3 gripes with photo attachments

1) The limit on 900px width seems unnecessary. Having to down sample every photo means that useful detail in the photos are lost and it's also a pain for the user. The ideal would be able to upload any size (say up to 5000px on any edge) and then have the forum software make a smaller version for display in line with text with the ability to see the larger one upon clicking.

2) The limit on the number of photos to 5 means that you have to make multiple posts to document something. This inhibits users from making detailed long-form posts and creates unnecessary scrolling if they have to spread it out over several posts.

3) The lack of ability to show the text and photos in an alternating fashion makes it difficult to caption photos and clearly convey an idea.

The only other option I can see to get around this is to use a third party image hosting service. This is great for doing all of the above however it's not a good long term option. Open and thread older than a few years and you'll see that half of the linked images no longer show up.

((The following comments are by myself as a user... i'm not in any way associated with the forum owners/runners. (other than as a happy "customer"). They're simply to convey some of the "why it's (probably) done that way" issues. ))

mad max said:

1) The limit on 900px width seems unnecessary. Having to down sample every photo means that useful detail in the photos are lost and it's also a pain for the user. The ideal would be able to upload any size (say up to 5000px on any edge) and then have the forum software make a smaller version for display in line with text with the ability to see the larger one upon clicking.

Click to expand...

The problem is excessive storage volume (sikwan's providing the disk space you're asking to consume in *squared* amounts... an 1800 pixel image (instead of 900) eats four times the storage.
Which also means four time the data transfer "costs" (speed or payment for the folks who have charges (or limits) on their monthly consumption (quite common)).
*My* solution (similar to yours) would be for the forum software to automatically downsize too-big images... but not necessarily save the 5000 pixel original (26 times the disk space of a 900 pixel).
Send it a 5400 pixel image and it would create the 900 pixel rendition.
The 900 is so that the entire page sizes properly for a 1024- or 1280-wide screen
If you use a 3rd party image source, you can end up creating a very wide (hence buttons and such get pushed off-screen) page, which is a pain to navigate.
Just from a user standpoint: it's really difficult to find a tiny high-detail-required bit of a huge image... providing a low res wide-shot with a 2nd full-res "outsert" of the needed detail is far more reader-friendly.

2) The limit on the number of photos to 5 means that you have to make multiple posts to document something. This inhibits users from making detailed long-form posts and creates unnecessary scrolling if they have to spread it out over several posts.

Click to expand...

Some of us are over-wordy(i am guilty as charged), i suspect some might prove over-imagery(ditto).

3) The lack of ability to show the text and photos in an alternating fashion makes it difficult to caption photos and clearly convey an idea.

Click to expand...

???
You certainly can interweave text and images, just drop the paperclip's menu to insert any specific image right *here* in the flow. Thusly:

This would be the caption for the above grabbed-at-random image.
(that said, it took me a few months to finally figure out how to do that, instead of having all of the loaded images appear after my signature. The Test Area is your friend.)
Here is the "How to post photos" thread: https://sprinter-source.com/forums/showthread.php?t=467
The "how to insert *here* and interweave" is discussed as the bottom chunk of message 1.

The only other option I can see to get around this is to use a third party image hosting service. This is great for doing all of the above however it's not a good long term option. Open and thread older than a few years and you'll see that half of the linked images no longer show up.

Click to expand...

Thus placing the cost burden of "supporting" big images on the original poster, which is kind'a fair, given the price we (as users) are paying for Sprinter-Forum's existence.

--dick

mad max said:

1) The limit on 900px width seems unnecessary. Having to down sample every photo means that useful detail in the photos are lost and it's also a pain for the user. The ideal would be able to upload any size (say up to 5000px on any edge) and then have the forum software make a smaller version for display in line with text with the ability to see the larger one upon clicking.

Click to expand...

The width limit is actually a good thing. It limits the need for horizontal scrolling, which is a huge pain. There was a recent thread by user mountainhick, in which he was documenting his build with many large images. He noted that there was almost no response and he wondered if he should bother. Several users replied that although interested in his build, the large photos were a negative. He resized them and now has a following.

Lack of resolution is almost always due to poor cropping choices, not lack of pixels. Much better to have several smaller images at the needed resolution than one large one that must be scrolled.

mad max said:

2) The limit on the number of photos to 5 means that you have to make multiple posts to document something. This inhibits users from making detailed long-form posts and creates unnecessary scrolling if they have to spread it out over several posts.

Click to expand...

The limit does seem arbitrary but is not really a big problem. The need to use multiple posts, while a bit clunky, does not contribute to increased scrolling. The vertical overhead of a post is nothing compared to the vertical extent of 5 images. Lots of pictures means lots of scrolling, regardless of how they are organized.

After six years on this forum, I would say that user inhibition is not a problem, though lack of it sometimes is.

mad max said:

3) The lack of ability to show the text and photos in an alternating fashion makes it difficult to caption photos and clearly convey an idea.

Click to expand...

Alternating text and photos is trivial. I've done it. Many others have done it. Just insert the text between the image references.

-----
Overall, the image support here is only so-so, but compared to the effort of creating high quality content, pretty far down the list. I don't know much about vBulletin, but perhaps our host could comment on which things are wired into the software and which are site specific parameters that can be easily changed.

An alternate way of interweaving your text and photos:
(a) create your post, and upload the photos.
(b) SUBMIT the post (the photos will appear at the bottom)
(c) now EDIT the post (advanced mode not required)
(d) scroll down to the bottom, and there's the "mark-up" for the attached photos.
(e) cut-and-paste those mark-up lines into their correct positions in the textual body of the post.
(f) submit/save the edited post.

--dick (who always thinks of something else to change or add after posting (did i mention "over-wordy"?))

I recently learned how to mix the text with the photos. Wish I could go back to my build thread and rearrange some text with the photos.

i second mad max, 900 pix many times has diluted the detail that the picture needs to be usefuli would increase that one third more.

Dick,
On storage and image sizes. I will observe your point that increasing image sizes places larger demands on the infrastructure and operating costs of running this forum. If it's being run out of someone's personal rack space then I give them a lot of credit for even attempting this. Are donations accepted anywhere here? I find this forum quite useful and I'd be happy to help support the costs of running it, especially since I'm blocking the ads.

On inserting text between photos, thank you for explaining that. I should have RTFM

Charlie,
I see your point about not having pictures so large that you need to scroll around to get through them. In the case of mountainhick's thread I think the issue there was that the large photos were not automatically resizing for users browser windows. I don't know jack about computer programming other than it is possible to do it because tons of other websites and even some forums will automatically resize images to fit. I never had issues when looking through mountinhick's thread so I think it may have been a browser-related problem? I've been using Chrome v46.0

High resolution screens are becoming really common. Even a $400 iPad has a screen that's 1563 x 2048 pixels.

N.B. that there is NOT a limit of five photos/post. The limit is uploading five photos while posting. If the photos are already uploaded (or remotely hosted), you can insert as many as you like, using the "image" button.

When I need more than five images in a post, I upload them to an album (see the "User CP" link). You can put lots of images in an album (although, strangely, you can only upload 3 at a time). The link to each image is available in the album--you can cut and paste any number of them into your post.

I could use a little help in discovering an easy way to resize photos from an iPad for posting on this forum. The search block didn't turn up anything specific.

Thanks, Gary

I seem to have reached my number of photos limit. Help...

GaryJ said:

I could use a little help in discovering an easy way to resize photos from an iPad for posting on this forum. The search block didn't turn up anything specific.

Thanks, Gary

Click to expand...

This works for me: http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDownload.htm


http://download.cnet.com/FastStone-Photo-Resizer/3000-2192_4-10319476.html

mad max said:

1) The limit on 900px width seems unnecessary. Having to down sample every photo means that useful detail in the photos are lost and it's also a pain for the user. The ideal would be able to upload any size (say up to 5000px on any edge) and then have the forum software make a smaller version for display in line with text with the ability to see the larger one upon clicking.

Click to expand...

The 900px limit is mainly due to scrolling, as someone had mentioned. Do you know how long it takes to upload and process a 5000px wide photo? If you do one picture locally, it wouldn't be too bad. Try doing 5-10 photos at that resolution.

In addition, not all of us have fast internet while traveling. I may have up to 90MB download at home (but 5MB upload), but it will still take time to process the 5000px wide picture down to 900px (or less depending on screen size) on the server side, before it reaches your screen. If I had slow internet (<2MB sometimes), do you know how long it would take before I can see any 5000px wide pictures?

For the resize, are you talking about thumbnails? We turned that off because we wanted inline photos.

mad max said:

2) The limit on the number of photos to 5 means that you have to make multiple posts to document something. This inhibits users from making detailed long-form posts and creates unnecessary scrolling if they have to spread it out over several posts.

Click to expand...

This limit is for download bandwidth per page. 5 pictures / post, with 10 posts / page equals (up to) 50 photos. Let's say we made the limit to 20 pictures per posts and everyone replying to the thread posted 20 pictures each (up to 5000px). Do you know what it would do for users (downloading) and the server (processing)?

mad max said:

3) The lack of ability to show the text and photos in an alternating fashion makes it difficult to caption photos and clearly convey an idea.

Click to expand...

I think we already have this.

mad max said:

The only other option I can see to get around this is to use a third party image hosting service. This is great for doing all of the above however it's not a good long term option. Open and thread older than a few years and you'll see that half of the linked images no longer show up.

Click to expand...

I agree with this. I would like nothing more than to have everyone upload their write-up pictures here, but there are limits.

MY method for best post pictures: Take at maximum camera resolution. Crop to just the important information. Re-size to 640.

lukedog said:

I seem to have reached my number of photos limit. Help...

Click to expand...

What is the number of photo limit? Help. Please

lukedog said:

What is the number of photo limit? Help. Please

Click to expand...

Well, I have an album with 59 pictures in it and it says that I have 1 remaining.

OTOH, I just created an empty test album. It says that I have 41 remaining.

Either there is both a per-album and also a per-user limit, or the display is flakey.

I wasn't aware of a photo limit. There are long threads like Geeks that have tons of photos. Is he remote linking them? Nothing more frustrating than having to go to a remote site to view pictures especially when traveling and poor internet speeds or to find out the account is closed.

Another frustrating trend is threads to promote remote blogs. Does that hurt or help with advertising revenues of this site. I will be quiet now.

Somewhere in the forum docs i thought i saw a "300 attachments" limit, but i KNOW i've vastly exceeded that.
If i look at some of my ancient postings, the images still seem to be there.

Your "user control panel" lets you list the attachments you've uploaded (for "handy" re-use??)

--dick