# A Guide to Images and You (Size)



## Litre (Jan 17, 2007)

I'll lay it down simple: No one likes huge pictures. Stop posting huge pictures. I don't want 1 meg or 2 meg jpegs or pngs or gifs. NO. STOP IT.

Help us. Help yourself.  Resize your pictures. PLEASE.

Use photoshop. Use your scanner software. ANYTHING.

http://www.irfanview.com/ Irfanview also does this. USE. NO EXCUSES. Hell you can do this in MSPaint.

I should probably clarify, since this was written in a haste and annoyance. Everyone doesn't want a picture that has a file size larger than 1 meg. Hell, even 500 kB is excessive. This is in response to idiots who don't have the sense of saving their pictures properly. I'm seeing sketches that are as large as my screen, with a file size of 2 MEGS. WHAT. Learn to crop to take negative space, and resize to reduce the size of your pictures, and resave them in the proper format. This will dramatically reduce filesize, and the frustration of having to scroll on both axis to see a damned sketch you did in school or on the bus or whatever. (this ends up covering both image and file size; they go hand in hand anyways). Reference wut and Arshes' posts below, and Rhainor for bitmap issues. WE HATE BITMAPS. Embrace .png and .jpg!


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## nobuyuki (Jan 17, 2007)

*RE: A Guide to Images and You*

you're lying, everyone loves huge pictures :v
like oc


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## Rhainor (Jan 18, 2007)

I prefer higher-resolution, larger-dimension pics.  However, it *is* possible to get the file size down without shrinking the dimensions or losing much quality.

First off, avoid uploading anything in Bitmap (.BMP) format, *EVER*.  Bitmap is good only between the scanner and your image-editing program of choice.  Once you're done with the image, it needs to be in PNG format (JPEG is meant for photographs, and doesn't do art as well as PNG).

Second, higher-end image editing programs will frequently add bits of info about themselves to the image file, which bloat its size.  There are numerous ways to strip this unneeded data off.

[EDIT]
It should be noted that I'm on dial-up, and I still prefer larger pictures.


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## wut (Jan 18, 2007)

Uh.

If you like (or like to provide) high resolution crap then link to it from a scaled down version. It's common courtesy. Most people don't really give much of a damn about print quality images and just want to see the thing without having to scroll around a gargantuan piece of work.

I also somehow doubt 2mb 2500px jpgs of doodles someone did on lined paper while in school qualifies much as something you'd want a high resolution version of.


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## Hanazawa (Jan 18, 2007)

I bet the folks who upload the huge images are the ones who complain the most about how slow the site is :V


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## yak (Jan 18, 2007)

At the moment FA resizes all submitted images to the maximum size of 1280px, by whichever dimension is the biggest.

The storage policy and logic may change in the future with Ferrox. Maybe FA will store the originals at they are, limiting them only by their filesize ('the sources'), and will generate as much 'previews' as it may be required, but never showing the original on-screen (available only via downloading it). 
As for horizontal scrolling, a bit of AJAX that will transparently send us the size of your browser, will ensure that you get the preview that always fits the width of your screen/browser.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 18, 2007)

I think that misses the point however yak. It doesn't matter if the resolution is sized for your browser, 2mb is still excessive for an image. While there are good cases like a tutorial, I've yet to see any real justification for a file size that large. Are you saying that with a resize it still won't be a crunched down 2mb file?


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## nobuyuki (Jan 18, 2007)

dimensions and size limit would be fine if this is really a concern.  our old ocs board had a size limit of 1.5mb, which meant only pictures png compressed would fit if they were ~1400 square pixels or less anyway.  Lower it to a little over a meg and it seems like a non-issue to me.  Unless people have an issue with BOTH physical dimensions and size.

Seriously, though, 1280 isn't that much larger than most people's screen sizes, and if you have an LCD you're already running at that size or higher so there shouldn't be a problem with it being too big to see.


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## yak (Jan 18, 2007)

Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> I think that misses the point however yak. It doesn't matter if the resolution is sized for your browser, 2mb is still excessive for an image. While there are good cases like a tutorial, I've yet to see any real justification for a file size that large. Are you saying that with a resize it still won't be a crunched down 2mb file?


jpegoptim or similar on all resized images perhaps?


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 18, 2007)

Well on full view hmm, actually what could be a good idea is that there would be info on what the full view image would be, like.

"Full View: 1200x1000 size 4.5mb"

Least then we know what we're getting into XD


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## lolcox (Jan 20, 2007)

yak said:
			
		

> At the moment FA resizes all submitted images to the maximum size of 1280px, by whichever dimension is the biggest.



Hoi, Yak.
How about I call bullshit here, especially since people have raised a couple of flags on this one:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/375836/
1280 squeeze? Didn't happen here.
2330.23 KB (2386155 bytes), by the way, is the file size.

There are numerous other images that are up just like this, but I never thought to write them down.

Please accept my feelings!



			
				yak said:
			
		

> The storage policy and logic may change in the future with Ferrox. Maybe FA will store the originals at they are, limiting them only by their filesize ('the sources'), and will generate as much 'previews' as it may be required, but never showing the original on-screen (available only via downloading it).



A bit of a Flickr-ism, then? Might be interesting.





			
				Rhainor said:
			
		

> First off, avoid uploading anything in Bitmap (.BMP) format, *EVER*.  Bitmap is good only between the scanner and your image-editing program of choice.


We agree here.



			
				Rhainor said:
			
		

> Once you're done with the image, it needs to be in PNG format (JPEG is meant for photographs, and doesn't do art as well as PNG).


ONLY IF YOUR COLOR COUNT IS NOT *OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAND!*.
That is to say, be considerate of other users of this resource.
Some images work fine as a JPEG. Check your color count before you consider how you're going to squeeze the image. The higher the color count, the more likely you will want to uploadÂ¹ as a JPEG, not a PNG.
16 colors? PNG, please.
16,384 colors? JPEG, please.

Maximize your potential compression, and minimize your loss of quality. 



			
				Rhainor said:
			
		

> Second, higher-end image editing programs will frequently add bits of info about themselves to the image file, which bloat its size.  There are numerous ways to strip this unneeded data off.



Adobe is notorious for doing that. 
I'm rather fond of a little bit of heaven I call:

```
jpegoptim --strip-all *.jpg
```

Example:

```
(some random image)(en).jpg 840x1200 24bit Adobe  [OK] 410430 --> 390473 bytes (4.86%), optimized.
```




Â¹ â€¢ For best results, save an original copy without compression. Then, save a copy of the image as either JPEG or PNG, depending on your findings. Upload the copy, and not the original.
Please accept my feelings!


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