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I have been noticing that many of you are having problems with photo quality in your personal pages, photo albums and project albums.

I can't understand why this is.

I have an old, and I mean old, Olympus digital camera that only has 1.3 megapixels....
I'm sure most of you have better cameras than I do however my photos seems to come out clear.
Here is an example.
Click on the photo link below for larger view.
[img]http://www.whalercentral.com/images/photoalbum/album_1/photo_87.jpg[/img]

Most all of the photos on this site taken by me are taken with my old 1.3 megapixel camera.

If you can't outdo the quality of my photo above and my camera which only has 1.3 megapixel, then something is wrong with your camera or settings.

For those of you having problems, try changing the settings in your camera.
1. I use 1280x960 for the size of my photos
2. I forget which quality setting i use but you would need to experiment with yours. Good, Better, Best, or whatever type of settings your camera has for the quality. Use the best quality and give it a try.

Then, following the directions in the Personal Page section or the FAQ's, you can reduce the size, NOT the quality, of your photo. Make your photos 640x480 for the personal page section and 960x720 for the photo albums or project albums.

See the instructions here and download the appropriate photo software for your type of computer.
http://www.whalercentral.com/forum/vi...ead_id=120

For those of you on an Apple computer, I also use Graphic Converter. Again, I do not lower the quality of the photo, only the size.
Graphic Converter for Mac

For those of you on Windows computers... Sorry, I can't help you... I don't do Windows...
However, start with your camera settings. Maybe others here can lead you down the right path in making good quality photos using Windows computers.

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I'm guessing that most are using a higher pixel camera and then trying to cut the size requirements down and in the process are loosing quality. For those that are usinjg windows XP you can go to microsoft.com and download a program called photo resizer. Once loaded all you have to do is right click on the photo and you have a choice of 4 sizes and very little quality is loss, Maybe this will help on the windows side

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I know for myself I have had more trouble trying to upload photos here than anywhere. I seem to always get an error about the file size no matter how small I make it.

A while back someone told me to add.jpg to the end of the file names, well they already were .jpg, so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here.

I would like to add an album and a personal page, but it seems to elude me…

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I just use my cheezy little cell phone camera (not sure even if that's o.k), not sure of "Mega-pixel's", I have a digital cam and don't even know how to use it. A woman asked me yesterday if I knew how to adjust the volume on her "I-pod", I said "Man did you pick the wrong guy", and showed her my "Sony" Walkman (complete with cassette tape), her jaw hit the ground as if she just met "Abe Lincoln". Can I use the cell phone cam ?

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I'm not at all a computer guy ! The photos I have are crisp and clean,even had some printed to poster size without loosing quality. Somehow the irfanware program I use leaves the pictures all of poor quality. I'll play with it more, most likely me.

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Joe, If I just reduce the size of my pictures to the suggested 640 x 480 or whatever its not enough to get them down to the size limit for upload on a post. The only way to accomplish the size requirement on mine is to reduce image quality.

An image taken with my 8.0 megapixel Olympus is about 1.6 to 2.0 mb. On my digital slr they can go as high as 10 mb.

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Many of the photos I've viewed here seem to be taken by a cell phone.

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What is not to understand? Photo editing capabilities and ease of this process on a Mac vs PC is night are day. Period. PC's do not have an easy way to convert image sizes unless you have Photoshop or a like software. For PC's I would recommend people look at using google's picasa for image editing. The program can be downloaded free and is the best way I have found to manage your images for a free piece of software. - Download Page - How to resize in Picasa



Another thing here is you have a large group of users who are not long time computer professionals. Lets be honest for the most part you are not dealing with tech savy younger adults here. Nothing wrong with that but, the average computer exposure a user of this site may have on a daily basis is some online time, as well as working in Microsoft excel, word and outlook (maybe). So, asking them to learn image editing can seem like voodoo magic. Not to say they can not do it but, it would take time.

Also, a lot of the images show high amounts of compression noise (blotchy pixel areas) which happens in two ways. One could be people just turning the quality of the image down through a image program to hit the upload threshold. The other happens with opening and resaving images. With Jpgs, gifs and bitmaps every time you open the file and resave it, the built in compression tries to optimize that image again. This recompression of the image and introduces more compression noise into the image than it had when you first opened it. That said though, the process of image sizing also is the LARGEST culprit in the introduction of compress noise to a file. I think over time people try many times over and over again to the their images to upload with out success. Many times it is because of the tight restrictions on characters and format of them in the file name that they are unable to upload. Sometimes I am sure it was because the image was just to big. So, with each failed attempt they will go back and adjust their image again. After a number of attempts at this along with overwriting the first file you destroy the quality of the image.

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Jeff, you nailed it. If at first my photo re size doesn't succeed, I try and try again until is it small enough. The downside to that is my photo image is deteriorated, as is my avatar, to a point that it becomes blurred.

Jeff, you must be looking over my shoulder every time I upload photos! Lol.

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If you have the new version of Microsoft Office 2007 it comes with Microsoft Office Picture Manager. You just click edit pictures, then resize, then choose your size. Very easy and my pics seem ok. The only pics that I have added that seem of poor quality are the cell phone pics when I forgot my camera.

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These days there is almost always an alternative to buying expensive programs for use on Windows. And photo manipulation is no exception. Windows users don't need an expensive program like Photoshop to get the resizing job done in a quality, easy fashion.

IRFANVIEW is a utility for Windows users that is free and easy to use. We have been mentioning it for years on this site.

IRFANVIEW allows you to work on 1 photo or multiple photos. You can resize, set quality, rename and more. It's free to boot.

The fact that I can take a whole disk of photos, load them all into the program with one click and tell it to set the long side of the photos to a particular size, say 640px, and then hit go and the program automatically sets the short side of the photo to a proportional length, whether the photo is oriented to portrait or landscape, is magical.

There is no loss in photo quality (or any I can discern) and the batch of photos are ready for upload with no file size errors.

Here is a link to the download Download IRFANVIEW

Here is a link to their home page: http://www.irfanview.com/

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scrimshaw,
Can you send me one photo that has not been altered or touched in any way?
I am curious what is going on.

sraab928,
Interesting. I would also like to see a photo from you that was taken with an 8 megapixel camera. Can you send me one that has not been altered or touched?

If I can do it, even a caveman can do it.........

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Joe, will do.

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Got the photo Jim and emailed you back.

Jim sent me a photo and here are the specs.
The original was 1279x912 and 3.3 MB in file size
I reduced it to 640x480 and 64 kb file size which is well below the 125 kb needed to upload to the personal page section.

This took me less than a minute.
I guess we need to look at why Windows users are having such a tough time of it.

Like I said, I don't do Windows so I can't help.
I used to run many different operating systems in the past as part of my job but I will only use Mac OS X now for lots or reasons.
One main reason, I have used Macs since 1993 and have never had a virus. I don't even have a virus program on my computer as I have no need for one. I also don't get the "Registry Error" or "Illegal Operation" errors. Those always made me laugh while I would just turn to another computer at work and continue on with other things. Of course the other computer I turned to was a Mac...
No, no computer wars here... This is just a fact...
You Windows user bought it, and that's what you got and want..
To each his own...

Our moderators are all on Macs I believe.
Tom, Phil (not positive) and myself.
Mike is the only on who uses a Windows computer but he is much too busy with his new job... Work always seem to get in the way of some of the fun.... He did make a post above so some of you need to look at that IRFANVIEW...

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Joe - I am away this week and do not have my main computer - When I return home I will email you a photo.

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Great Scott...

I look forward to seeing a photo from the 8 megapixel camera....

My wife has a 4 and a 5 megapixel camera and I haven't had any problems reducing the size of the those photos.

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I've been using Irfanview for quite a few years. Fast, free, and fully featured. Unlike a lot of freeware, the author hasn't dropped if for some other project, so it continues to evolve.

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I use both, Windows and a Mac.

I am an IT professional so I am always willing to help members (via email and phone) for help.

If computers were easy, I would be out of a job.

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I also had trouble at first uploading pix, but checked out post on irfanview--downloaded & followed directions, got the right size for uploading with very little loss of quality-to be honest, I don't note any loss in quality. Rich

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Whaler warrior,

That is good to hear. Maybe some Windows users just haven't taken the time to download IFranview and read the directions.

Maybe more Windows users will start using it and found out how easy it really is to use.

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I too had a problem with images reducing to the correct size but being to large as to the file size. From our point and shoot, a 7 megapixel Canon, I use iPhoto for handling the images. If I use iPhoto to export an image, an original 3.4mb 2304 x 3072 image becomes 480 x 640 176kb image. Not small enough. But if I run the exported image through PhotoExpress, which is recommended in the FAQ, the resulting size is 60kb. It works, but the extra step is a hassle and PhotoExpress has several annoying bugs. I hate to use Lightroom for the pointing and shoot, so I'll stick with the present process.

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Jim -

I found when exporting from I-Photo, if I select a custom size, it helps reduce the file size. Then again, I am shooting photos on a 7 megapixel camera with the resolution set to one notch below super-high. By a lower setting, I don't worry about running out of room on the card.

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Dear Joe,

I am happy that uploading photos for you is so easy. I have followed all your instructions - file size, name.jpg, etc, etc. and your web site will not take it. The problem, I suspect, is that you can not look at a member's photo(s) that fail to upload and troubleshoot the cause. You and everyone else with advise on the subject are just guessing at causes.

Suggestion: How about I send you at your personal email address (or a google or yahoo address, if you wish to keep your personal email address private) my BW photo that I have been trying to upload, so you can determine the problem. I will send you the original photo and the reduced photo (properly named per your instructions).

Frustrated new member, Len

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Len -

An offer of assistance has been sent to your email mailbox.

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All,
Irfanview is lowering the quality of the image, basically it sets the resolution to 72ppi (standard screen resolution) and then resamples the file. From the Irfanview help "Note: the showed Resample filters are used for enlarging only. For shrinking, a special/fast resample filter is used" For the web and for viewing on a monitor it is fine. If you view the resulting file in Lightroom or Photoshop it looks really fuzzy at anything above 100% because the information is just gone. To get the same file size in Lightroom I had to export the file as jpeg with 72ppi for a resolution and jpeg quality set to 20%. At that rate, with lightroom not doing any resampling the image is pretty fuzzy at 2:1 where the same image out of Irfanview is not quite as fuzzy.

My guess is that programs like photoexpress also use some sort of sampling to drop the filesize down.

Jim,
For exporting photo's for WC you might want to switch to Irfanview as a single step process. It seems to have all the editing features and a compression algorithm to get filesizes that work here. It also has a batch conversion that I plan to try for my project album.

Len,
what software are you using to edit images? You can try Irfanview or send me your images and i can convert them for you.

All my testing was done on files that started as 4000 x 3000 from a 12.1 MP camera. If anyone wants the original and test files, let me know and I can email them too you.

If anyone needs photo help, Pm me or email me. Also Windows PC help.

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Thanks! I was using Picasa. Finally worked using Microsoft Image Resizer.
Len

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Hi Len,

I see you got your photos working but the names are still not correct.
You have a double .jpg.jpg for all your photos.
Here is a name of one of your photos:
interior.jpg.jpg

You should only have one file name behind the photo like:
interior.jpg

Again, the photos are working but file name shouldn't have a double .jpg

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Thanks, Joe. I don't know how the second jpg got added. It wasn't there when I uploaded the photos. This tech stuff is all a mystery to me. The one important thing i have learned about computers - if it doesn't work one way, try another, and don't ask why. I have decided to make the PC to MAC switch, since my wife started using a MacBook this Spring. She is definitely not tech savvy, so guess who is the problem solver? And I am not all that tech savvy, as you can see by my posts.
Have a great day! Len

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Joe says, "I don't do Windows." That sent me away laughing. Way to go, Joe.
Mike