Picture Size - As Uploaded vs. As Displayed

[mookien]

As you probably know all this technical stuff is way beyond my ken, but, how about posting a picture here on this thread just to see what happens?

Jock: Good idea. I just finished watching a movie, "Another Year", and during it I had the same thought, especially since I had opened up a new thread, anyway. Brilliant minds think alike, I guess, so here goes ...


After a stroll on our local ski hill, and having just come down the mountain, I coerced my son into taking some pictures. Attached (to me) is my 6-yard Douglas Reproduction sewn by Matt at New House Highland.

That's my brand new Coyote Sporran from Rocky at USA Kilts. The sun is bright at 2800 meters, thus the sunglasses.

Now, the Preview window shows a small picture. Let's see if the picture is any bigger in the actual post.

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No, it is not. As I skeptically expected, the picture is no bigger in the post than in the Preview window. Also, if you click on the picture, it does not increase in size (necessary to see the salient details).

That has not happened in any of my previous picture posts. So, I need to find out why. I can't help but feel that the problem is occurring during picture compression (from ~ 250 KB down to ~ 20 KB). Is that normal, ie expected? Or, has something run amok - on my side or in forum-side processing?

John

[Jock Scot]

This picture, unlike some, cannot be made bigger even after logging in and clicking on them, which is what I have to do for some. Hey-ho back to the drawing board, eh?

[Chas]

I find no problems when using Photobucket. Something to do with the picture being hosted on a remote site - it doesn't cost XMarks any storage.

Here is a random example of a devilishly handsome individual flanked by two of his chums.

[sydnie7]

Chas is right, in my experience it's the difference between using Photobucket or another remote site vs. uploading directly from your PC. I can't even figure out how to load from PC. . . but then I haven't put much effort into it, as the results are so small. Much prefer taking the extra step to put the photo onto PB and then copy/paste the IMG tag into my XMTS post.

I have PB default set to upload photos at a "medium" size or what PB considers appropriate for forum posting. If you really want/needed to post an 8x10, be sure it's uploading at that size. And be aware that your right margin may push the boundaries of forum layout, which gives some strange results.

You can tell a PB-hosted photo as it's not a thumbnail/clickable (as Chas' example shows). The thumbnails seem redundant to me, as when you click them the "full size" version is not noticeably larger!

[mookien]

I used Photobucket, too, before direct uploading became available. I much prefer the latter, because if your pictures are deleted from PB, they no longer appear on the XMTS posts.

During the introduction of uploading, once the "glitches" on both ends were cleared up, I have never had any difficulty with it, until now. For some reason this picture is exhibiting a problem not seen before. I think if someone can get to the bottom of why the picture, that is 250 MB in size on my PC, is being stored as 20 MB on the XMTS servers, we will figure out the problem.

[mookien]

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more, ...

Insert suspect picture below:

Now examine the Preview window. Wow! Looks like the problem is solved.

Let's see what it looks like after posting.

Look's as intended, ie great!

Now I'll start that new thread again entitled "Douglas Repro Ramble".

Many thanks to Kilted Code Warrior for his help on this problem. I'll let him weigh in with any details, should he choose, but as I understand it, the extension on my files was "JPEG". If it had been "JPG", the problem would not have occurred.

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

For those who want the gory technical details, vBulletin, which is the software used to run XMarks, applies rules/restrictions to files that are uploaded depending on the extension of that file. In this case, Mookien's files had an extension of jpeg, which is still a picture file, but the settings for files with a jpeg extension were not the same as for files with a jpg extension. In order to be efficient with our server storage space, which is where XMarks has to store all those pictures that are uploaded, we can make XMarks limit the file size, and maximum resolution, for a given picture. That was set at 20K for jpeg extension files, so the software automatically resized Mookiens pictures down to a resolution that made the file size 20K. I have updated the settings so that the jpg and jpeg extensions are the same, and voila, it all works as it should.

[mookien]

This picture, unlike some, cannot be made bigger even after logging in and clicking on them, which is what I have to do for some. Hey-ho back to the drawing board, eh?

I believe that the reason the picture "cannot be made bigger" is due to its size being reduced from 250 KB to 20 KB somewhere along the way from my PC to the XMTS servers.

Can anyone shed light on what compression, if any, that the XMTS servers/algorithms use when uploading pictures?

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion, Jock.