How to make your photos look better on “The Photo” 😊

Get a new camera? learn new composition methods?
well maybe, but that’s not what this post is about 😉

…One of the features, here on DPRevived, is that it is fairly easy to upload and post your image into any thread. The result is a fairly small automatically generated thumbnail picture that has a somewhat reduced size and also the contrast seems reduced too. If you click on the image then you can see it bigger, but you have to download it to see its full quality.

There is however a way to make it easier for the viewer to see your photo bigger, and let its true glory shine out, without the viewer having to click or download 😊

I’ve been testing a special image upload method on DPRevived for a while now, and it has worked very well, it also has been approved for use by the admins.

The problem is that it’s a bit more tricky to use, compared to the standard easy to use "automatic thumbnail generation" method, but you might want to try it anyway, and see if it works for you.

Here’s an image with the standard upload method

And here is the same image again with the special upload method

You can see how it already looks bigger & sharper, and just one click on the image will open the full resolution image.
This works great on a PC monitor, but on a phone display they will just look the same size but it does have a better resolution

The next post shows how to use this method

How to upload and display a bigger image, using a special text

As already mentioned, this is a bit tricky, and somewhat more time consuming!
Basically, you have to upload your image first in the normal way then use a modified HTTP code to display it bigger.

Follow the 3 STEPS:

Step 1)
in the normal way, use the up-arrow to upload, then, as usual, click on the insert-into-message button to make the thumbnail image.
Now copy this following special text into your message

and then click the preview button

Step 2)
In the preview mode click on the image this will open a new tab.
Open that new tab and copy the URL from the new tab then go back to Edit mode

Step 3)
In Edit mode paste this URL twice in the special text to replace those 2 xxx in the special link
Don’t forget to remove the code that made the original thumbnail

You can now test that it is looking fine before posting, by using the preview button, then as usual, click on
Post reply

... let me know how/if this works for you :-)

Thanks to Fireplace33 for explaining a method to display our images more large (and to me, much better looking).

I first saw a variation of the method used by our mate nannodanno. Before I knew how to achieve it (thanks Arvo), I was quite annoyed that our antagonist could display far better looking images than the rest of us.

However, I am at a loss to understand the reluctance to change when we are supposed to be a photography site.

We have spent months going back and forth discussing how to improve the site to attract new members. I am quite sure that many photographers with just average ability, who are looking to expand their online opportunities, will look at the current view and walk away. Most want to see their and others' images with a reasonable size and resolution.

An example:

Compare the two initial views of the Darter on the post. (The same applies to the Woodswallow)

www.dpreview.com/forums/post/68085075

dprevived.com/t/discovered-a-new-lake-with-a-few-birds/6757/

Even while they are the same display size, the loss of detail / sharpness in the one on this site leaves a lot to be desired.

The DPR one makes me want to click on it and view more large. The one here is flat, looks OOF and doesn't really inspire further investigation.

We don't need to display the initial image full size nor full res, but at least at a resolution that doesn't degrade the image too much.

I quite like the size of the alternative method and would encourage everyone to use it.

Hi David, You're right. This method, as described, produces an image that has the same good quality as when viewing the hi res version that is saved on the servers.

The difference is, with this method, that "good quality" is available without any effort by the viewer, that would otherwise need to make extra clicks & manually download the images one by one to see the good quality.
I have heard that people don't always, or in some cases hardly ever, view the fully enlarged images, and just look at the thumbs in the threads.
So that means they are left to view and comment on images with a tiny size of only 60kB and so miss out on the quality of the images, .... and that can lead to people getting the impression that the photos are generally not displayed particular well on our dedicated photo site.
Please see also my reply to Arvo below.

Thanks Arvo, this is pointing the way to a good workable solution that we can find to make the site look more attractive to photographers.

As we discussed yesterday, a full res image is large and could slow down the delivery for people with slower, or metered conections. The full res image is anyway saved on the servers so it is not a question of storage space, just a question of speed. Personally, I notice no difference at all in the loading speed with my connection to internet, but others might.

Please consider that the images shown on Whatsapp are known to be of a fairly poor quality, and they have a size of between 200kB and 500kB.
So the 60kB thumbnails that we see on our dedicated photo site which only have 60kB are really really tiny, even in comparison to Whatsapp :-(

Arvo mentioned we can certainly find a good compromise here; one that improves the size and resolution of what we see in the threads without causing any considerable impact for those people with a slow connection.
We do not need the full resolution (like 8MB as in my example!), although the possibility of using the method as I described above is still available and allowed for anyone that wants to use it.

The advantage of changing the default thumbnail size as Arvo suggested, is that better looking images become available to everyone immediately with zero effort for both the poster and the viewer :-)

Changing the settings (size and resolution) that create the thumbnails would also be a fairly easy thing to program.
I think it was Bob that said we want a site that presents and focusses on good quality images!

Arvo also mentioned that, theoretically, there could also be another possibility to add a setting in a user's profile that would allow the user to choose how the images are displayed in the threads (on his/her monitor) to make everyone happy:
-smaller, low res images , faster loading, or
-bigger, hi-res images, slower loading
but this would be a lot of programming to implement and so not (easily) possible to do at the moment.

The compromise of making better looking, default, thumbs bigger than the tiny 60KB seems like a good, and easy, way to go.

...hoping for a fairly quick improvment for us all :-)

I said that knowing that not many would bother to use it. And sans any better solution.

But you left out my previous sentence : "We don't need to display the initial image full size nor full res, but at least at a resolution that doesn't degrade the image too much."

Which I believe is also something you prefer, and well covered by Fireplace in his subsequent post above. I would be happy enough with that and would then say don't use the method described. Because we would all be on a level playing field of nice grass.

But I am going to take it further now. The site is supposedly to discuss images. So a question: Of all the people who participate in C&C and the weekly discussion threads, who only relies on the thumbnail and who views the images full screen?

I don't have a super fast connection and sometimes it can be quite slow. But if I am participating in one of the threads, I always view the images full screen - so I suffer any slow downloads.

Not knowing how Misago is set up, it could be something in the code that Martin would need to change, or it could be an admin setting. Either way it is not a lot of work. Even establishing a user preference setting is not much work.

Looks like we are heading in the right direction :-)

Just to expand on this:

Assuming the Misago code is reasonably well put together, there is probably just one line of code that would need to be changed. Even if it was not so well designed code, there might be a few places that need the change. But a simple search should find them.

Thanks 👍

Test:

Got it to work! It's important that the "url= ... [/url]" is all typed in a single line. I first tried two lines (I'm not the brightest candle in the church) and it didn't work. Then the duh god spoke to me and said it has to be all on one line (followed by a really condescending "Duh" quip, which I thought was totally unnecessary, but that's how gods are, I guess), so I tried it, and it worked.

By the way, my 2100 x 1400 uploaded file is just 1.16 MB, and I'm sure the thumbnail file is significantly smaller (as it's a lot less than 2100 x 1400). So, I'm not sure what's going on with the talk of 8 MB files. Regardless of the size of the uploaded file, wouldn't the thumbnail be well under 1 MB?

Worse when it happens with a woman. 😁

More seriously, really? Wow! So why does it take so long? I'm guessing it's loading in the photo I uploaded and then downsampling it to the display size. If so, why not do the downsampling when it's uploaded rather than when it's displayed? That is, when you upload a photo, The Photo stores the uploaded photo (which is what is displayed when clicked on) and the thumbnail (and I'd make the thumbnails fit into an 800x800 window, which is a tad larger than what is displayed above).

When I resampled the photo I uploaded as a 95% jpg to 800x538, it was only 168K, which is 14% the size of the photo I uploaded. Assuming proportional display times, that would take your 5 seconds down to 0.7 seconds for a [slightly] larger photo than what I uploaded (and take up 14% more disk space on The Photo). Is this an issue with regards to coding, time, or memory? Or is it just something that only a select few want?

Hi Alan,
If the 1.16MB image from GreatBustard takes 5 whole seconds to load where you are right now, then that is an incredibly slow internet connection and IMO shouldn’t be taken as the norm here.

After discussions with Arvo, it seems like the direction we are going will benefit everyone giving better quality displayed images, with no extra effort needed by the poster!
The poster would just upload in the normal way and the "preview" images would be displayed bigger, better and less compressed.

It would no longer be needed to use the, admittedly rather complicated, method I posted about in this thread to see a decent image in the thread.

At the moment, the images shown on DPRevived in our threads have a poor quality with an image size of only 60kB! That is absolutely tiny compared to most modern displays, monitors, cameras and other websites. The displayed images here have only 500 pixels along one side which is also tiny, resulting in low quality, low res, blurry, low contrast images!

DPReview shows a better quality in their forum threads with preview images having 1120 pixels on one side and a bigger image size.
Why should "ThePhoto", a dedicated image website, show smaller, worse images than DPReview ?

As to the speed issue, for people with incredibly slow connections, if there really are lots of complaints about speed, then maybe in the future there could be a setting programmed into in the user’s viewing profile where he/she can choose between:
-tiny preview images, displayed fast
-bigger, better images, displayed somewhat slower

Arvo is currently experimenting with different sized previews and different compression settings. I’m optimistic that we’ll see something better.

Congrats on getting it to work :-)
Looks much better than the normal small thumbnail preview images here on DPRevived.
Once you've seen how it works, it is quite straight forward to use.

By the way, the 8MB talk was about my original image in this thread, that was sort of like a medium to worse case with 4128 x 2752 pixels and not much compression.
The better alternative is, as discussed in the previous post just now, would be automatically generated, better quality preview images that would be a lot smaller than that, and would mean no extra effort for the poster. This could be achieved by the admins with a one time change of the preview image settings.

I applaud any and all work being done to get us better quality "preview" images on the site. Much needed.