I’m a newbie currently building a website for photo galleries. My images currently load a bit too slowly because they are large. I want them as large as practicable, because many people now have larger monitors, and I don’t like the smaller images I see coming up on my own monitor. And, being an amateur, I do not have the same concern a professional might have at having my images ripped off, although I would of course prefer that not to happen.
In Showcase I currently set my large images as 1600 wide and have the large image output as JPEG with high smoothing, 70% quality, non-progressive. I like the results, but the files are too big and don’t load fast enough. I’m sure they’d work OK if I dropped the width to 800, but I would prefer wider.
Is there any consensus as to what right now is the optimum size and quality? This must be changing as monitors get larger, with good resolution.
1600px is too wide - even by todays standards of monitor ownership.
A more sensible screen size to base your site on would be 1024 but remember with the lost real estate of scroll bars etc and the fact that most users do not have their browser window full screen I tend towards 960px
So if you have a max image width of 960 and reduce your image to 72ppi you can then adjust your compression (inc progression) to get your file sizes manageable.
The other factor to consider is the number of images in your Showcase gallery.
I am not sure if SC uses a form of lazyloading or not but 20 images at 1Mb each is a lot of bandwith and speed of page load keeps visitors. A slow loading page and they will be off somewhere else.
In Showcase I currently set my large images as 1600 wide and have the large image output as JPEG with high smoothing, 70% quality, non-progressive. I like the results, but the files are too big and don’t load fast enough. I’m sure they’d work OK if I dropped the width to 800, but I would prefer wider.
Wow, that’s quite big. I’m sitting her on a 1440 wide screen so I wouldn’t be able to see your entire pic. The size is clearly the problem with loading speed so I would be reducing them down. I’m not sure if there is any way to auto-detect a screen size and then display a suitably sized image??
Is there any consensus as to what right now is the optimum size and quality? This must be changing as monitors get larger, with good resolution.
I guess this is a ‘how long is a piece of string’ question. Despite monitors getting bigger, I’d suggest the practical limitation will still be bandwidth (user patience).
Thanks. It does look like I’ll have to reluctantly reduce my large image width.
With the self-testing I did, there was a pause for loading but I judged it acceptable. However, my download speed averages 20 Mb/s - which I didn’t think was all that spectacular - but maybe it is fooling me into thinking my site loads faster than others might experience.
In Australia I would say 20 Mbs is the exception rather than the rule. The government are rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN) and are targeting 12 Mbs as a sweet spot (although some may have higher). We have a business level net service here and we get solid synchronous 5 Mbs which is good but a long way from 20. We could get up to 100 Mbs but it would be prohibitive. I’d be happy to have 12 Mbs as long as it is both ways.
The other factor to consider is the number of images in your Showcase gallery. I am not sure if SC uses a form of lazyloading or not but 20 images at 1Mb each is a lot of bandwith and speed of page load keeps visitors.
My thumbnails view of my gallery loads very fast, because of course those images are small. It’s operation of the slide show that is slow. particularly the first image. If the slideshow is loading on the fly, then the size of the file for each image would clearly be significant. But, would the number of images matter, if they are only loading as they are needed? Is this truly how a Freeway slideshow works?
In Australia I would say 20 Mbs is the exception rather than the rule.
This seems to be the root of my problem. All those I have asked for feedback from live near me and have similar access speeds, so I’m getting mislead - to you my site would be much slower than I think it is.
Thanks for feedback. It’s ironic that my good fortune in having a higher download speed is actually working against me in trying to create a workable site.