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Web reproductions (size)
Filed in Printing - February 25, 2007This image:
has opened up the whole question of what size to use for ‘printing’ for the web again. The version I’ve put above is my usual 650 pixels, which, you’ll probably agree, doesn’t really work. Here is a 900 pixel version (that is already over 400kb), which just begins to show how the image works.
My 650 pixel limit was chosen for a number of reasons but primarily because a noticeable proportion of the pictures that go on the Today blog are vertical, portrait, format. A review of most web stats show a significant number of users with 1024×768 screens and 650 is all you can get on a 768 pixel high screen once the browser has grabbed the space at the top.
I’ve had a quick look around to see if there have been any great innovations since the last time I thought about this. But, no, the web is still littered with sites with flash based presentations, and with sites where you never get past the thumbnails.
The other approach is the hand crafted individual image file, like this one from Ctein (no prizes for working out why I was looking for images of Cluanie – that spot is still like that by the way. The hydro-electric system keep the ‘beach’ area free from plant life). Apart from the issue of vertical shots, this way of doing things suffers from a maintenance problem. I bet Ctein wished that that image was properly colour managed and had an easy link back to one of his main pages, but changing those sorts of things is a chore and a bore with manual html.
Ignoring the screen height means that you randomly get images that don’t fit without scrolling on even a quite large screen (the linked example doesn’t display in Firefox on a 900 pixel high screen without scrolling).
So, what to do? I’m thinking of putting one or two images up each month in a larger size. I haven’t quite decided where or how yet (let alone issues like copyright protection and so on). I figure that a small number will be manageable. It needs to be done in a way such that people with slow connections, or normal sized screens, will have fair warning so that it won’t be too irritating.
But really, the web is such a bad way to present photos.
Here’s a possibility:
http://www.durhamtownship.com/
Small image, with a link to a larger one.
February 25, 2007 @ 9:19 pm
Derek,
I haven’t been walking in Durham for ages…
This site currently uses Moveable Type version 3.3. It was custom-designed and hand-coded by myself and other designers.
Says it all. You can have a really cool, feature rich, website if you put your mind to it. What I don’t have the time to do is hand coding, or, the other obvious possibility, of hand linking two parallel blogs together.
February 25, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
There is quite a difference between the quality resulting from the 650 restriction and the quality from around a 300k file as used in Myfourthirds. In the latter (haven’t been back to check) I think that one can set the size according to your monitor. Is that not a possibility? In any event, working to the lowest common denominator (can’t say LCD!) isn’t necessarily the best policy is it? Surely, more serious viewers are now up at larger screen sizes?
February 26, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
John,
It isn’t the Kb size that matters. I could make the 650 pixel versions more bandwidth intensive without changing the way they appear for the vast majority of users. The compression is done on a high quality machine and varied to the point where I can’t tell the difference (file sizes vary between 50Kb and 250Kb – depending on how much of the shot is clear tonal area).
It is obviously technically possible to put up a large version and have a user selectable scaling. But that requires an upfront expenditure of effort and some on-going management. Maintaining that sort of software is non-trivial. Especially if you would want it to work in conjuction with some form of blog or content manager.
As to serious users….I’m often on the web using 1024×768. When I last looked at my stats 24% of viewers were using that particular size (although the 800×600 had more or less gone away – just a few percent from memory).
I’d probably opt for 900×600 if I only ever used landscape format, but about one in five shots are portrait format and using a different longest dimension sucks.
February 26, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
Colin, you’ve presented a fine example of how the internet stinks as a way to show photographs. Without going to the 900 pixel version, I had no idea what the waterfall in the background was. I thought it was something caught in the trees!
I’ll be curious to see what you come up with as a “solution” to the problem.
February 27, 2007 @ 2:35 am
I’m not sure there is a good solution here. I always appreciate links to larger files, but realize it adds another layer of work. Worrying about copyright protection is a complete waste of time. There may be a few people that end up using your image on their crappy web sites, but do you really care? Unless you’re well known and have iconic images–maybe it’s *better* to propagate your images in hi-res on the web. I’ve asked a lot of photographers obsessed with archival permanence, “what is your photographic legacy?” What’s going to happen to all those archival pieces of paper once your days on the earth are over? Surprisingly, most photographers have no plan and no idea if anyone will even want their finely crafted images. So they they might well end up in a landfill or maybe sell for $10 at an estate sale. So the internet may be a better bet if you want to leave a legacy. I’m thinking it might be a good idea to post our raw files and prepay for 10 years of web hosting before we pass.
February 28, 2007 @ 2:18 am
This post got me thinking about my own galleries which suffered from the same problem. After looking around, I think I found a solution. Gallery is an open source software that has all the functionalities I needed plus you can set it up to present as few or as many functionality you want. It is included in Fantastico and part of the standard package with my hoster so installing it was just a matter of a few clicks. I spend about half a day figuring out how to work with it. Seems quite good. I am in the process of moving my galleries to it.
February 28, 2007 @ 8:20 am
Barry S,
I’m pretty relaxed about (my own) copyright for the reasons that you mention. Sure, I’ll stamp down on flagrant abuse, but I’m not about to waste my time spoiling images by putting copyright notices across the file.
February 28, 2007 @ 9:29 am
Stephane,
Do you mean the http://gallery.menalto.com/ software?
It did take me a while to work out that Gallery was a different product from Gallerie (which is something I use on another part of the site), but I’ve been following the developments at menalto for a while. It is looking increasingly interesting.
February 28, 2007 @ 9:45 am
Colin,
Yes, that’s what I mean. Among other things it offers what I find is a nice answer to the size problem. It allows you to present your photos sized to fit the browser window. That way, users with large screens can benefit and no users get a truncated view. Every user is allowed to get a full size scrolling view. Also, it uses clever pre-loading to hide the loading time of the photos.
February 28, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Stephane,
The pre-loading is one of the aspects that I don’t like. I know a couple of sites using Gallery and when you first go there the pre-loading chokes my connection. I haven’t got far enough into it to know how user customisable that feature is.
February 28, 2007 @ 12:23 pm