INVESTIGATION: Best Upload File Size and Pixel Dimensions

[Andrea B.]

MID-TOPIC SUMMARY HERE: https://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php?/topic/5149-investigation-best-upload-file-size-and-pixel-dimensions/&do=findComment&comment=53490

There might be more discussion. If so, I'll resummarize.

 

 

TEST: Compare pre-upload and post-upload file sizes.

 

Select an original unprocessed NEF

File Size: 26.2 MB, 6080 x 4028 px

 

Save the NEF file as JPG with highest quality in Photo Mechanic.

File Size: 4.1 MB, 6016 x 4018 px

 

Upload that JPG.

File Size: 4.91 MB

So file size grew slightly? I have absolutely no idea why.

 

 

[Andrea B.]

DEMONSTRATION:  The forum software has three ways of displaying your image.

• within the forum page
• full screen
• full detail

 

Please note that uploaded small images will look the same in all 3 modes. Images which are larger than the width of a forum page will be resized by the forum software to fit within a forum page. Such images will look larger when clicked up into full screen mode.

 

I find it interesting that any resizing for the display modes is done in real time. The uploaded file is not altered.

 

Here is the display of the uploaded photo on my Macbook Pro (Retina) in a fully expanded Firefox browser. 

This photo has large pixel dimensions:  6016 x 4018 px.

It has obviously been resized for display within the forum page by the forum software.

FORUM PAGE DISPLAY

 

 

 

If you click the displayed photo once, then the photo will fill the screen.

However, it has been again resized for display within the screen.

For my Macbook Pro Retina the screen is set to a default 1792 x 1120 px.

SCREEN DISPLAY

 

 

If you click the displayed photo again, then you can see the photo details at full resolution However, you cannot see the details all at once. (And you aren't seeing the full-sized details in this actual uploaded screen shot which is now in a FORUM PAGE DISPLAY. But I'm sure you get the idea.)

DETAILS

 

 

 

 

[Andrea B.]

INVESTIGATION:  How do we maximize the appearance of our uploaded photographs?

A large image will be resized by the forum software. Maybe resizing the image prior to uploading will give a better outcome? The question is:  who does the better resizing to fit within a forum page - you or the forum software? And what happens to the resized photo when the browser is expanded or contracted?

 

Given that nobody is looking at photos on UVP using the same monitors or screens, it seems useless to try for any kind of resizing before upload to match a particular monitor/screen res.  So perhaps the first resizing to try is to fit the photo within the forum page.

 

(Reminder: if your browser is fully expanded and you click on a photo resized before upload to fit within the forum page, the photo will not be any bigger when clicked up to the full screen view.)

 

 

 

 

 

[Andrea B.]

CONTROL EXAMPLE:  Unresized image upload.

How does it look in the 3 display modes?

 

I'm going to start with a square crop from a Photo Ninja conversion which has been given some minor detail sharpening but which has not been resized. The dimensions of the crop are 3171 x 3171 px.

 

After looking at this photo with real-time forum display resizes, I will then resize it myself and upload it again in the next post. Maybe we can determine who is better at resizing. 

 

Click once, twice, 3 times. Which one looks the best, if any? There is quite a lot of detail.

 

UV Rudbeckia:  This is the unresized control photo against which we'll test the resized vesions. Only the forum software is resizing this photo.

File Size:  10.66 MB

[Andrea B.]

EXAMPLE:  Resize before upload to 900 x 900 px.

 

I'm no expert on resizing, that's for sure. But let me start with 900 x 900 px. Gotta start somewhere. I can take suggestions as to resizing dimensions later if you want me to try something. 900 px dimensions is a conservative choice because the photo will fit well within the forum page.

 

NOTE:  Leave quality setting out of this for now. We'll get to that later, OK?

 

I'm going to make three resized versions at 900 x 900 px each with slightly different sharpening approaches. The generally accepted wisdom is that re-sharpening should be applied after resizing. But let's see what happens.

 

V1: Resize an unsharpened version of the original square crop prior to upload.

Do not apply sharpening after resizing.

File Size: .948 MB

 

 

 

 

V2: Resize an unsharpened version of the original square crop prior to upload.

Apply minor detail sharpening after resizing.

File Size:  1 MB

 

 

 

V3: Resize a slightly sharpened version of the square crop prior to upload.

Do not apply sharpening after resizing.

We would be looking to see if any of the sharpening survives the resize.

Mostly not, but this version is subtly different from the other two.

File Size: .988 MB

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andrea B.]

Pick the Best from the three Previous Resize-prior-to-upload examples.

 

That is a tough call. But I think that the middle one looks best. This is the one which was resharpened after the resize to 900 px prior to upload.

More sharpening could have been used maybe?

Let me try applying a bit more sharpening after resizing to 900 x 900 px.

File Size: 1.04 MB

[Andrea B.]

PAUSE:  Are we getting anywhere?

 

At this point I like the forum resized version of the large unresized image the best. That was in the fourth post above. Maybe that is because it is larger?

I'll try resizing to something larger than 900 x 900.

 

Watch this space........

[Andrea B.]

EXAMPLE:  Resize before upload to 1000 x 1000 px.

 

Here is a 1000 px x 1000 px resize made prior to the upload.

Some sharpening was added after the resize.

File Size:  1.29 MB

[Andy Perrin]

1000x1000 looks better. 

[Andrea B.]

I am officially Not Impressed by my own resizing efforts. But I need to try one more resize.

But first......

 

REPOST of the Unresized Image in the 4th Post

Here is a repost of the earlier large version which will automatically be forum-resized.

I wanted it close so that you can compare it to the next effort which is a 1200 x 1200 px resize.

File size:  10.6 MB

 

 

[Andrea B.]

EXAMPLE:  Resize before upload to 1200 x 1200 px.

 

Here is the 1200 x 1200 px resize. Some sharpening was added after the resize. This looks rather good compared to the 900 px and 1000 px resize examples above. But I'm not sure why that is so. What is magic about a maximum 1200 px width? I do not know.

 

How do you think this images compares to the forum resized version reposted just above?

 

But note that at 1200 x 1200 px, the file is getting resized slightly by the forum software for the Forum Page display and Full Screen display. You'll see that when you click it up to the Full Detail display.

So I have to ask whether this is an optimal resize. It certainly does look good.

File Size: about 1 MB

[Andy Perrin]

That looks even better. I’m reading on my iPhone and there is a clear improvement. Andrea, look on your phone as well as the Mac. 

[Andrea B.]

Will do for sure!

 

Andy, try a couple of resizes and see what you get. Perhaps I am not using an optimal resizer?

Everyone needs to figure out this resizing thing for their own software, I am thinking.

If we put all our results together we might be able to offer a reccie.

 

I have to log out now for dinner, etc. But later I will try resizing in other apps to see what happens.

((Can 1200 max width really be better than 1000 px? I have no explanation.))

[Andrea B.]

Side Note:  The file sizes are all over the map.

The very largest unresized file I uploaded is around 10.66 MB.

Some of the resized files are also around 9-10 MB.

Two of the resized files are only around 1.5 MB. How can there be so much difference in file sizes?

 

My eyes are tired. I wrote total garbáge. Sorry about that. I'm losing zeros, tra-la-la......

[dabateman]

The 1200x1200 one looks great and is only 1MB. That might be the secret. 

 

I use my Samsung S8 to read the site mostly. 

 

[Andrea B.]

I really truly don't think file size has anything to do with anything. But we'll see. I am going to save some at different quality levels.

[Andrea B.]

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Resize Before Upload to 1200 x 1200 px.

 

Here is another 1200 px width. No re-sharpening was added after the resize.

The original sharpening applied to the full-size image held up fairly well.

 

 

 

And the same file with a bit of extra sharpening after the resize to 1200 px.

It is so important to do some re-sharpening after a downsize of a large image.

However, I might have to pull back ever so slightly on the resharpening for this one.

You don't want to get the photo looking overly crispy.

[Andrea B.]

PREVIOUS EXAMPLE Saved at Quality 50 in Photo Mechanic

 

This is the immediately preceding image saved at Quality 50 from Photo Mechanic.

The JPG quality scale there runs from 0 to 100.

 

All preceding JPGs were saved at Quality 100 in Photo Mechanic.

Can you see any differences between this Q50 photo and the Q100 photo just above?

 

File Size: 308 KB.

But it really is not particularly important to reduce file size dramatically because I pay for traffic, not for disk space.

 

[Andrea B.]

MID-TOPIC SUMMARY

 

• Apply all edits to a raw copy or full-sized, uncompressed, 16-bit TIF conversion of your original file.
  Save this as a full-sized master copy.
• Resize the TIF to a maximum width of 1200 pixels.
• Apply some re-sharpening to the TIF.
  • You'll have to work out the best re-sharpening for each photo.
  • More detail or more USM or a little of both? Global or local? Very dependent on the subject matter, light, etc.
• Save the resized, re-sharpened TIF as a JPG using a quality setting high enough to avoid JPG artifacts.
  This save is where you strip the EXIF if you want to do that before posting.
• Even though uploads/downloads are so much faster everywhere these days, smaller file sizes probably load faster.
  • I have no data on that for UVP specifically.
  • I have informally noticed that topics with lots of files -- like more than say 10-12 -- do load a bit more slowly. If your forum friends complain about excess files per topic, then you'll know to split files between two posts or between two topics. At this point I'm not really worried about load times but will occasionally mention it.

 

I am still not quite sure whether the original full-sized photo should be sharpened before resizing if they are to be posted in a forum topic. In the past when anti-aliasing filters were common, we always sharpened lightly during conversion in such a way as to improve the anti-aliasing fuzz. I don't think we need to do that anymore. But you must make that experiment on your own based on what camera and what app you are using.

 

 

 

[Andrea B.]

David, don't you think that the new forum software is much much better on our cell phones than the old stuff?

Now when I'm out somewhere and need a quick look at the forum, I don't have to pop into a Best Buy and snag one of their demos.

 

There is supposed to be a mobile version but it probably wouldn't work on the S8.

 

[Guest]

With MacOS system photo preview tool I resize and output 1200 pixel wides between 115-200K size and find the quality very acceptable. Much better than my default Raw software Sony ImageEdge Edit. 

[Andy Perrin]

Andrea can you please clarify what you mean by “I pay for traffic so it’s not important to reduce disk size”? If every image on the site were 10 times the file size, you would pay ten times as much per page load, because every page load would be ten times bigger? 
 

Additionally large files take a long time on a slow connection, which I am seeing in this thread with your 10MB test. 

[Guest]

Probably what is meant as page impressions. Here see the faq at the bottom. 

 

https://invisioncommunity.com/buy

[nfoto]

According to the blurb on the provider's site, there *are* storage limits?

[Andrea B.]

Are you talking about Site5 or about Invision?

 

Here is the Site5 main page.

I think I don't actually pay them $9.17/month. It's less.

 

Please note the sentence under the blue box:  Unmetered Bandwidth, Unmetered Disk Space.

Unfortunately, Site5's mentioned disaster recovery and 24x7 support is not particularly useful when they are the ones

who break the installation and create a major UVP outage requiring an expensive and time-consuming software upgrade.

But that's an old story now.