I need some help with photographs ...

[Smiles]

I'm by no means an expert on this problem, and need some advice. I'm sure it's out there!


My 2 latest photo albums in "My Pictures" (on my hard drive) are named Thailand_2005 and Thailand_2006. I've been able to upload all the photos I want to into my Sawatdee Album from Thailand_06 with no problem.

But my attempts to upload any photos from the Thailand_2005 album are refused by the Sawatdee Forum software ( I get a message which says the photo file is too large, or the file is corrupted ). Well, the photos are not corrupted, but it looks like they are too large. The Album 'byte' limit is 200,000 and all the photos in Thailand_2005 are over that limit.

The fundamental difference between the photos in the 2 albums is this: The 2005 photos were taken on an old fashioned film camera . . . the 2006 photos were all taken on a nice shiny new digital camera.

Although all of the photos in both albums are 'around' the same physical size (i.e. the 800X600 thing for easy viewing on the screen), by "byte" size the digitals are all under the 200,000 byte limit, whilst the film shots are all in the 200,001 to 400,000 byte area . . . too big for uploading.

My question is: does anyone know if there is a technique to reduce the "byte" size of a film image (as opposed to a digital image) while at the same time keeping the clarity of the photo, and NOT reducing it down to a physical size too small to view properly?

I'd like to upload a number of shots from the 2005 holiday, but at this moment I cannot bcause of the size issue.

Any guru out there with a solution?

Cheers ...


PS . . . and why ARE film images significantly larger (by "byte" size) than digital images? All my digitals are much clearer than any of my film photos ( which says to me there is more 'information' packed into the photo on a digital image ) . . . but yet the "byte" size is smaller across the board.

[Jetsam]

Are the film images in jpg format? if not try to save them as jpg file, that would reduce the size.

[Smiles]

" ... Are the film images in jpg format? if not try to save them as jpg file, that would reduce the size ... "
Thanks Jetsam,
A majority of the photos are already .jpg files, with the odd .gif in there as well.

But I think the solution was sitting right under my nose all the time: I had reduced almost all the photos in the Thailand_05 album to at least 800X600 (with some larger). It seemed a reasonable size to me at the time for ease of viewing.
But in retrospect that is still too large when working with images taken originally on film ~ especially when you run up against a 200,000 byte limit.

So I tried reducing some of them down to 500X400 (in that ball park anyway) and voila(!) they went below the limit, and are still at a reasonble viewing size. So I'm happy . . . they'll upload to the Album now.
Still, I'd rather have them larger, but henceforth the fact that all my photos will be digital takes care of that issue as well.

Cheers ...

[Bob]

Still don't understand, Smiles. I don't think you can (logically) talk about the "byte-size" of 35 mm film photos as only
digital photos have "byte size". 35 mm photos are just so many inches (or millimeters) by so many inches (or millimeters). Once converted to the electronic medium, whether gif's, tiff's, jpegs, or whatever, each has a definite byte size.
In any event, glad you figured it out..... nice photos.

Someday I ought to load up my album on this site as I have a couple thousand (+) photos from over the years. Too lazy so far.

[GWMinUS]

Smiles,

How did you get the film images into digital format??
If you scanned them, they are probably very high resolution.
Much larger than they need to be for the Web.
Remember, most Web Browsers use 75 pixles per inch for displaying photos.

So to get the image down to below 200 KB, you can either reduce the size of the digitial image or you can reduce the resolution, the number of pixles per inch, while keeping the size.

I do this with PhotoShop and its Save for the Web menu choice. But I have read on Sawatdee that the IrfanView program does a great job. Download it for free and see how it works for you.

Always enjoy your photos. And not just becasue many inclued handsome Suphot!!!
:blackeye:

One of the free Microsoft Power Toys will also resize photos, and I think can do a batch at one time.

search for jpeg optimiser.

you can get a free download which will reduce the file size but not the picture size or quality - xara webstyle casn do this also.

[Smiles]

Thanks all for your help. I've had the solution in front of my dumbass nose all the time.

I don't understand "why" this works, but it does: GWMinUS asked about whether I had scanned the series of film images into my HD folders. The answer is, yes I did. But then I just essentially left them sitting there as (what turned out to be) Very Large Files.

Using IrfanView (which I've had for ever) I reduced a 400KB original image file with a physical size of (let's say) 800X600 down to 799X600 (just 1 pixel size!!) and voila ... within Irfanview it instantly reduced itself (?) to a 80KB image file. Don't ask me "how" or "why" . . . it just "happened" ~ every time.

So now I know how to do this ~ though as I said above, I'm now 'digital' so the necessity is no longer there. But if the scanner ever needs warming up again, at least I am able to turn my photos into reasonable file size.


Thanks again for the ideas & cheers ...