Poll : For Obverse And Reverse Coin Photos On Nvmis Forvms, Which Resolution Looks Best On Your Device (Computer, Phone, Etc)?

[sand]

Greetings fellow coin collectors. I'm trying to find out, what is the best vertical pixel size, when posting obverse and reverse coin photos on Nvmis Forvms. Which of the following photos, which show the obverse and reverse of one of my coins, look best on your device (computer, phone, etc)? I'm just wondering, which photos look too small on your device, which photos look too large on your device, and which photos look just right. Do any of the photos look sharper? Myself, when I'm on Nvmis Forvms, I'm using a desktop computer, and my "monitor" is an old Samsung 40 inch diagonal flat screen TV, which I bought in 2010, which has 1920 pixels in the horizontal direction, and 1080 pixels in the vertical direction. My monitor is usually approximately 44 inches from my face. On my desktop computer, all of the following photos look approximately the same to me, if I don't click on them. If I click on the photos, then the 1000 vertical pixels photos look best to me. If I click on the photos again, which shows the full size photos, then the 3400 vertical pixels photos show the most detail, but I have to scroll to view the entirety of the photos. I also have to scroll, to view the 2000 vertical pixels photos. For the 1000 vertical pixels photos, I have to scroll side to side, but I don't have to scroll up or down. To take the following photos, the camera which I used, is a relatively inexpensive 2013 Nikon Coolpix digital camera, which has a maximum resolution of 4896 pixels horizontal by 3672 pixels vertical, for a total of 17,978,112 pixels, which is usually called "18.1 megapixels". When I turn my camera on, the lens moves forward and sticks out 1.25 inches. The lens seems to be 0.75 inches in diameter. At least, that's how wide the front of the lens seems to be. My camera uses auto focus. I cannot manually focus my camera. Obviously, I'm not a camera expert. To create the images below, I took the original photos of the obverse and reverse, each of which were 4896 pixels horizontal by 3672 pixels vertical, and I clipped the photos to remove a small amount of the background, and then I resized the images to the desired number of vertical pixels. Then, I pasted the obverse photo and reverse photo together. All of this was done, using Microsoft Paint. I'm just wondering, which photos look best to you, on your particular device. How many vertical pixels, look best to you? Is even 800 vertical pixels, too many pixels, for you? For me, the 1000 vertical pixels photos seem best, but I'm wondering if I'm "behind the times" with my antique computer and monitor, and if 1000 vertical pixels is hopelessly small, on the newer devices that Nvmis Forvms members may be using. The downsides of more pixels, are slower load times, and occupying more hard disk space on the Nvmis Forvms server hard drives, which cost money and energy to maintain.

The following photos are 800 pixels in the vertical direction.

The following photos are 900 pixels in the vertical direction.

The following photos are 1000 pixels in the vertical direction.

The following photos are 2000 pixels in the vertical direction.

The following photos are 3400 pixels in the vertical direction.

Edited June 4, 2023 by sand

[expat]

I have an independent monitor to my desktop. I voted for 1000 pixels. But, bear in mind, not many people adjust the color and light settings on their computers, they are mostly still using the factory settings instead of adjusting to more realistic levels in regard to the location of the monitor, taking into account the light levels and reflected ambient light/colors around them.

[Roman Collector]

They look identical to me on my desktop with monitor. I have excellent vision with glasses, too. I use 550 to 600 pixel vertical for my images, btw, and I think they are of reasonable resolution.

[Heliodromus]

3 hours ago, sand said:

The following photos are 3400 pixels in the vertical direction.

Well, my monitor is only 1440 vertical (27" 2560x1440) so anything larger than that is going to be down-scaled for display anyway.

I keep a massive reference collection of coin photos, in addition to those of my collection, and rescale everything to 800 pixel width. If I was starting over today I might go for slightly larger (1000 or 1200 max), but 800 really is good enough for my purposes. The advantage of having everything same size, and not too large, is that it makes it easy to do side-by-side comparisons of a bunch of coins for style/die comparison etc, which is something I do all the time (every day I'd say). If they were larger I'd have to double-click on image then resize window smaller to fit more on screen.

To me super-high resolution would only make sense for printing coin images, which I don't do. I suppose some people like to look at full-screen photos on their monitor at full monitor resolution,  which would then suggest having photos stored at monitor resolution given that your photo app (photoshop/etc) probably can do a better job of downscaling than whatever app you use to display them.

I guess one could keep multiple resolution photos of each coin - a high resolution one for full-screen display and/or printing, and a smaller one for side-by-side comparisons if that's something you do a lot of.

 

[idesofmarch01]

This thread is related to an issue that has been in the back of my mind ever since this Forum was created; namely, the varying sizes of images posted by members and the effect is has on reading and scrolling through threads.

I'm sure I'm not the only member who finds it extraordinarily tedious to scroll through a thread that has many extremely large images in most of its posts -- images that sometimes take minutes to download and display, increasing the scrolling and viewing time seemingly endlessly.  This is especially cumbersome when you want to find the accompanying text/explanation for a post you've seen previously and are trying to find again.

I'm wondering if there is a setting for the website that could scale every image posted by any member to a uniformly small or medium size that is displayed initially in the post.  Subsequently, that smaller image could be clicked on if the viewer wanted to see a larger image of the coin.

I'd also suggest reducing the number of posts required to start a new page from the current 25 to, say 15, so that searching for a previously read post isn't as time-consuming as it is now.

What are everyone's thoughts on this?

Edited June 4, 2023 by idesofmarch01

[Heliodromus]

48 minutes ago, idesofmarch01 said:

What are everyone's thoughts on this?

Not sure if the forum can do it, but that would certainly seem beneficial - display a smaller quick-to-load version of photo with option to click-thru to full upload resolution one. I'm guessing that most of the time people wouldn't even bother with the click-thru.

[John Conduitt]

All the images above look the same to me as my screen scales them to fit. Even when I click on them there isn't a noticeable difference in quality, although the last one takes slightly longer to load. I imagine if you tried to zoom in further the pixelation of the first would show up, but I can't imagine people do that very often.

Perhaps that suggests no need to go bigger than 800 pixels.

Edited June 4, 2023 by John Conduitt

[John Conduitt]

44 minutes ago, idesofmarch01 said:

This thread is related to an issue that has been in the back of my mind ever since this Forum was created; namely, the varying sizes of images posted by members and the effect is has on reading and scrolling through threads.

I'm sure I'm not the only member who finds it extraordinarily tedious to scroll through a thread that has many extremely large images in most of its posts -- images that sometimes take minutes to download and display, increasing the scrolling and viewing time seemingly endlessly.  This is especially cumbersome when you want to find the accompanying text/explanation for a post you've seen previously and are trying to find again.

I'm wondering if there is a setting for the website that could scale every image posted by any member to a uniformly small or medium size that is displayed initially in the post.  Subsequently, that smaller image could be clicked on if the viewer wanted to see a larger image of the coin.

I'd also suggest reducing the number of posts required to start a new page from the current 25 to, say 15, so that searching for a previously read post isn't as time-consuming as it is now.

What are everyone's thoughts on this?

I have this problem more where one side of a coin is posted at a time, not side-by-side. This then becomes very large and takes a long time to scroll past. It also doesn't help if there are a dozen coins in a post with no text.

The 25 posts per page is sometimes good, sometimes bad. On long threads, it can be a pain trying to find what you're looking for if there are too many pages.

[ewomack]

Images on the web are a very difficult thing to gauge given the multitudinous display devices, internet providers, computer capabilities, etc. that exist out there. There are too many variables to account for. The best one can do is find a "good enough" base resolution and use that as a baseline never to go under (some exceptions exist to this, but I don't know if they would pertain to this forum). The images @sand posted above also all look identical to me, with the exception of some extremely tiny nuances. They all look great, but the work put into finding an optimal resolution may not end up worth it past a certain point. It might look better on your own screen off the web, but many, perhaps most, people won't notice a difference on the web. That said, it's worth experimenting with if you're concerned about how your images look. To me, they look great as they are. Since all of the images look mostly the same, I would choose the lowest resolution you used to cut down on image size.

As for posting very large images, yes, I agree with @idesofmarch01, mostly because the large images can take a long time to load, especially when multiples appear on a page. More than once a visit, I find myself waiting for large images to load on a thread and sometimes I just skip them if they take longer than 15 - 30 seconds (many of them do). So posting smaller images would help the readability and performance of the forum overall. I upload an image, then I click on it and resize it to 300 X 300 or 400 X 400 (the image tool will automatically resize to proportion with the checkbox clicked), but I rarely go larger than that for coins.

There is also the issue of storage space and potential costs for the forum. Most providers/hosts have a minimum amount of total storage allowed, or they charge for what is used (this is the most dangerous pricing model). This is why many forums limit image upload size, frustrating as that can be. I don't know the arrangement this forum has, @Restitutor, but some of these large images, especially in multiples, must take up a lot of space.

Edited June 4, 2023 by ewomack

[Hrefn]

I use an iPad Pro.  All the pictures appear the same, unless I enlarge them to examine a portion in detail, which is extremely simple with a touch screen.  Then the increased detail of the higher pixel count images is very noticeable.  

When I am using a regular desktop computer, I find myself flailing with the screen trying to enlarge the image to examine some detail on a coin.  The intuitive interface of Apple products allows such maneuvers to be accomplished without conscious thought.  

Here is the Emperor squinting at his monitor.  

 

[DonnaML]

The photos look identical to me as well, both on my desktop monitor and on my phone.

I do sometimes have to edit images before posting them here, to avoid having them appear much too enormous on my desktop monitor. As I've explained before, I reduce the pixel width (not the height) by doing CRTL- Right click - edit image, and checking the "keep original aspect width" box before reducing the number. My photos vary as to how large they appear before editing, depending on the resolution of the photos in kilobytes. They're sometimes as large as 871 pixels wide initially, in which case I usually reduce them to about 700 before posting them. If they show up as 700 or less, I leave them alone.  That assumes that they're photos of both sides of the coin next to each other; if they're separate photos of the obverse and reverse, to be posted one above the other, I have to make them quite a bit smaller.

I like having 25 posts on a page, so I don't keep having to go to the next page.

Edited June 4, 2023 by DonnaML

[Kaleun96]

The reason these all look the same to most of us on our different devices is because they horizontal resolution is the main limiting factor. The aspect ratio of the photos means they quickly max out the horizontal width of the page and prevent the photos from being too large vertically. It's the photos that are more of a square aspect ratio, or portrait style, that cause the biggest issues for some users as these photos can take up almost the entire vertical screen  space of someone's device. 

There's probably a way to limit the max vertical resolution of all images posted here to prevent them from taking up much screen space and this would in turn resize the image to a smaller size by keeping the aspect ratio fixed. 

[CPK]

All the pictures look the same size to me. I haven't run into any issues with anyone's posted photos that I can think of.

I guess the photos I typically post are rather large - roughly 5000x3000 and around 2mb. I hope this hasn't been causing others inconvenience.

Here's a random photo and maybe you all can tell me if it's gobbling up too much of your monitor space, or taking an inordinate amount of time to load:

 

[DonnaML]

50 minutes ago, CPK said:

All the pictures look the same size to me. I haven't run into any issues with anyone's posted photos that I can think of.

I guess the photos I typically post are rather large - roughly 5000x3000 and around 2mb. I hope this hasn't been causing others inconvenience.

Here's a random photo and maybe you all can tell me if it's gobbling up too much of your monitor space, or taking an inordinate amount of time to load:

 

Looks fine to me.

[Ancient Coin Hunter]

Probably about 1000 vertical. To be honest, I almost never think about this. If I click on inspect, then I will notice the properties.

[sand]

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll, and everyone who posted on this thread. If you have not yet voted, then you are welcome to continue to vote. Additional posts are also welcome. I'll look at this poll again tomorrow and the next day. Below is a snapshot of the poll, at this point in time. It seems that, for most persons, the photos all look the same. Among the persons who had a preferred resolution, there wasn't much agreement, about which vertical pixel resolution was best. Therefore, I'm leaning toward the 1000 vertical pixels resolution. The 1000 vertical pixels image looks best on my desktop computer, unless I view the full resolution. Based on the results of this poll, I'm guessing that most people don't bother to view the full resolution, because it requires multiple mouse clicks, unless perhaps if you have a phone or tablet with a touch screen. The file sizes, for my 5 images in my OP, which are JPG images, were 520 kilobytes, 654 kilobytes, 801 kilobytes, 2848 kilobytes, and 6402 kilobytes. The 1000 vertical pixels image isn't much more kilobytes than the 800 vertical pixels image and the 900 vertical pixels image, therefore it seems worth it, to use the 1000 vertical pixels image. On the other hand, the 2000 vertical pixels image and the 3400 vertical pixels image are a lot more kilobytes, without much additional benefit, it seems. In the interest of decreasing download times, and decreasing the usage of hard disk space on the Nvmis Forvms servers, I think I'll probably use 1000 vertical pixels, most of the time. The exceptions to the rule, might be, if I'm asking for feedback about particular details of a coin, such as whether a coin may be tooled, or whether a coin looks like a fake. In those situations, perhaps I'll post a 2000 vertical pixels image, or a 3400 vertical pixels image.

I agree with @John Conduitt and @Kaleun96, that if the images are large, then a single image with the obverse and reverse side by side is usually not a problem, and that it's when there is a separate obverse image and reverse image that it takes a long time to scroll past. If the images are large, and if the obverse and reverse of a coin are shown in separate images, then this occupies 4 times as much vertical space, compared to when the obverse and reverse are shown side by side in a single image. This is because, if the images are large, and if the obverse and reverse are shown in separate images, then each image occupies twice as much vertical space as the obverse-and-reverse-side-by-side image, and the 2 separate images get stacked vertically.

As for the number of posts per page, I guess I like 25 posts per page. I haven't noticed problems downloading the photo images, with 25 posts per page. Perhaps my internet speed is fast enough, that it doesn't matter, for me.

Regarding @CPK's image, which is 5493 horizontal pixels by 3662 vertical pixels, it looks fine to me. It has the obverse and reverse of the coin, side by side in a single image, therefore it occupies a reasonable amount of vertical space, for me. And, when I view this thread, it downloads instantaneously. Again, one's internet speed is important.

Edited June 5, 2023 by sand