins
CNC Guitar Parts

John Watkins is a powerful wizard! Do not cross him.

DOn't forget the trip to the digital darkroom!

You can even swap headstocks on guitars! er...John can

Bingo. Funny I didn't mention you guys by name....

There is one of six images on Hesh's front page that is actually 290KB. Ten times the size it could be. Soon it won't matter because the dinosaur of dialup will phase out, I'm sure.

It's hard to believe it's already at 15% man, I might as well just get me a No.2 Pencil and a Big Chief tablet.....

I had an old timer who is in my dad's generation send me eight pictures from his artillery reunion in Oklahoma recently. Total size of the email was 8700KB's. When this happens I just start the download at bedtime and check it in the morning.

Thanks for the responses.

John,

I could sure stand to reduce the file sizes at my site. Would you care to discuss the file compression settings you used? Sure looks a lot more than 30k!


Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

[QUOTE=Hesh1956] Oh so you are going to get a Mac.......
(incoming...) [/QUOTE]

Uh oh, careful Hesh. Some of the Window's Vistas options you mentioned
as being things OSX doesn't do (like the screenshots) have been with my
867 powerbook since I bought it four or five years ago :)

But everything else you said sounds pretty good. I loosely try to keep it
under 150k. For me, those tend to be 700px or wider images. I think
people are safe unless they simply don't compress an image.

A way to weight it might be like this. I love (love love love) making super
fast sites. However, is saving the minority of visitors a few seconds worth
image degredation. I'm only postulating, but I believe they'd prefer the
better images to an extra few seconds.

Usually images only have large file sizes because they're too large, not
because they're not compressed enough.

Hesh - Your site needs to feature the inlays much more prominantly. The headstock inlay on the Peace guitar isn't really clearly visible.

_________________
Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Here are a couple of things to consider.

1. screen size. I think this is a big consideration and not as easy to factor as bandwidth. What size do you build to? 800 x 600? 1024 x 768? What? Do a little research and you will find that there is a good mix of screen resolutions. I realize that you can build a site to scale in and out, but that can negatively impact the design (since you can't control how it will be presented.)

2. Here is the recipe I use to reduce graphic files. This is just about the best I have found, but granted it is not a single step process.

If reducing the pixel size of the image reduce it by no more than half in any single operation. For instance, if you have a 1000 x 1000 image that you want to be 175 x 175, the first reduction in size should be to take it to 500 x 500.

Then run an unsharp mask filter over it with the variables set to 100% .6pixel and 0 threshold.

Reduce again by half (250 x 250)

Run the unsharp mask

Reduce to final dimensions (175 x 175)

run the unsharp mask

Then run a gaussian blur of .2

This will give you a much better looking picture than reducing the file size from 1000 x 1000 to 175 x 175 in a single shot.

Try it, you will see.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

[QUOTE=Brock Poling] 1. screen size. I think this is a big consideration
and not as easy to factor as bandwidth. What size do you build to? 800 x
600? 1024 x 768? What? Do a little research and you will find that there
is a good mix of screen resolutions. I realize that you can build a site to
scale in and out, but that can negatively impact the design (since you
can't control how it will be presented.)[/QUOTE]

I hate it when people only respond to posts and add on to what someone
said. Now I'm doing it    

I've been using this $30 web stats program called [URL=http://
haveamint.com]Mint[/URL recently. It was released last year. For a while
I was thinking, "Why pay for sytled stats?" I've come to realize how nice it
can be for R&D though. The stats are really easy to follow, but more
importantly, it goes above and beyond to tell you the resolution of a
viewers computer, their browser's window width, the version of Flash
player they're using. And it breaks it all down into percentages for you
too. What percent of your viewers have 800x600? What percent have
1024x768?

It's really useful for me because my niche is really these dynamic sites
that do stretch and have massive background images...and are all flash
based. How many people are using Flash player 8? Well if it's the
majority, I can take advantage of the features. Here's a screen shot:

    

Brock,

I agree with you on this one, but you can easily make it into a single step operation (in Photoshop), by recording the steps as an action and applying it as needed. Saves a little clicking, at least!

Russ

I think it's pretty important for a website to be accessible to dial-up users. I have problems with sites not loading right often because of my slow connection. My computer has a 56k modem in it but the fastest it will ever connect is 26.4 kbps because of my location. Cable and dsl are also not available where I live. It's dial-up or nothing.

Colby, My sis has the same problem north of town. The only thing available is 56k dailup. I live in town and everthing is available. Time to bump up.

Brock has shared his formula before, but I don't have Photoshop. I simply use the Image Resizer that Lance shared for Windows xp users years ago. The image quality is good enough and never seems to pixelate. That is a pet peeve of mine, err well, besides huge pics that don't load, or load so slow.

I usually milk technology for all it's worth before giving way and spending more bucks. Time to go sell a bit of tonewood.

Hey Bruce,

You can pick up an older version of Paint Shop Pro on eBay for pretty cheap. I just went there and did a search and came up with this.

I use an old version (v4.0) for most of my image resizing work. I also have a copy of v8.0, which is a much more robust product, and might do what you need for a tiny fraction of the cost of a copy of Photoshop.

Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

Brock,

After you run your masks and what have you, what sort of compression settings are you using when you save the image to a jpg file?

Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

There are several really good free editors out there. I really like Gimp but it is a bit complicated to install and use for novist graphics editors. Another good freebie editor PhotoFiltre This one is real simple to use for editing and resizing and has pretty good editing filters does a lot in a simple editing format. Kim Komando has a link to both on her siteMichaelP38916.4900462963

[QUOTE=James Orr] [QUOTE=Brock Poling] 1. screen size. I think this is a big consideration
and not as easy to factor as bandwidth. What size do you build to? 800 x
600? 1024 x 768? What? Do a little research and you will find that there
is a good mix of screen resolutions. I realize that you can build a site to
scale in and out, but that can negatively impact the design (since you
can't control how it will be presented.)[/QUOTE]

I hate it when people only respond to posts and add on to what someone
said. Now I'm doing it    

I've been using this $30 web stats program called [URL=http://
haveamint.com]Mint[/URL recently. It was released last year. For a while
I was thinking, "Why pay for sytled stats?" I've come to realize how nice it
can be for R&D though. The stats are really easy to follow, but more
importantly, it goes above and beyond to tell you the resolution of a
viewers computer, their browser's window width, the version of Flash
player they're using. And it breaks it all down into percentages for you
too. What percent of your viewers have 800x600? What percent have
1024x768?

It's really useful for me because my niche is really these dynamic sites
that do stretch and have massive background images...and are all flash
based. How many people are using Flash player 8? Well if it's the
majority, I can take advantage of the features. Here's a screen shot:

    [/QUOTE]


Also there is a program you can integrate with your site called Browser Hawk, that will grab specific data on your users, screen resolution, connection speed, browser software, version, and about 100 other interesting data points. You can even record it into a data record then using cookies remember their "set up" from session to session.

It is very slick.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

[QUOTE=Dickey] Colby, My sis has the same problem north of town. The only thing available is 56k dailup. I live in town and everthing is available. Time to bump up.

Brock has shared his formula before, but I don't have Photoshop. I simply use the Image Resizer that Lance shared for Windows xp users years ago. The image quality is good enough and never seems to pixelate. That is a pet peeve of mine, err well, besides huge pics that don't load, or load so slow.

I usually milk technology for all it's worth before giving way and spending more bucks. Time to go sell a bit of tonewood.[/QUOTE]

Grab a copy of Fireworks 3 or Fireworks 4. You should be able to find them on Amazon or eBay for next to nothing.

They are nice programs. I am not sure if you can create a macro to do it in one click or not, but they have a lot of features and are relatively easy for non graphic people to learn (unlike Photoshop).

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

[QUOTE=Michael McBroom] Brock,

After you run your masks and what have you, what sort of compression settings are you using when you save the image to a jpg file?

Best,

Michael
[/QUOTE]

Usually somewhere between 60% and 80%

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

IrFanView is another free utility with which one may convert image files, resize, compress, sharpen and color correct images. I use this one often and it is easy to do the steps referred to above in getting to usable size digital photos for your site.

I am sure it is obvious, but nobody has said it yet, use of more thumbs can make a site more friendly, with the big pics being clickable from the thumbs.

_________________
"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck