Hello everyone. I thought I share some tips that I use for uploading images for the best fidelity and smallest size (I pay for server storage 
).
1. Make sure the horizontal size is not more than 1000 pixels. The forum software happily accepts larger sizes but then shrinks them for display if over this width. For organic images (people, landscape, etc.) this is fine but not for graphics. Resizing makes graphs or anything with fonts look softer/fuzzier. User can click on them to get the larger original size but this is an extra step and many don't know to do this.
2. For graphs and screen snapshots, most of the time it is best to save them in .png format as this is a lossless format. If you are using Photoshop, click the option for smallest size. This reduces the color palette with minor, if any degradation in fidelity of your graphs. The space saving can be quite remarkable (almost 2:1). Sometimes if there are very few colors, .gif format generates smaller files.
3. For natural images shot with your camera and such, jpeg is the format of choice. Here, again make sure to resize your image first to 1000 pixels or smaller (width). Adjust the compression ratio so that the file size is below 100 Kbytes, but preferably smaller than 50 Kbytes.
4. Please, please don't just grab an image form your phone and post it! These images are often thousands of pixels wide and quite large. They will look soft per #1 above and at any rate, use up a lot of server space. Our server uses SSD storage which is fast but more expensive than hard disk. As such, we all need to do our bit to keep the amount of storage small.
5. Back to graphics, please don't take snapshots of your entire high-resolution computer display. If you are using Windows, use the Clipping Tool and cut out the part that is of interest. It is very hard to read the small text of your entire desktop in a forum that is basically 1000 pixels wide.
6. Large images slow down page loads for everyone. Having to fetch hundreds of kilobytes or even megabytes makes little sense just to read a post.
If you want examples of above, look at my reviews. I spend quite a bit of time in optimizing images. Most product pictures are only 30 or 35 Kbytes! This is done by using very simple backgrounds that turns into white and hence compresses quite well. Again, graphics are sized to be just what is needed.
Following these guidelines are good for you, our readers and the site.
).1. Make sure the horizontal size is not more than 1000 pixels. The forum software happily accepts larger sizes but then shrinks them for display if over this width. For organic images (people, landscape, etc.) this is fine but not for graphics. Resizing makes graphs or anything with fonts look softer/fuzzier. User can click on them to get the larger original size but this is an extra step and many don't know to do this.
2. For graphs and screen snapshots, most of the time it is best to save them in .png format as this is a lossless format. If you are using Photoshop, click the option for smallest size. This reduces the color palette with minor, if any degradation in fidelity of your graphs. The space saving can be quite remarkable (almost 2:1). Sometimes if there are very few colors, .gif format generates smaller files.
3. For natural images shot with your camera and such, jpeg is the format of choice. Here, again make sure to resize your image first to 1000 pixels or smaller (width). Adjust the compression ratio so that the file size is below 100 Kbytes, but preferably smaller than 50 Kbytes.
4. Please, please don't just grab an image form your phone and post it! These images are often thousands of pixels wide and quite large. They will look soft per #1 above and at any rate, use up a lot of server space. Our server uses SSD storage which is fast but more expensive than hard disk. As such, we all need to do our bit to keep the amount of storage small.
5. Back to graphics, please don't take snapshots of your entire high-resolution computer display. If you are using Windows, use the Clipping Tool and cut out the part that is of interest. It is very hard to read the small text of your entire desktop in a forum that is basically 1000 pixels wide.
6. Large images slow down page loads for everyone. Having to fetch hundreds of kilobytes or even megabytes makes little sense just to read a post.
If you want examples of above, look at my reviews. I spend quite a bit of time in optimizing images. Most product pictures are only 30 or 35 Kbytes! This is done by using very simple backgrounds that turns into white and hence compresses quite well. Again, graphics are sized to be just what is needed.
Following these guidelines are good for you, our readers and the site.
