Sizes of photographs - please!

[Topcat7]

I am NOT trying to offend anyone, and I apologize in advance if anyone takes offense, but there seems to be a propensity for people to post the largest photographs of a coin they can make. (What they hope to achieve by doing this I do not know.)

When you look at these 'oversized' pictures they are distorted and confusing. I have to get out of my chair and move to the other side of the room to see what I am looking at.

I have found that in order to see them clearly one has to reduce their size to 3 inches (or less), which I do not always do. Sometimes I just move on to another thread.

Can the posters please look at their 'oversized' pictures and then at some of the smaller ones (the 3 inch ones from people who know better) and compare the two for ease of interpretation?

I think that the results are obvious. What do people think?

Edited August 19, 2022 by Topcat7

[ambr0zie]

I never encounter this on NumisForums. All the pics are fit to screen and some are smaller (including mine, as I use Snipping Tool and the actual size/width of the photo is usually smaller as I take them from a Word document).

Are you sure it's not something local? (browser settings or whatever)

[Kali]

The photos don't bother me. It's the endless youtube videos, animated gifts, & other nonsense that is thrown into a single post that I find very annoying. It was done frequently on cointalk and it's done on here too.

It brings nothing to the topic unless it's a youtube video on the subject or history of the coin provided in the threads topics.

I know I would post more frequently with replies if that stuff would just stop.

As of now, if I see my browser window fill up with that garbage, I hit the back button and find another thread.

[John Conduitt]

22 minutes ago, ambr0zie said:

I never encounter this on NumisForums. All the pics are fit to screen and some are smaller (including mine, as I use Snipping Tool and the actual size/width of the photo is usually smaller as I take them from a Word document).

Are you sure it's not something local? (browser settings or whatever)

Yes mine scales to fit. So it depends on how big your screen is as to whether they are 3" or not. The only time a coin photo seems to come out too large is when the obverse and reverse are posted separately, and so each takes up the full width of the screen. My screen is only 11" wide, and with obverse/reverse side by side, they all come out under 4". But if I was using a 50" TV, it would be bigger, and I'd want it to be, as presumably I'd be sitting on the other side of the room.

Whether 3" is 'ideal' will also depend on the resolution of the photo. Some photos can be enlarged a lot more.

Edited August 19, 2022 by John Conduitt

[Kaleun96]

Strange, the images should resize to fit the viewport. In the screenshot below you can see an example where I attached a photo with a width of 2560 pixels but my screen is only displaying it at 1094 pixels. If I reduce the width of the Chrome window, it becomes even smaller. This should be done automatically by the forum's CSS to ensure that the forum is scaled to fit your screen and the content within the threads is scaled to fit within the bounds of the thread.

It should also work if you have any accessibility settings set within Chrome to increase the font size / zoom. Though it's possible accessibility settings set on your device (e.g. via Windows' settings or such) may not play ball. @Topcat7Can you link us an example so we can test it and see if it's limited to your device or if it appears that way for everyone?

Ideally the scaling of images is done entirely by the forum (and as far as I can tell it is) because making people resize images manually is not a great experience for everyone. For some people, a non-scaled 500x500 pixel image on a screen may be too large, for others it may be much too small. The best method is for the device/client to serve the correct size of image for each user depending on the resolution of their screen/viewport. Most websites and apps do that today ("responsive design") as it's fairly easy for them to do and results in the best experience for most people.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Kaleun96

[Ed Snible]

NumisForums prefers to display images at the width of the user's screen.

This style looks great for single photographs that show an obverse and reverse joined horizontally.

If the user doesn't paste their photos together stitched horizontally, the images look huge on screen.  For example https://www.numisforums.com/topic/873-lifetime-coinage-of-alexander-the-great/?do=findComment&comment=15337

 

[John Conduitt]

Just as a note, the top photo in your post here comes out full width (8") on my screen, while the second one is 5.5".

 

[Harry G]

Whenever I try to post a picture of one of my coins, the forum automatically blows it up to the maximum size possible. Because I normally only take pictures of coins with my phone, the quality generally isn't great.

For example, here's a picture of a Victorinus ant, that I was going to post on my latest thread.

My photo looked really grainy, so I ended up posting 2 coins together, so the smaller size doesn't make the quality look as bad.

I don't know if there's a way to reduce the size of the picture on the forum (or if it's possible to add one), but maybe someone knows how? Changing the picture size outside of the forum isn't really an option for me, as all the options I've tried compress the hell out of the photo, making it even more unusable.

[John Conduitt]

17 minutes ago, Harry G said:

Whenever I try to post a picture of one of my coins, the forum automatically blows it up to the maximum size possible. Because I normally only take pictures of coins with my phone, the quality generally isn't great.

For example, here's a picture of a Victorinus ant, that I was going to post on my latest thread.

My photo looked really grainy, so I ended up posting 2 coins together, so the smaller size doesn't make the quality look as bad.

I don't know if there's a way to reduce the size of the picture on the forum (or if it's possible to add one), but maybe someone knows how? Changing the picture size outside of the forum isn't really an option for me, as all the options I've tried compress the hell out of the photo, making it even more unusable.

It looks fine. It's not hugely grainy and all the detail is clear. Even if I click on it to open it up, each side is 5" and looks fine.

You could enlarge the width of the background on the photo. If it was white and twice the width of the coins, you wouldn't even know.

To be honest, on my screen, the bottom picture is too small.

Edited August 19, 2022 by John Conduitt

[Kaleun96]

1 hour ago, Harry G said:

Whenever I try to post a picture of one of my coins, the forum automatically blows it up to the maximum size possible. Because I normally only take pictures of coins with my phone, the quality generally isn't great.

For example, here's a picture of a Victorinus ant, that I was going to post on my latest thread.

My photo looked really grainy, so I ended up posting 2 coins together, so the smaller size doesn't make the quality look as bad.

I don't know if there's a way to reduce the size of the picture on the forum (or if it's possible to add one), but maybe someone knows how? Changing the picture size outside of the forum isn't really an option for me, as all the options I've tried compress the hell out of the photo, making it even more unusable.

Can you check what the resolution of these photos are on your computer before you upload them? According to the dev tools in Chrome, the forum software is reducing the resolution of the image from 3000 pixels wide to just 1094 pixels wide (for my device, at least). To me it doesn't look like the forum software is increasing the size at all, particularly as it wouldn't make sense for it to upscale an image to 3000 pixels from whatever the original resolution was and then downscale it again to 1000 pixels.

But this is a good example of another point worth making for @Topcat7: if you export a photo from Photoshop that is 3" by 3" at, say 300 PPI, what you get is a 900 x 900 pixel image that will be displayed at different sizes depending on the screen/device of the user. So even when you export an image to a specific dimension, it does not mean that is how it will appear to all users.

Case in point, the above image is rendered to 1094 pixels wide on both my 32" 2560 × 1440 screen and also on my 16" 3072 × 1920 screen. The 16" screen is smaller in physical dimensions and has a higher resolution, so the 1094 pixel wide image measures in at 21cm, but on my larger 32" monitor, the image measures 29.5cm. So the dimensions of the file don't guarantee how much physical space it will take up on your screen when measured with a ruler. Combined with responsive web design, not only is your image going to appear to have different physical dimensions for different users, the resolution of the image served to the users will be different as well.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Kaleun96

[IanG]

Harry G asks if there is a way to reduce the size of a picture being posted on the forum. There is, I did it yesterday. I was posting pictures of two coins in a reply on a thread. The first came out at normal size, the second for some reason was very much larger. Leaving them like that would have looked odd so I altered the second one. What you need to do is right click on the picture that you want to alter and press control. this brings up an option to resize. It was easy for me because I was able to check the pixel size on the first picture and match it so they were of identical size. Otherwise you might need a bit of trial and error.

Edited August 19, 2022 by IanG

[shanxi]

Test: Same picture

814x400

400x196

200x98

 

It works. Perfectly explained @IanG

also left and right alignement is possible

[Harry G]

15 minutes ago, IanG said:

Harry G asks if there is a way to reduce the size of a picture being posted on the forum. There is, I did it yesterday. I was posting pictures of two coins in a reply on a thread. The first came out at normal size, the second for some reason was very much larger. Leaving them like that would have looked odd so I altered the second one. What you need to do is right click on the picture that you want to alter and press control. this brings up an option to resize. It was easy for me because I was able to check the pixel size on the first picture and match it so they were of identical size. Otherwise you might need a bit of trial and error.

 

Thanks for this! That works for me (although I need to double click rather than right click for some reason).

^That one is 1 pixel x 0 pixels apparently 😄

[Topcat7]

7 hours ago, Kaleun96 said:

@Topcat7Can you link us an example so we can test it and see if it's limited to your device or if it appears that way for everyone?

 

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/954-egregious-lazy-cock-ups/#comment-16361

 

[Kaleun96]

9 minutes ago, Topcat7 said:

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/954-egregious-lazy-cock-ups/#comment-16361

 

It has scaled correctly to the page for me but because the orientation is portrait rather than landscape, it's possible for the image to be longer than the height of the viewport of your device so you may have to scroll to see all of it. In that case, the solution suggested IanG is ideal since it rescales the image for display but opening the image in a new tab will show the full size original image. Whereas if you reduce the resolution and then upload the file, there's no way for someone to see the image in its original resolution and detail is lost.

If someone forgets to use the forum tool for resizing and the image is longer than the viewport, you can also click on the image to open the "lightbox" and this will resize the image so its height is less than the viewport and you can see the entire image on your screen without having to scroll.

This shouldn't be a problem for most photos in a common landscape aspect ratio as the aspect ratio will ensure the image is never scaled so that it is too "tall" for your device and requires scrolling.

[Etcherdude]

1 hour ago, Topcat7 said:

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/954-egregious-lazy-cock-ups/#comment-16361

 

Looks alright on my iPad.

[DonnaML]

I almost always substantially reduce the size of photos before I post them. Otherwise, they're OK on a phone, but on my desktop they're so enormous that I sometimes can't see the entire image on the screen! The easy fix on Windows is as follows: after you insert the photo in your post but before you actually post it, hit the CTRL key and right-click on the image. Among the options you'll see EDIT IMAGE. Choose that option, and then, under "Size," reduce the size, while making sure to click the box that says "keep original aspect ratio."  For example, without reduction, this photo size is 1003 x 519, copied from the image in my downloads folder on my hard drive.  It's not a particularly annoying example, but is still too large for my liking:

Here it is reduced to 750 x 390, which seems much more viewer-friendly to me on my desktop:

Edited August 19, 2022 by DonnaML

[John Conduitt]

29 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

I almost always substantially reduce the size of photos before I post them. Otherwise, they're OK on a phone, but on my desktop they're so enormous that I sometimes can't see the entire image on the screen! The easy fix on Windows is as follows: after you insert the photo in your post but before you actually post it, hit the CTRL key and right-click on the image. Among the options you'll see EDIT IMAGE. Choose that option, and then, under "Size," reduce the size, while making sure to click the box that says "keep original aspect ratio."  For example, without reduction, this photo size is 1003 x 519, copied from the image in my downloads folder on my hard drive.  It's not a particularly annoying example, but is still too large for my liking:

Here it is reduced to 750 x 390, which seems much more viewer-friendly to me on my desktop:

One good thing about this approach is that if (like me) you want the larger image at the top, you just click on the smaller image and it reverts to full size.

[DonnaML]

1 hour ago, DonnaML said:

I almost always substantially reduce the size of photos before I post them. Otherwise, they're OK on a phone, but on my desktop they're so enormous that I sometimes can't see the entire image on the screen! The easy fix on Windows is as follows: after you insert the photo in your post but before you actually post it, hit the CTRL key and right-click on the image. Among the options you'll see EDIT IMAGE. Choose that option, and then, under "Size," reduce the size, while making sure to click the box that says "keep original aspect ratio."  For example, without reduction, this photo size is 1003 x 519, copied from the image in my downloads folder on my hard drive.  It's not a particularly annoying example, but is still too large for my liking:

Here it is reduced to 750 x 390, which seems much more viewer-friendly to me on my desktop:

I should note that on my cellphone, the two photos are the exact same size. The difference is visible only on my desktop. 

[ewomack]

I have noticed pictures of varying sizes here as well, but not to an extreme degree as described above. I probably have posted large pictures in the past myself, though not intentionally, but they always looked okay on my own screen. One downside of the web is that it's very hard to tell how things will display on different browsers, operating systems, monitor sizes, etc. Loads of variables exist. As already discussed, this forum doesn't seem to auto-size large photos the way some other forums I use do, so I started re-sizing them myself "just in case." I don't think most people, if any, intentionally post enormous pictures, it's probably a result of the voluminous variations in display possibilities. In any case, I did not know about the resizing option for photos before this thread. It looks like I have to double-click as well, so I'll post a few tests. Thank you for pointing this out.

This seems to work great! I'll give it a try going forward. Again, thanks for pointing this feature out.

Edited August 20, 2022 by ewomack