Website: Image sizing for best viewing quality/fastest viewing tradeoff?

[Dinarius]

Just wondering if, when it comes to sizing, and choosing the quality of Jpegs for their websites,  people have metrics that they stick to?

1. What size (on the long side) do you tend to use?

2. What Jpeg quality in Photoshop (or wherever) do you tend to choose? 8? 10? 12?

3. Do you take viewing platform into consideration? (Computer screen, iPad, phone, etc.)

4. Anything else I should be considering?

Thanks.

D.

[john beardsworth]

It depends on the web site's characteristics. Do you already have a site or are you using something like Smugmug or ZenFolio or whatever?

[BobShaw]

I think the best advise is to use what the website recommends.
As for point 3 "Do you take viewing platform into consideration?" Absolutely. It is the most important thing. Grab the bottom left corner on your website and drag it as small as mobile phone. If it doesn't display correctly get a new "responsive" website.

If all else fails you can just visit Google PageSpeed Insights and they will make new images for you. They tend to get a bit carried away though.

[elliot_n]

I recently started making a test site with Squarespace. They recommend uploading jpegs 2,500 pixels wide. That's much bigger than what I'm used to, but I guess it's necessary for optimal presentation on retina displays (?)

[Farmer]

I recently started making a test site with Squarespace. They recommend uploading jpegs 2,500 pixels wide. That's much bigger than what I'm used to, but I guess it's necessary for optimal presentation on retina displays (?)

Not just Retina.  My Surface is 3000x2000, so more and more products need larger files to display 1:1 full screen.  Even phones and tablets are pretty much a minimum of 1080 and getting larger.  My S7 is 2560 pixels wide, for example.

[BobShaw]

If you use big files then Google will penalise you. Often recommending big files means buying more server space so you need to look at who is recommending it. At the end of the day most people (70% or more) are using a small screen.

[DougDolde]

I size mine for 5K monitors. 2880 pixels high. My host service www.photodeck.com detects the monitor resolution and serves the right size image to fit.

[Stephen Ray]

4. Anything else I should be considering?

Your first consideration might be your preference of what you want, or don’t want, photo pirates to do with your property. What size print would you like them to make? From a 2k*3k file one may sometimes print a decent 20 x30 inch poster.