Compression monster.

[Taz]

Is there something that can be done about the resolution the entries are displayed on for voting? Maybe make it a bit wider? Because some really look like crap unless you view full.

my 2¢

[Silky]

The entries are displayed at 500 pixels wide. Unfortunately, if we make it larger, the pages would be horribly slow to load...and we have some folks who aren't on cable. I know the compression can be really bad for some images because of the size uploaded, but maybe uploading a bit smaller image would help. I'll pass this on to Jolt, but I doubt if there's much that can be done...we'll see.

On the bright side, we have a LOT of people who actually DO view full to vote. :)

[Raphael]

Taz, a good tip for this is, knowing that the displayed image will be 500 pixels wide, make sure your image is a nice round number in relation to that. eg 500, 750, 1000 or even 600, 700, 800 etc. That way when the images are automatically resized to 500 pixels there's more chance of a nice even number of pixels being thrown away and your image coming out OK.

[Silky]

Taz, what width are the images you're uploading?

[Scott]

Compression for contest images is currently set at 80% I can increase this a little, but the 80% ensures that that user who doesn't know how to effectively compress a jpg gets covered along with everyone else. I'll bump it up a little. It would be retroactive, but it may help in the future.

[Taz]

[QUOTE=Raphael]Taz, a good tip for this is, knowing that the displayed image will be 500 pixels wide, make sure your image is a nice round number in relation to that. eg 500, 750, 1000 or even 600, 700, 800 etc. That way when the images are automatically resized to 500 pixels there's more chance of a nice even number of pixels being thrown away and your image coming out OK.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the tip, I'll try to keep that in mind.

Sil, I don't know offhand what size my pics are at, but the one I mentioned to you was compressed really badly. I'll try to keep them at 1000 I think.

[Silky]

[QUOTE=Taz]Thanks for the tip, I'll try to keep that in mind.

Sil, I don't know offhand what size my pics are at, but the one I mentioned to you was compressed really badly. I'll try to keep them at 1000 I think.[/QUOTE]

The reason I asked was because the one image you uploaded, the foot one, seemed awfully narrow. I was wondering if it was even 500 pixels wide in full view.

EDIT: That image in full size is only 400 pixels wide. When you uploaded the original you should have put it on a white background to make up the 100 pixels. Images that aren't 500 pixels wide get "stretched" to meet the 500 pixel minimum for uploading. That's why some of them look so awful.

[Taz]

[QUOTE=Silkenfairy]
EDIT: That image in full size is only 400 pixels wide. When you uploaded the original you should have put it on a white background to make up the 100 pixels. Images that aren't 500 pixels wide get "stretched" to meet the 500 pixel minimum for uploading. That's why some of them look so awful.[/QUOTE]

Crappity crap crap.

[Scott]

Yeah 500 pix wide is a hard and fast minimum around here for now.

[burndog]

What do you mean by 80% compression, for example if I save an image with a quality of say 60 and the compressed size is 150k, about what size would the regular view image be. Just curious. Most of the time I will try to resize my images to 500 px wide so I can control the sharpening to try to get the regular view to look as good as possible.

Kind of off the subject, but why can we not upload gifs? Especially for the gig poster contest it would have made for some very small files that would have been sharper. Again, I am just curious.

[Scott]

PHP and GD have to specifically be compiled to support GIFs. On our original server they weren't. On this new server they are so it may be a feature you see in the future.

Basically when you upload the software creates 2 image and stores your original image. It copies your upload, creates a 200 pixel wide jpg with a compression setting of 8 and throws it in a folder. Then it creates a 500 pixel wide image with a jpg setting of 8 and throws that in a folder, then it throws your upload into a folder for full view. The setting of 8 is to compress thumbnails slightly more to save server space. It's pretty standard and happens on most image-driven sites like ours. The main difference with us is that if the upload is smaller than 500 pixels wide it will get enlarged to be 500 pixels wide. That, combined with additional compression, can really make the 500 pixel wide image look terrible. That's why we always suggest a 500 pixel wide minimum on ALL entries.