I have come to the point where I find it just about impossible to produce an expectable image at 640 and less then 150kb in size. I have a nice image I would like to submit for the Free Study but no matter what I do I can not get the file under 150kb. It has a great deal of detail even saving at quality 2 in Photoshop it is still about 150kb and looks like crap and would never even think about submitting something like that. Come on, get rid of this ridicules limitation.
I agree with Tom, though saving for the web should help him much, we answered a poll not to long back about what connection speeds we were using and there were not alot of us on the slower connections anymore.
I think we should move it up to the 200Kb limit, to aide the people with the larger cameras, and to still stay low enough that the connection speed will not be effected very much.
Tom, I have a Canon 40d, with the same amount of Megapixels as your E-3. If you save for web, then you should get a respectable image under the 150kb limit.
I'm not trying to stir up a nest - this has been debated many times - but I am curious why "those with larger cameras" need this help. That statement makes no sense at all to me. Proper resize techniques and methods of sharpening, saving, etc., are what those people need to use. Folks, there are some AMAZING pictures on this site, and they are at 640x480 and 150kb. The idea of this restriction hurting the users of "big" cameras more than it does the users of "small" cameras just doesn't make any sense at all to me. I'm not trying to be insulting or combative - I just don't see how that applies.
there was a poll recently about this... but I can't rememeber the results!
It was very close to 3% of all being on dial up.
Wow, thats a lot lower than I expected. I don't see really see the need to increase the limit unless the 640 pixel limit is increased, but that would open a whole new can of worms (thats already been debated ad nauseum!), main point being people who pinch images and palm them off as their own.
If it ain't broken don't fix it!
(although being a engineer my motto is "if it aint broken fix it 'till it is!")
I'm not trying to stir up a nest - this has been debated many times - but I am curious why "those with larger cameras" need this help. That statement makes no sense at all to me. Proper resize techniques and methods of sharpening, saving, etc., are what those people need to use. Folks, there are some AMAZING pictures on this site, and they are at 640x480 and 150kb. The idea of this restriction hurting the users of "big" cameras more than it does the users of "small" cameras just doesn't make any sense at all to me. I'm not trying to be insulting or combative - I just don't see how that applies.
I agree that it's not the camera. However, there are times when a photo just has too much detail to get acceptable results at 150kb. I've not run into it often, but have a similar scenario for this month's Free Study. Ended up playing around with canvas size and border width to increase the amount of non-detailed space (resulting in a smaller image area, but still 640 max) to squeak under the 150kb limit (and it still lost considerable detail).
Most of the time I feel I would like 720px instead of 640px and keep 150kb if 200kb is an issue with storage space. Most shots just look so much better at 720px. Sure there where a couple of times when images with a lot of detail where hard to compress and make look good but most of the time I'm finding I would like to post at higher res and not resort to cropping.
Member challenges can be get 200kb whilst still leaving 150kb for Open challenges?
I'm not trying to stir up a nest - this has been debated many times - but I am curious why "those with larger cameras" need this help. That statement makes no sense at all to me. Proper resize techniques and methods of sharpening, saving, etc., are what those people need to use. Folks, there are some AMAZING pictures on this site, and they are at 640x480 and 150kb. The idea of this restriction hurting the users of "big" cameras more than it does the users of "small" cameras just doesn't make any sense at all to me. I'm not trying to be insulting or combative - I just don't see how that applies.
I agree that it's not the camera. However, there are times when a photo just has too much detail to get acceptable results at 150kb. I've not run into it often, but have a similar scenario for this month's Free Study. Ended up playing around with canvas size and border width to increase the amount of non-detailed space (resulting in a smaller image area, but still 640 max) to squeak under the 150kb limit (and it still lost considerable detail).
This is basically what I was refering to also when making the statement, I have had trouble sometimes where I need to set the image quality very low on the save for web setting that it had lost a good deal of the image quality. It has happened to me a few times.
I'd actually like to push for a combined width*height restriction, rather than a longest side restriction, too, if we are talking about this subject :)
I do quite a bit of shooting at a 16:9 aspect ratio now. If I enter with a 640 width, the height is such that my entry is about 1/3rd smaller than an equivalent 3:2 aspect ratio shot. It works out that for the same screen area, a 16:9 image should be about 722x426
So perhaps there could be some sort of combined range limits on width/ height to allow panoramic entries or different crops ? The best way to game that particular system is to enter square images just now.
I'm sure this could have scored lower if you could have really seen it properly
One of the 3% (here and elsewhere). Agree that 150 kb and 640 can be a problem for certain kinds of shots. Most of the high scoring photos do not have the kind of detail that require even the full 150 kb - in fact many files could be a lot smaller. However, I think the size restriction is the more serious drawback. As well, I would like to see more space around the photo: I am frequently irked by the blue bar at the top; moving the screen up to eliminate it helps a little.
As for the occasional 720 option, most programs have an automatic 640 resizer, or at least the 640 becomes habit.
(My 2 cents times 3 percent = something?)
I use 720 / 200 for ALL side challenges since the last poll and have heard nothing about it. If the screen is too small or there are too many 'menu bars' F11 works wonders!
F11, on Internet Explorer, Firefox and possibly other browsers, takes you to a "full screen" mode which minimizes the space taken up by browser menus & toolbars and therefore maximizes the space available to display a web page or an image.
In the past, we've been reluctant to change the limit because we still had a small but significant number of dialup users. That number has shrunk to 3.2% per the last poll, and is shrinking at the rate of half every two years. Moving to a somewhat higher file size seems at this point to be a reasonable thing to do.
We've talked about coupling the 720px change to a file size increase, though nothing is yet set in stone. In order to implement either, we really need to revamp the voting page, which is a bigger task than it seems. I can't comment on a timeline, but a show of public support cannot hurt ;-)
In order to implement either, we really need to revamp the voting page, which is a bigger task than it seems. I can't comment on a timeline, but a show of public support cannot hurt ;-)
