Photo code, not photos showing

[GoDawgs]

Sometimes I click on a post and instead of seeing photos all I see is code. I wait and wait but the pics never load. For example, in Mark Thompson's Hawaii post in the Grow Logs section I see the following:

A14C213F-3C6B-4047-8A3A-B287867EBA6F.jpeg (5.35 MiB) Viewed 229 times

523DD059-2F62-4329-872D-DB0A5ACD8C01.jpeg
523DD059-2F62-4329-872D-DB0A5ACD8C01.jpeg (5.42 MiB) Viewed 229 times

56DE2562-C3DC-4075-91F9-82615B582ACB.jpeg
56DE2562-C3DC-4075-91F9-82615B582ACB.jpeg (3.53 MiB) Viewed 229 times

AFB8EE03-6AA3-4B63-9473-810CF9B32CAB.jpeg
AFB8EE03-6AA3-4B63-9473-810CF9B32CAB.jpeg (3.23 MiB) Viewed 229 times

DFC9E262-6E77-4D9B-94A9-1BAB663E9C58.jpeg
DFC9E262-6E77-4D9B-94A9-1BAB663E9C58.jpeg (3.41 MiB) Viewed 229 times


Then if I go away to read another post and then come back to the one with the photo problem, the photos start loading very slowly.

Now that I'm looking again at the above codes I'm seeing high MB like 5.35, 5.42 etc. Is it that the photos are so large that's causing the problem? Just wondering.

[MissS]

I would think that the biggest factor is your internet speed. This site allows large sized photos and those with dial-up rarely get to see the pics. If your computer is running a program or maintenance then things will load much slower for you.

[GoDawgs]

Thanks for that info. This problem doesn't happen all the time so it might be the maintenance thing. I'm on a metered satellite internet connection as there isn't any cable out here. The anti-virus program is only supposed to do maintenance during off hours at night but sometimes it happens during the day. Hopefully within a year the whole county, including us out in the sticks, will have high speed internet available.

[bower]

I have this problem all the time because of my slow internet. Sometimes the pics never do load, or only some of them do so slowly. It all depends on how many pics are on the page. So in threads that are really loaded with large images, I get a quick load only when a new page is just starting.
I have found that on times, if I only got a partial view of the images and then posted a reply, that the remaining images came up when my reply also posted. But that's a bit awkward in itself, as I usually missed something that I might have commented on as well.
This is why I only read the long and pictureful threads which I have trouble loading, when I have lots of time to spare.

Does the size of image make a difference? Yes I believe so. It only makes sense.
Some threads are far more difficult for me to load than others. For example, I never had any wait time to view Anneliese's tomatoes in the gallery. They just load right up, and I think that must be because they are reasonably sized.
Personally I do resize my images before I post them, so they are easy to view. Many sites have size limits, so it's a habit I picked up along the way.

I was also given the advice to try mousing over the 'code' to get the picture to load. I've gotten that to work once or twice but mostly not.

[GoDawgs]

Personally I do resize my images before I post them, so they are easy to view. Many sites have size limits, so it's a habit I picked up along the way.

I've also gotten into the habit of resizing for the same reason.

[Seven Bends]

Personally I do resize my images before I post them, so they are easy to view. Many sites have size limits, so it's a habit I picked up along the way.

I've also gotten into the habit of resizing for the same reason.

What's the best size (in pixels) to use for posting on this board? Meaning, not the image file size in KB/MB, but the pixel dimensions of the image.

From my photo software, I can export pictures for the web in the original size or in 1600 pixels, 1200 pixels, 1024 pixels, etc. I think that's the horizontal pixel number, but I could be misunderstanding it entirely. People use so many types of devices with such different screen resolutions that I don't know what's recommended anymore. I've got the hang of optimizing jpegs for quality to reduce file size, but I don't know what to choose for pixel dimensions.

[Toomanymatoes]

Personally I do resize my images before I post them, so they are easy to view. Many sites have size limits, so it's a habit I picked up along the way.

I've also gotten into the habit of resizing for the same reason.

What's the best size (in pixels) to use for posting on this board? Meaning, not the image file size in KB/MB, but the pixel dimensions of the image.

From my photo software, I can export pictures for the web in the original size or in 1600 pixels, 1200 pixels, 1024 pixels, etc. I think that's the horizontal pixel number, but I could be misunderstanding it entirely. People use so many types of devices with such different screen resolutions that I don't know what's recommended anymore. I've got the hang of optimizing jpegs for quality to reduce file size, but I don't know what to choose for pixel dimensions.

800 to 1200 should be more than adequate.

[Rajun Gardener]

How often is this happening? There's a few things that cause this to happen and probably more that I don't know about, slow internet especially on large images, your antivirus software could be slow to scan the image before loading it and some adblockers.

@GoDawgs I don't know if it'll help but I did find over 1200 orphaned image files in the forum and deleted them. This happens mostly if users are attaching files but not submitting the post. This should clear space in the system and hopefully speed things up.

I think there's an option to display thumbnails that you have to click to display full size images. That allows the user with slow internet to load faster but it's also a click to open the image and another to close it. Is this something everyone would be interested in?

[zeuspaul]

edit: The first number is the width

1200 should be more than adequate. I generally try to keep it to 1000. I have a 32 inch screen set to 2560 x 1440 (
edit: the first number is the width) probably larger than most posters screens and 1200 would fill 83% (edit should be 47%) of the width. However my browser is not full screen so 1200 would fill all of my browser window (not true). Up to 1000 would be more than adequate.(not really, a bit larger would be better)

But it is the size of the image file in KB that makes the difference. I generally use a jpg quality of no more than 75%. I try for 200 KB or 300 KB or less.

I have slow internet (DSL) by most of the newer standards and sometimes those pictures referred to load and sometimes they don't.

[zeuspaul]

@Rajun Gardener I think that would be a good addition to the forum.

[Seven Bends]

Personally I do resize my images before I post them, so they are easy to view. Many sites have size limits, so it's a habit I picked up along the way.

I've also gotten into the habit of resizing for the same reason.

What's the best size (in pixels) to use for posting on this board? Meaning, not the image file size in KB/MB, but the pixel dimensions of the image.

From my photo software, I can export pictures for the web in the original size or in 1600 pixels, 1200 pixels, 1024 pixels, etc. I think that's the horizontal pixel number, but I could be misunderstanding it entirely. People use so many types of devices with such different screen resolutions that I don't know what's recommended anymore. I've got the hang of optimizing jpegs for quality to reduce file size, but I don't know what to choose for pixel dimensions.

800 to 1200 should be more than adequate.

Thanks. After posting, I did a bit of research. It looks to me like a 1600-pixel horizontal dimension might be a good choice, giving an image large enough for desktop screens but with very small file sizes to speed up image loading. Here's why:

A website about responsive web design says current web browsing is 58% mobile devices, 40% desktops, and 2% tablets. An 800 or 1200-pixel image would be plenty for phone screens, but it could be pretty small on many desktop screens, and people wouldn't have the option to zoom. The web design site says the most common desktop screen size now is 1920x1080, so an 800-pixel image would fill less than half the screen across (42%), if I'm understanding this correctly.

I did some tests with my photo software and images. With my phone (an older model), an unedited horizontal picture is 4032 x 3024, and the image size usually is about 2.4MB. Keeping the image full size but exporting with normal jpeg compression takes the file size down to 1.7MB, not much of a reduction. But exporting to a 1600-pixel horizontal size with normal jpeg compression gives a file size of 340KB, a huge savings, and probably fine for most users. Exporting to 1200-pixel size results in a 217KB file, not that much additional savings.

I checked three cameras (2 DSLRs and one mirrorless interchangeable lens camera) and got these image and files sizes:
Canon 6DII 6240x4160, 7-9MB jpg file size
Canon SL1 5184x3456, 5-10MB "
Fuji X-T1 4896x3264, 4-6MB "
If members are uploading full-size images from DSLRs or from modern phones with sophisticated cameras, even with jpeg compression, it's no wonder images are loading slowly. (Mea culpa, probably!)

[zeuspaul]

oops I will have to edit my post. The first number is the width of the image.

[Seven Bends]

1200 should be more than adequate. I generally try to keep it to 1000. I have a 32 inch screen set to 2560 x 1440 (the second number is the width) probably larger than most posters screens and 1200 would fill 83% of the width. However my browser is not full screen so 1200 would fill all of my browser window. Up to 1000 would be more than adequate.

But it is the size of the image file in KB that makes the difference. I generally use a jpg quality of no more than 75%. I try for 200 KB or 300 KB or less.

The first number in screen resolution is the width, not the height. So a 1200-pixel image would fill less than half the width of your screen if you have the browser full-screen.

I generally choose 85% compression; 75% may show some artifacts/loss of detail. For my sample image, 1600 pixels and 85% compression gave a file size of 340KB; 1600 pixels and 75% gave a file size of 253KB. I guess that savings would be significant if there are lots of images loading at once. I'll try 75% for awhile and see how things look.

It seems like the thumbnail idea might be the best solution, though.

[zeuspaul]

If there is text in the image I use less compression (85%+ or use png with a larger file size and no loss of quality but opt for a smaller image). For most images a few artifacts aren't a big deal.

[bower]

I'm probably doing this all wrong, in the re-sizing as well. My process is totally old school. Pixels mean nothing to me, so when I scale the image I toggle to 'inches' instead. Usually I choose 8 inches as the standard width for a "8X10" type shape and let it choose the proportional height. Iirc, the 8 inch equivalent in pixels is 576 or something like that, less than 600.
Then when it comes to compression, well I don't do any. The cpu sometimes offers compression in the high 90's percent, which I sometimes accept or other times I slide it back to 100%.
The resulting image is in the same ballpark of around 250-350 KB.
But perhaps this is not the best way to get a quality image to view, of the same file size.
Of course it depends on the original file size and whether I cropped it close for some reason, but generally perhaps the other approach with more pixels and some compression is better?

[Rajun Gardener]

For the record, way back when we set this forum up. I set the image size as large as possible so people don't have to do all this resizing. You also don't need to use an image site to load photos, copy and paste should work if you're using the full editor. You can also copy and paste images from a snipping tool, no need to save it then pull it back up to post.

Also, don't forget about the "Width" tool in the top header and in your User Control Panel to resize the forum to fit your device/PC/LT.

image.png

To get to your settings go to your screenname and click for a dropdown menu

image.png

Find "Board Preferences" and play around till you get what you want, you can change the forum color and a few other neat things.

image.png

[Rajun Gardener]

Here's the link to the Width tool tutorial. custom-forum-width-settings-t588.html

[Rajun Gardener]

Here's what the thumbnail setup looks like, you have to click it to open a new window to see a full size pic and then hit the back buttom to go back to the forum. It will make loading time faster but you give up the ease of using the forum to browse pics.

20210807_161656.jpg

20210807_161831.jpg

20210807_174040.jpg

[zeuspaul]

Those are large thumbnails more like small images. Do large images produce larger thumbnails? Do smaller images produce thumbnails of about the same size? It would be easier to browse images with thumbnails like those and then view the image larger if it is of interest.

[Rajun Gardener]

I can make the thumbnails smaller but I'm sure it's a hard sell for some that don't have problems loading images and I really don't like having to click and then click again to get back to TJ but I'm open to it if everyone likes it. I thought this way you can still see images and then click to expand them if you need a closer look.

Y'all let me know if you like it and I'll put up a poll for everyone to decide.