Image Dimensions For Fine Art Web Site?

[Lust4Life]

I've had a few friends mention to me that they wish I had posted larger dimension images on my web site.  Of late, basically Recent Work tab, I've been doing that as an experiment.  I've received no complaints about slow download from views so I think I'll enlarge all of the images on my site.

Question:
What has your experience proven to be the optimum size of an image to post on the web site - in inches please.
I'm posting at 72dpi resolution.

Thanks,
Jack

[feppe]

I've had a few friends mention to me that they wish I had posted larger dimension images on my web site.  Of late, basically Recent Work tab, I've been doing that as an experiment.  I've received no complaints about slow download from views so I think I'll enlarge all of the images on my site.

Question:
What has your experience proven to be the optimum size of an image to post on the web site - in inches please.
I'm posting at 72dpi resolution.

Thanks,
Jack

I updated my site a few months back and was faced with the same question. What I did was look at my server logs, and what resolution my visitors were using. Nearly 100% are at 1024x768 or higher. I designed the site to fit within the viewport of a maximized browser, and resampled my images to 800x600 so that they would comfortably fit inside the viewport.

The increased usage of widescreen monitors changes these numbers a bit. Just took a new look and more than 1/3 of my visitors have widescreen monitors. So being conservative in the vertical direction, and generous in the horizontal, might be prudent.

Another option would be to display the image at screen res, with option(s) for larger images below the image.

[amsp]

FYI, if a website is too big for someone's screen there is a nifty zoom in/out feature in browsers today (at least firefox) that scales the whole website.

[Carsten W]

FYI, if a website is too big for someone's screen there is a nifty zoom in/out feature in browsers today (at least firefox) that scales the whole website.

Most current browsers (all?) will scale an image which is too large to display, so that it fits the screen. The cursor turns into a '+' which can zoom the picture. This only works for viewing images directly though. Within a webpage, they still require scroll bars if they are too large. Personally, I use a max 600 dimension for blog entries, and 800 for normal viewing.

[feppe]

Most current browsers (all?) will scale an image which is too large to display, so that it fits the screen. The cursor turns into a '+' which can zoom the picture. This only works for viewing images directly though. Within a webpage, they still require scroll bars if they are too large. Personally, I use a max 600 dimension for blog entries, and 800 for normal viewing.

Good point. But the scaling is not good quality, and for anal-retentives like me it's not good enough...

I know IE and FF do, but does Safari auto-scale as well?

[Carsten W]

Good point. But the scaling is not good quality, and for anal-retentives like me it's not good enough...

I know IE and FF do, but does Safari auto-scale as well?

Yes, but your point is good: the scaling is quick-n-dirty, not high quality.

[Morgan_Moore]

While my website is good ol html I just offerend people different sceen sizes

those more motivated towards the best display could have a pile of different size images..

SMM COM

(go past the slide show)

S

[Alexandre Buisse]

Most current browsers (all?) will scale an image which is too large to display, so that it fits the screen. The cursor turns into a '+' which can zoom the picture. This only works for viewing images directly though. Within a webpage, they still require scroll bars if they are too large. Personally, I use a max 600 dimension for blog entries, and 800 for normal viewing.

That works only if the image is loaded directly in the address bar. Something I would really recommend against, as it is a pain to navigate between pictures in this way (you have to go backwards to the gallery and then select the next one).

The compromise I have finally found for dimensions is to use 900px as the maximum width and 750px as the maximum height (which with a normal ratio makes 900x600 and 500x750 images, or 12.5x8.3" and 6.9x10.4" at 72dpi). Provided that your website has a reasonable design, it's viewable without scroll by people browsing in 1024x768, except maybe a slight crop on portrait images, and still gives quite a lot of details. When I compare it to my earlier images of only 800 or 850px width, I really enjoy the extra real estate.

[amsp]

Guys, you are way off the mark here. I am NOT talking about when you load a photo directly in the addressbar, I am talking about zooming in or out on a website. In safari go in under "view" in the menu then "zoom". This will scale the ENTIRE website, and it works very well.

[Alexandre Buisse]

Guys, you are way off the mark here. I am NOT talking about when you load a photo directly in the addressbar, I am talking about zooming in or out on a website. In safari go in under "view" in the menu then "zoom". This will scale the ENTIRE website, and it works very well.

Well, the fact that no one knows what you are talking about should tell you about the probability that people will use this feature to navigate your website...

[Carsten W]

Well, the fact that no one knows what you are talking about should tell you about the probability that people will use this feature to navigate your website...

I do know what he is talking about (I believe that in Safari on a Mac laptop, Ctrl-two-fingers up on the touchpad accesses it directly), but the quality of the scaling is horrible. It is larger, but also more pixelated, edges are jaggy...

[thsinar]

Dear Carsten,

No, he means "Apple" "+" or "Apple" "-" to increase or decrease the size: the resolution is a lot better than by using "CTRL" "Finger Scroll Up".

Best regards,
Thierry

I do know what he is talking about (I believe that in Safari on a Mac laptop, Ctrl-two-fingers up on the touchpad accesses it directly), but the quality of the scaling is horrible. It is larger, but also more pixelated, edges are jaggy...

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I do know what he is talking about (I believe that in Safari on a Mac laptop, Ctrl-two-fingers up on the touchpad accesses it directly), but the quality of the scaling is horrible. It is larger, but also more pixelated, edges are jaggy...

Just to complete the Safari story, I'll report that on the Windows version "Zoom" is found in the "Window" menu, while the "View" menu has "Make text bigger", "Make text normal size", and "Make text smaller". These last three seem to do exactly what they say: they change the size of text while leaving images completely unchanged.

As for "Zoom", I'm not quite sure what the Apple folks have in mind. On my (Vista 32) system, when I choose "Zoom" while Safari is taking the whole screen, it chops the window to a little more than half width and slightly less than full height, but text and images do not change size at all (scroll bars appear). If I click "Zoom" again, the width adds a tiny amount, but the scaling doesn't change. After that, additional "Zooms" have no effect whatever. Pretty weird!

Opera has a nice scale-the-whole-content feature which you can evoke using the "+" and "-" keys on the numeric keyboard (doesn't work when focus is on a field looking for keyboard input), and numeric-keyboard-"*" takes you back to normal scale.

The scaling business seems to be so very much different browser to browser that I would never depend on it.

[Carsten W]

No, he means "Apple" "+" or "Apple" "-" to increase or decrease the size: the resolution is a lot better than by using "CTRL" "Finger Scroll Up".

That only works for text. It came up in the context of image size for a web page, so I thought he meant the zoom which works with images.

[ctz]

what about using autoviewer:
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/autoviewer/app/
this example features pretty small pics (you may want to use larger ones), but try to reduce your browser window (as for smaller resolution display) and something cool is happening. the image shrinks (or expands). and very smooth.
also, if you use larger (and heavier) images they are loaded in background, so no worry about lower bandwith.
a simplified version is present in lightroom web gallery module.

hth