"For sale" photos July 25, 2005, 08:10:49 am Yahoo Message Number: 56090Folks, we're running into a serious space problem with uploaded photos. Yahoo only gives us 30 MB to store photos in, and as of this morning we were at capacity--full up! The immediate cause was that a single member had uploaded 7 MB (!) of photos of a rig for sale. But after deleting that folder and taking a look at others, I found that in some cases individual images as large as 700K had been uploaded to folders in the Photos area. Now, normally when this happens, we moderators go in and delete just the "full size" versions of the photos, in order to save space. Unfortunately, Yahoo makes it very cumbersome and time-consuming for us to do this, so we don't always keep on top of things--as in this case. Ideally, we'd prefer that you don't upload anything bigger than 50K, because otherwise we rapidly run out of space. But we don't have any way to enforce that--no way to set up a warning that says "Sorry, no files over 50K can be accepted"--so we keep getting these monster uploads and then having to go in and do a bunch of time-consuming housekeeping. I'm afraid we may have to simply make a rule against posting "For sale" photos here, since those seem to be the ones that most often break the bank. ;-) There are lots of other places online where you can upload your photos--Yahoo has individual photo sharing areas, and there's Ofoto, Shutterfly, Geocities, etc. About all we can do is plead with you to send large images--or large folders of images-- elsewhere, because we just don't have room for them here. Sorry, folks, but those are the constraints Yahoo places on us...and as I often remind myself, we're not paying them anything for this service, so we don't have much leverage when it comes to asking for more features or more space.Andy Baird
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] "For sale" photos Reply #1 – July 25, 2005, 12:02:41 pm Yahoo Message Number: 56097At 12:09 PM 7/25/2005 +0000, you wrote:QuoteFolks, we're running into a serious space problem with uploaded photos. Yahoo only gives us 30 MB to store photos in, and as of this morning we were at capacity--full up! The immediate cause was that a single member had uploaded 7 MB (!) of photos of a rig for sale. But after deleting that folder and taking a look at others, I found that in some cases individual images as large as 700K had been uploaded to folders in the Photos area. Here's a thought...use compression programs that drop those puppies from 1-2M to less than 50K. I use Hemera NetGraphics Optimizer, but I'm sure there are others. In fact, these days, they are probably included with most photo editing programs, scanners (that's where mine came from), etc. Not only do huge photo sizes clog the web page, they sometimes make email delivery bog down completely. This has happened to me (as a recipient) several times. So please check photo sizes before sending mail or uploading files. Even that 7M killer could probably be reduced to postcard size, optimized, and sent on its way for well under 1K.Sonsie
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] "For sale" photos Reply #2 – July 25, 2005, 01:08:26 pm Yahoo Message Number: 56100In actuality, jpg files are already compressed. Maybe you're referring to resizing, which definitely makes a difference. A 750k file from your camera can be resized to 600 X 450 dropping the file size to 80k. 1/10th of original without losing quality. Increase the jpg compression and it'll drop even further. This is the Internet, not an art studio. (g) Big enuff and good enuff to see what's needed.DonQuoteHere's a thought...use compression programs that drop those puppies from 1-2M to less than 50K. I use Hemera NetGraphics Optimizer, but I'm sure there are others. In fact, these days, they are probably included with most Quotephoto editing programs, scanners (that's where mine came from), etc.Not only do huge photo sizes clog the web page, they sometimes make email delivery bog down completely. This has happened to me (as a recipient) Quoteseveral times. So please check photo sizes before sending mail or uploading files. Even that 7M killer could probably be reduced to postcard size,Quoteoptimized, and sent on its way for well under 1K.Sonsie
Re: "For sale" photos Reply #3 – July 25, 2005, 03:04:27 pm Yahoo Message Number: 56104"Use compression programs that drop those puppies from 1-2M to less than 50K." Thanks for the suggestion, Sonsie. All the files uploaded to the Photos section are already compressed JPEGs. Of course, JPEG file size can vary quite a bit depending on the level of compression applied...but from looking at the excessively large image files we've gotten, it's clear that compression isn't the problem. Resolution is. People sometimes upload files that are thousands of pixels on a side--two or even three-megapixel files straight from the digital camera. We don't have room for these. If people would stick to 450 x 300 pixels or smaller, there'd be no need to ever have files bigger than 50K. All graphics software has the ability to 'resample' an image to whatever pixel resolution you want; just choose a size that no larger than 450 x 300 pixels and you'll be doing your part for truth, justice and American Way. ;-) Add JPEG compression quality of about 5 or 6 on a scale of 10, and you'll end up with excellent-looking images and small files. As for "for-sale" photos...another problem is that these are transitory in nature, usually only needed for a few weeks...but they rarely get deleted after a rig is sold, so they tend to pile up over time...meaning still more work for us poor unpaid moderators. ;-) That's another reason to put them on some other photo-sharing site, not here.Andy Baird