What resolution for web display

Hey everybody,

quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most detail? Also, do most of you save as a jpeg file? What is your typical file size when uploading?
Thanks. I guess I should have said "questions"

Drew

leave them at 72dpi and save them as jpeg quality 5 through 8.....in PS 6 and other packages you can preview the image when selecting the compression level. For me 7 is usually pretty good. I aim for 800x600 images to be between 45k and 110k.

tim

photochi said:

Hey everybody,
quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or
digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most
detail? Also, do most of you save as a jpeg file? What is your
typical file size when uploading?
Thanks. I guess I should have said "questions"

Drew

Click to expand...

photochi said:

quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or
digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most
detail?

Click to expand...

I normally use something like 640 or 800 pixels for web publishing, but it depends on what you want to achieve. These sizes are suitable for screen viewing, but far too small for "serious" printing, for example.

You can use a program like PhotoThumb to automate the creation of thumbnails, larger images (suitable for web use), and web pages. Highly configurable, fast, and easy to use. You'll find a free trial version at http://photothumb.com

Hope this helps.

Jarle

You shopuld save your images as jpegs. The "dpi" value saved inside the jpeg file is ignored by the browser when the browser displays the image. Thus it can be set for any value and will have no effect whatsoever on how the image looks (i.e. it will not affect the physical size of the image, nor the quality of the image, etc.)

What IS important is the PIXEL DIMENSIONS and the COMPRESSION. The pixel dimensions determine how big the image will appear. But they are not the final determination, since they also work in combination with the SCREEN SETTINGS that your audience is using.

If you make a 640-pixel wide image, it will always display 640 pixels wide on the browser's screen, but those 640 pixels will appear as 640/640 = 100% or full-width on a screen set for 640x480 display, yet the same image will appear 640/800 = 80% width on a screen set for 800x600 display.

You cannot know what size screen display your audience is using, so it is usual to plan for the worst case and make a rule never to save an image wider than about 600 pixels -- which will always display fully (with no horizontal scrolling) on even the smallest 640x480 screen.

COMPRESSION on the other hand determines how many bytes the same image -- say 600x400 -- will be encoded as. This is a personal preference depending on how good you want your image to look (i.e. to avoid encoding artifacts) vs. not to make it too good or else people may steal it and print it out without paying you, as an artist, for your own print.

Generally I use about about 30 kilobytes per "good quality" 600x400 jpeg image.

-bruce

photochi said:

Hey everybody,
quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or
digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most
detail? Also, do most of you save as a jpeg file? What is your
typical file size when uploading?
Thanks. I guess I should have said "questions"

Drew

Click to expand...

Hi Drew,

For viewers running 1024x768 screenmode, you should probably use 640x480 for your image. The browser window is usually not the complete screen, and there are some borders/title bars to substract.

Note that around 90% of the viewers these days uses 1024x768 screenmode. Only a few still run 800x600. They will have to scroll then, but well, not impossible.

Save your images as JPG, use a quality not lower than 70% or 7 / 10 depending on your program. If you go lower, you will get noticable artefacts.

Your thumbnail pictures should be something like max. 100 pixels in the largest dimension. Use GIF for your thumbnails. That keeps them nice and crisp.

Nils Haeck
http://www.abc-view.com

PS you can download an all-in-one solution for generating the pages when you surf to my site (see ABC-View Manager), download and run the "build-a-web" wizard. Sample pages here:
http://www.abc-view.com/samples/index.html

photochi said:

Hey everybody,
quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or
digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most
detail? Also, do most of you save as a jpeg file? What is your
typical file size when uploading?
Thanks. I guess I should have said "questions"

Drew

Click to expand...

Nils Haeck said:

For viewers running 1024x768 screenmode, you should probably use
640x480 for your image. The browser window is usually not the
complete screen, and there are some borders/title bars to substract.

Note that around 90% of the viewers these days uses 1024x768
screenmode. Only a few still run 800x600. They will have to scroll
then, but well, not impossible.

Save your images as JPG, use a quality not lower than 70% or 7 / 10
depending on your program. If you go lower, you will get noticable
artefacts.

Your thumbnail pictures should be something like max. 100 pixels in
the largest dimension. Use GIF for your thumbnails. That keeps them
nice and crisp.

Nils Haeck
http://www.abc-view.com

PS you can download an all-in-one solution for generating the pages
when you surf to my site (see ABC-View Manager), download and run
the "build-a-web" wizard. Sample pages here:
http://www.abc-view.com/samples/index.html

photochi said:

Hey everybody,
quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or
digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most
detail? Also, do most of you save as a jpeg file? What is your
typical file size when uploading?
Thanks. I guess I should have said "questions"

Drew

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Thanks to everybody for your valuable comments.
Drew

I decided to go with 400*300 or 400*262.

This small size makes sure that there is some room around the image. Empty space is hard to fin in the web and helps the eyes to rest. I started to put caption information in the picture and therefor has to save them as high quality jpegs to avoid that the text become unsharp. You can see the result under: gallery - travel - ireland

http://www.joachimgerstl.com

Joachim

photochi said:

Hey everybody,
quick question: What resolution should I resize my scans (or
digital pix) for fast downloads yet be able to maintain most
detail? Also, do most of you save as a jpeg file? What is your
typical file size when uploading?
Thanks. I guess I should have said "questions"

Drew

Click to expand...

--joachim