Graphics downloads to us deprived dial-uppers

[Blogwitch]

This is what I was trying to explain in my previous post. I found some pics on my off computer storage archive, and selected one that sort of sums up the types of pictures we use on here.

This first one is a heavyweight at 1.5MB, taken on a max of 2 megapixels and it took up over 10 times the normal storage I would generally allow in my photobucket account, and hence a few of you will notice that it does take a fair time to load into this post.

This is after being put straight thru the resizer, and was ready to use about one second after I pressed the convert button, and was skinned down to a modest 150KB, still a little large for my liking, but it does show that there is very little difference in the two except for the obvious size one. Which could easily be remedied by tweaking a couple of figures in the program, which I won't do, as this is the standard display size I use for all my pics now.

This is the way I feel I should be going to help the unfortunates with slow speeds, and also maybe prevent nasty things happening on the web in the future.

From taking 50 shots in the shop (three without and two with flash for each shot), sorting thru them to get the ones I want (I very rarely crop, I tend to do that when taking the pic), to using 10 in an article I am writing, maybe 15 minutes or less of my time. A small price to pay in my mind.

Bogs

 

[bearcar1]

Thank you Bogs for incorporating those photos into this discussion as it is exactly the point I was referring to in my previous post. We all really should make a concerted effort to do these simple, often overlooked and usually taken for granted functions. Doing so will ensure that not only this web site, which we all hold in high regard, as well as the rest of the civilized (?) cyberworld, will remain available to us without undo restriction.(keep in mind the recent 'overusage' events that occurred resulting in this website being taken off line for a period of time) As a fellow member I am asking nicely that we all discipline ourselves towards practicing smart bandwidth usage, it WILL pay off big dividends in the future. Well focused/cropped and visually centered images that have been reduced down to manageable pixel sizes is all that is required. Also spreading the word to others that may not be aware of the bandwidth limitations will slowly initiate a change in the way the public uses this technology.

BC1
Jim

 

[itowbig]

i really dont mind small pics as long as i can make them bigger (failing eyes) and i for one really never thought about those with dial up. so to me it would be more considerate to just put in smaller pics and thumb nails are not that bad as long as i can clik them to make them bigger. i just dont know how to make those yet.
so i really dont see why we all cant just make this site more enjoyable for all. after all is this just want its about enjoyment. this is my 2 pennys and thats my story and im sticken to it.

 

[cobra428]

I'm with Sid,
How do you make small pics and have them enlarge when you click? I noticed there seems to be two kinds...ones that just get big and ones that go to a temp download to open.

Tony

 

[Troutsqueezer]

As for Internet bandwidth, I believe photographic images don't even show up on the radar when the trend now is to download HD movies, television shows, anything thru Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, DirectTV On Demand, etc. Now there's some bandwidth.

-T

 

[bearcar1]

Perhaps there is a bit of a misunderstanding regarding the usage of the terms that have been employed in this thread referencing photo 'size' (yes it DOES matter but not here ;D) The physical 'size' of an image does not have to change, that can remain the same. Just for conversation lets us explore Bogs' examples. The first of that series is a high resolution (number of total pixels) photo. Now, say this photo were 1200x800 format and was being uploaded (sent) or downloaded (being viewed), the network connection (internet) would have to transmit that HUGE amount of data in order to for an end user to visually see it. Now for some of the high speed DSL linked connection users this would not seem to present too much of a problem. BUT.... for the dial-up users out there and you all know who you are ;D this can be quite time consuming and can lead to transmission time outs due to the speed at which this huge amount of data is being handled. Sure, the photo clearly shows the bits of swarf on the carriage stop but is that truly required or necessary? Not really. Now, also included in that same photo is quite a bit of the surrounding machine (very nice nice machine BTW). This portion of the photo is really incidental but the fact remains that all of those pixels that make up that area of the photo has to be sent along as well. Wasted bandwidth as it were. Now then, the second photo, although it is displayed as a physically smaller image has also been reduced in the number of pixels used down to a much leaner image of say 600x200 pixels. Notice now that the image quality has not degraded THAT noticeably and the small swarf bits exist but not quite as sharp detail as in the first example. So what, we all know what swarf looks like right? :big: But the time required to transmit or receive this second 'downsized' image is cut by probably at least 60% due to the fact that there is not nearly as much data making up the image size. If the photo were to be cropped of the areas surrounding the carriage stop the transfer or throughput speeds would be increased as well, again because there is not as much data that has to be handled. The PHYSICAL picture size can remain the same just the amount of electronic information that is being handled (bandwidth) is much less. Its the reduction of the information needed to represent the image that is key to the bandwidth issues and not so much the speed of the connection although they are related to one another. Less is more as it were, less data required for a clear image equals faster transferal speeds and less mass storage archival space needed (hard drive space). If everyone were to use the ever increasing megapixel formats all of the time, the extra and mostly not needed information will lead to a slowdown of transmission speeds across the entire network at the basic levels. As has been stated previously, define your focal points (get as much of the pertinent subject matter (ei: the carriage stop) in your view finder and cut down the pixel size format, unless of course that you are planning on making life-sized posters for a living. The low-res (less pixels) formats begin to loose their clarity quickly when being enlarged so it is a happy medium. We just have to be aware of the impact that something as simple as taking a picture has become as technology in data transfer and storage struggle to stay ahead of the demands.

BC1
Jim

 

[Troutsqueezer]

I should mention that for a good number of photographs, it's the stuff in the background that interests me most. I have made changes in my shop based on what I see in the background of some pics posted here. :hDe:

 

[cobra428]

BC1
I realize that the size of the pic 150GB or 1KB. I just figured while we where on the subject of pics.

Tony

 

[Orrin]

Jim (BC1) and Bog, thank you for your level-headed and intelligent posts. Both of you are to be commended.

Most people do not realize that the information superhighway can get overcrowded. Overloading it is just like rush hour traffic on a ten-lane highway that barely moves at a crawl.

People who have satellite Internet connections understand this. During peak hours their service moves at a crawl. Many say that is is no better than dial-up. Only just so much data can be squeezed through that little pipe.

Every Internet user should understand their obligation to eliminate transmitting unnecessary data. Unfortunately, Micro$oft users are led to believe that their 10 Megapixel picture only barely fills the screen. That is because Micro$oft's slide show and viewing programs automatically resize those monsters down to fit the monitor.

Many people send those ten meg pictures. When they arrive at the destination they must be resized to 100 kilobytes in order to see the darned thing. It's stupid! Why send ten megs when 100 k will do?

It is things like this that cause satellite service to move at a crawl. It is things like this that cause Web sites to exceed their ISP's bandwidth allowance.

When I made the OP, I had not idea how many users of this site were on dial-up. I figured the intelligent thing to do was to bring up the topic for discussion. I did not expect the 99% to change their ways to suit my whims. For all any of us know, perhaps the ratio of dial-uppers to DSL-ers is more like 75/25. Who knows unless someone raises the issue and intelligent discourse reveals the answer?

Please keep in mind that the first thing I attempted to do was set my preferences to display fewer posts per page. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be an option with this forum's software. I hoped that I had overlooked something and that by mentioning it someone would point the way to setting that preference.

I had no idea that folks disliked thumbnails. To me, they're the smart way to go and I like them. Alright, I admit I was wrong. Forget thumbnails.

There is one thing that posters could do to accommodate bandwidth-challenged members of this forum. It would only take two key strokes, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

It's this way. When posting pictures one needs to provide the URL of image source. When they do that all they'd have to do is copy it (Ctrl-C), then paste it into the text they include with the picture. (Ctrl-V) That way, the deprived can obtain each picture from the source.

Posters could do this act of kindness as a favor. It would get them their gold star for the day.

I am very grateful to those of you who made thoughtful and calm replies to this topic.

Best regards,

Orrin

 

[ksouers]

As for Internet bandwidth, I believe photographic images don't even show up on the radar when the trend now is to download HD movies, television shows, anything thru Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, DirectTV On Demand, etc. Now there's some bandwidth.

-T

Data is data. It all counts. Doesn't matter if it's a picture or a Word document or the latest Bruce Willis movie. The networks don't know the difference. It all counts because only one packet of data can reside on a line at any fraction of an instant in time. The next packet can't move till the first packet is cleared. It doesn't matter if it's DSL or dial-up.

The problem is infrastructure, we are using 40 year old technology to move data. The US is behind many other countries in regards to infrastructure. Our high end DSL runs about 6 meg with an average of about 2 meg, the average in South Korea is 9 meg. How did that happen?

That is because Micro$oft's slide show and viewing programs automatically resize those monsters down to fit the monitor.

Excellent point. Many browsers will also do the same. The point is that MORE information is being sent than is necessary or than will be used. It ends up being a waste of resources needlessly being transmitted. Do you Tivo television? I do. An hour program is really only 40 minutes. 20 minutes of air time, and disk space, is wasted to commercials. I just zip right through them. Sending too much data in the form of an oversized picture is the same thing.

With careful cropping the actual subject of the picture can be shown larger and in more detail than originally thought, yet still be contained in a much smaller file simply by getting rid of the unnecessary information.

Color depth is another area that can reduce file size. Personally, I have a bit of difficulty telling the difference between 24 bit and 32 bit color depth, but my network can simply because of the difference in the file sizes.

 

[Cedge]

Orrin
Your simple solution is both elegant and effective. By adding the URL for the photos, you'd still have linked access even if the page timed out before the images loaded.

I haven't forgotten the days when one had to code web sites to meet the requirements of as many as 8 different browsers. To say it was challenging would be an understatement of the highest order. While I never want to go back to those days, I'll have to admit your solution is worthy of being widely accepted. I'll concede the point and will try to remember to add them when I begin my next build log.

Been a LONG time since I've encountered the BW police......I would have thought they would have evolved their arguments a little more, over time. Still much the same stuff as it was back in the early 90's.

Steve

 

[Blogwitch]

Kevin,

I am on an ADSL2 line, which in theory can give 24 meg download speed, but that very rarely happens. It all depends on how far you are away from the telephone exchange. If you are say within 1/2 mile, you would get somewhere around 20megs, or like myself, who is on the outer limits of about 3 miles, I get between 5 and 7 megs download and a permanent 1 meg upload speed. When you first go online, they send the full speed to you, and measure how many dropped packages you get. Over the course of the first month, they gradually reduce the speed until you get no further dropped packets. It then remains around that speed all the time then, and even though I am on a high contention rate of about 30, it never falls below the lower figure of 5 megs.

But as I have said, even though big pictures don't affect me at all, I still try to get them as small as possible.

Bogs

 

[shred]

FWIW, since I sometimes research this kind of stuff for a living:

The internet 'backbones' are nowhere near capacity. There's 'dark fiber' all over the place unused. The limits are on the "last mile" to the user and occasionally across oceans or to individual ISPs.

In March 2009, 7% of US internet connections were via some sort of dial-up. That number went below 10% in early 2008 and is on a fairly slow, steady ramp down, but has slowed considerably in recent years (US Broadband only passed up dial-up as the #1 connection in late 2004)

China has the most broadband connections. Japan, Korea and France by far out-pace everybody else's broadband as far as average connection speed. Wireless bandwidth is going through the roof, but will start out limited to metro and high-population areas.

---

As all my pictures are hosted on my own server, sitting at the end of a noisy DSL, I try to keep my images a reasonable size. It hides the scratches too

As I mentioned earlier, there are also proxy servers out there that will auto-shrink images before shuttling them down a phone line to you if you're bandwidth-limited.

 

[Cedge]

Shred
My ISP tracking system also indicates the dial up connections are between 6 and 7% of the total. agree with the surplus you've noted. The choke points do tend to be much closer to the end user than the backbone.

I'm in the process of planning a revamp of my steam site. It was designed when the dominant screen size was 800 x600. With the much higher resolutions in use today, the site now looks tiny on screen and the 500 pixel photos are harder to see. I'm looking to add links to larger format images in the 800x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 ranges. I'm alos looking at adding (gasp) videos of the engines running. Yup.... I'm going to increase my BW usage and pray the web doesn't come to a crashing halt in the process.

Steve

 

[bearcar1]

Until the technology for fiber to the NID at the entrance to the structure (your home) becomes affordable the bottlenecks that are being encountered will continue to be an ever increasing problem. When the day finally arrives that we are able to affordably obtain that luxury, the end users will continue to stumble along at a snails pace, keeping the web's potential at a low percentage rate. Now, if the end users were to have such resources available to them, then the web would become more and more congested at the higher gateway levels due to the increase in bandwidth demand but then the throughput speeds should increase dramatically and the ISPs should be able to handle the higher transfer rates easier as the routers and such would not have to deal with as much compression/decompression at the source and destination addresses. I have been in subdivisions where there is a glass backbone already in place to the structure but it is not lit up because no company wishes to pay for the equipment to be installed at both ends of the glass so end users wind up using copper to the routers and that also keeps the transferal rates much slower.

BC1
Jim

 

[cobra428]

Jim,
What are you talking about fiber to the door? I have it. My town was the second beta site after Kaleen TX to get it from Verizon 5 years ago. Affordable $35 a month. All the phone you want $35 a month. TV basic $35 a month. If you go full bore $180 a month will do phone, int, and all the HD TV and other then you could imagine.

I'll never go to cable or sat again!

Tony

 

[bearcar1]

Man you must live in the 'high rent district', Tony. ;D Most locales do not have that, at least not here in the Chicagoland area. The latest and greatest here is AT&T's U-verse packages but that again is copper coaxial cable and quite pricey to boot. Fiber to the serving pedestals is spotty in some areas around here but glass to the door, I've not heard of it here. Always talk, but never any follow through.

BC1
Jim

 

[cobra428]

Jim,
I don't know about the high rent district but Kaleen TX had it for a year before us. Verizon waited a year after me to start spreading it around the rest of Long Island, then into the city.

I'm known as the pioneer by the techs. I was one of the first to get it. I called every day to find out when my CO will get it!

Cable and sat have been soiling their undies since. 10 cable commercials on TV to 1 FIOS.

This is FIOS this is Big! When you start to hear that it's coming. I'm really surprised that Chi town doesn't have it yet. Is Verizon around by you?

Tony

 

[doc1955]

Orrin
Your simple solution is both elegant and effective. By adding the URL for the photos, you'd still have linked access even if the page timed out before the images loaded.


Steve

Just a note when a photo time out and doesn't load just right click click copy location and open a new window past the copied location and you will be taken to the photo. Just because the url isn't listed it is there.
But I do agree photos should be down sized 72 resolution is all the higher you should go not 200 or even 300.
Another good optimizer is web-graphics optimizer but it isn't free that is the program I use and it works good.

 

[bearcar1]

Tony, Naperville is I believe the fourth or fifth largest city in the state of Illinois, pop. 115+K. Ameritech (what was once Illinois Bell, anyone still remember The Bell System?) went through this area and placed a fiber backbone for cable TV service but it was/is only to the local serving area X-box and not to the neighborhood pedestals, nothing is to the back of the structures. In my instance as well as other areas of the country, I believe that the infrastructure does not exist to that level even and if it does, like our metro area, there isn't enough support equipment installed in the wire center (CO) to support ISP service. No one wants to spend the $$$$$$, they just want to rape the communities for cable TV and phone services.

BC1
Jim