Can we increase the photo size limit, please?

[Malcolm Schweizer]

When I ran a PHPBB board for wood surfboard building, I paid $25 a year for a website with unlimited image hosting, and so I turned up the image posting limit. It cost me zero extra dollars, and people loved the ability to post images without hassle.

Can an we bump up the image posting limit to 5MB each so we don't have to resize photos? Even iPhone images are too big for the current limit. I just documented a project thoroughly and took care to set the camera for the least resolution, but still my images are too big.

Many thanks for considering it.

[Dan Hintz]

Can an we bump up the image posting limit to 5MB each so we don't have to resize photos?

A 5MB photo can potentially be HUGE on any mortal-sized monitor... scrollbars suck, so the forum had better be able to resize on the fly to prevent a 10-line paragraph of text becoming one single line that is 10 screens wide. Forums should limit image dimensions while still providing a large enough file size limit to allow for quality images. Limiting to file size only is a half-solution. I do not know what this particular forum is set up for, however...

[Art Mann]

There is always the possibility of providing a link to full resolution photos that are hosted somewhere else.

[Keith Outten]

Links to pictures that are hosted elsewhere become a problem when the pictures are no longer available. Threads often become useless when this happens and it can cause problems for us with the search engines and cause the demise of SawMill Creek when we have an undesirable number of broken links.

We host over one quarter million file attachments, most are pictures. Imagine the hard drive capacity we would have to have if we allowed five meg files. Secondly the bandwidth necessary to transfer such a large file would bankrupt our service as we would have to triple our server capacity without benefit of the funds to pay for the additional costs.

We host between 40 to 60 thousand unique visitors per day and our transfer statistics are huge, we also average between 15 to 20 million page views per month and although we do have a number of Contributors the majority of our funding comes from advertising. It is impossible for us to fund these kind of changes as long as the majority of our Members and all of our visitors use The Creek for free.
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[Phil Thien]

Maybe the system parameters could be adjusted so very large photos could at least be uploaded before they're resized to whatever you guys feel like storing?

What I'm suggesting is taking a survey of cameras built into phones and figuring out the maximum resolution you would expect to see. Set upload limits to accommodate that size, but then resize it down to the maximum you want to store.

I imagine most of your traffic is outbound, so I don't think this would create a traffic issue as this data would be inbound. There would be some processing involved in the resizing, but I doubt there would be too many simultaneous uploads of giant photos, so maybe it would be tolerable?

[Myk Rian]

A 5MB photo can potentially be HUGE on any mortal-sized monitor... scrollbars suck, so the forum had better be able to resize on the fly to prevent a 10-line paragraph of text becoming one single line that is 10 screens wide.

Not to mention the entire thread expands to that width. Really makes things ugly.

I have no problem resizing pictures. Those that do either need to use a resizer that keeps both images available, or not upload.
Many say they are not computer literate, but it really is a simple process to resize.

[Phil Thien]

Not to mention the entire thread expands to that width. Really makes things ugly.

I have no problem resizing pictures. Those that do either need to use a resizer that keeps both images available, or not upload.
Many say they are not computer literate, but it really is a simple process to resize.

I'm torn. I agree that resizing is a simple process. OTOH, I seem to know so many people incapable of real simple processes.

Kind of a funny world we live in, you know. That is, knowing the difference between restarting and shutting down a PC makes you a bit of a Mensan.

[Mike Henderson]

I can well understand the need to limit the size of pictures. Even if the creek allowed very large pictures to be uploaded and then the creek resized them, bandwidth is used to transfer the pictures, and CPU cycles are used to do the resize. Asking people to resize before uploading is not too much to ask. Most pictures can be resized to 800 by 600 and will convey information quite well.

Mike

[Phil Thien]

I can well understand the need to limit the size of pictures. Even if the creek allowed very large pictures to be uploaded and then the creek resized them, bandwidth is used to transfer the pictures, and CPU cycles are used to do the resize. Asking people to resize before uploading is not too much to ask. Most pictures can be resized to 800 by 600 and will convey information quite well.

Mike

For some people, it might be.

SMC's pipe is probably hugely unbalanced, the traffic going out is multiples of what is coming in. I don't think bandwidth would be a problem.

CPU utilization certainly could be, but there just aren't that many people simultaneously posting threads with pictures. I honestly don't think the CPU ticks would be a problem, either. But I admit this is a variable.

If there would be a performance hit or some cost, I'd agree that users should be required to resize pics.

OTOH, if it is a feature that could be improved without any consequences, and would make some SMC users happy (and I'd be one of them, it would save me a step), then I don't see any reason why not.

Save for possible technical reasons, that is. I know the SMF software I use for my forum allows me to allow users to upload enormous photos that get resized. I don't know if vbulletin can do the same thing. I was just reading a thread that sort of indicated that maybe it can't. It which case, the entire point is moot.

[Art Mann]

The problem that I most often see is that people will upload a picture the size of a thumbnail and you can't tell anything about it.

[Phil Thien]

The problem that I most often see is that people will upload a picture the size of a thumbnail and you can't tell anything about it.

Yeah I see that a lot, too.

Based on that, though, I think it is safe to assume a lot of users do struggle w/ resizing. The pic may have started way too big, and in an effort to resize it, they made it way too small.

And there are certainly people that try to post pics that are too large that just give-up and say "the heck with it."

[M Toupin]

While I'm sure there's concerns about server load and band width, it's just plain inconsiderate to upload 5 megapixel (or larger) pictures. The screen stretch issue has already been mentioned, but more importantly is the impact on download speeds. While many of us are fortunate to have high speed connections with unlimited download, many folks are less fortunate. Many, especially in the rural areas, are on low speed or even dial-up connections and/or have download limits. To expect folks to spend minutes downloading just one mega pic and to pay for the data on top of it is not friendly.

The considerate thing to do is resize your pics. It's not difficult, download Picture Resizer, rename the exe to PhotoResize800.exe and just drop the picture, or even an entire folder full of pictures on the icon. It automatically resizes the pic to 800 pixels wide leaving the original in tact. Takes all of 1 click and about a second.

Mike

[Phil Thien]

While I'm sure there's concerns about server load and band width, it's just plain inconsiderate to upload 5 megapixel (or larger) pictures. The screen stretch issue has already been mentioned, but more importantly is the impact on download speeds. While many of us are fortunate to have high speed connections with unlimited download, many folks are less fortunate. Many, especially in the rural areas, are on low speed or even dial-up connections and/or have download limits. To expect folks to spend minutes downloading just one mega pic and to pay for the data on top of it is not friendly.

The considerate thing to do is resize your pics. It's not difficult, download Picture Resizer, rename the exe to PhotoResize800.exe and just drop the picture, or even an entire folder full of pictures on the icon. It automatically resizes the pic to 800 pixels wide leaving the original in tact. Takes all of 1 click and about a second.

Mike

I don't think anyone is advocating giant pics in threads. The question is whether the vbulletin software can be configured to automatically resize giant photos, and whether that would have any negative impact on system performance.

If the resizing step could be eliminated w/o consequence, we'd likely benefit as users because we'd see pics from people that may be very good woodworkers that either can't figure out how (or won't bother to) resize photos.

[Myk Rian]

I installed Image Resizer. https://imageresizer.codeplex.com/
To use it, go to where you store the picture you want to upload. RIGHT click the filename. Select RESIZE PICTURES from the list. Choose the size you want.
The result will be another picture with a name like Img_0105 (Small)
That is the one you choose to upload.
Really. What's so hard about that?

[Phil Thien]

Really. What's so hard about that?

(1) You have to download/install software. Download it from one of the wrong download sites, you get malware with it.
(2) You have to know an appropriate size. Someone may go too small, pics look like carp. Someone could try too large, have to start all over.
(3) You now have to copies of the same image.

Why do you guys think eBay and Craigslist (and others) are making their systems auto-size images? Answer: They're trying to appeal to the largest possible user base.

Again, I will just go on record as saying I don't know vbulletin can do this. I sort of suspect it cannot, otherwise I think Keith would have it turned on already.