The Fuzzy World 3um

So I've been wondering, what the heck is up with RR Picture Archives.net since they "revamped" the site?, and I can't ask them because the forum has been down since then!

For one thing, all the thumbnails for pictures I've uploaded since the revamp have a little white bar on the right side when displayed on the album page:

http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net/arc ... 57&Page=70

More signficantly, the quality of the pictures seems to have been reduced. I upload my photos at close to their original camera dimensions (minus cropping) and a filesize usually between 7 and 8 megabytes. Understandably, the site reduced them down to a maximum of 1024 wide, and a filesize of between 400 and 600 KB.

Here is one of the last photos I uploaded before the revamp, with a filesize of 494.7 KB according to the IE "Properties" query:

http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=2329967

However, the site now reduces the filesize much further, with a significant and visible loss of quality. Here is one of the first photos I uploaded after the changeover, with a filesize of 126.4 KB. Look in particular at the "City of Chicago" lettering. You can definitely see some blockiness where the edges of the locomotive meet the sky, as well:

http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=2339769

All the photos I've uploaded since the revamp have had a filesize of between 95-130 KB, and much more visible quality loss and compression artifacts than before.

If this does not change, looks like I'm going to have to find a new place to host my train photos. However, I've always preferred RRPA over Flickr or Photobucket due to its focus on railroads, and its ability to browse photos by location, locomotive make/model, railroad company, or even specific locomotive/car numbers from specific companies.

_________________
Badgerland Rail Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/HighIronofWisconsin
Rail photos: http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net

Write the webmaster/owner. Tim Huemmer is working hard to get things upgraded - its a huge project and he's asked several of us regular contributor troubleshooters for feedback. I have not had a problem with recent uploads - but sending RRPA files over a meg is, IMO, UNREASONABLE.

Fuzzy has a limit of 384k for 1k wide attachments here - I'm saving locos, power lashups and large cars @ 1500 pix wide - and simple rolling stock @ 1200.
My 3 photo software apps allow for jpg compression on a 1-10 or 1-12 scale - with 12 being no compression at all. with 1-10, I normally save either an 8, or if file size is a concern 7 without any visible degradation. Instead of forcing his servers to compress your monsters to web-quality - do a bit of work on them yourself. None of my files @ 1500 wide are over a half meg - most fit beneath the 384k threshold even at compression 8.

If you've got juicy images that really deserve to be seen wider than 1k - cough up the $25/yr for a Flickr pro account. You can begin with 200 freely hosted shots.
Tim's site is worth every penny you've sent him - be part of the solution. Note there are no longer CN Sw1500's - they've all been corraled correctly with their WC siblings - even though most (all but 4) are in CaNoodul uniforms. It took one email - and 12 misidentified locos were relocated.

The list view link (pg 70) is fubar right now -it yields a page 70 of 0 - but I can see the shots in that album fine in grid view.

Here is one of the first photos ICE 6418 I uploaded after the changeover, with a filesize of 126.4 KB. Look in particular at the "City of Chicago" lettering. You can definitely see some blockiness where the edges of the locomotive meet the sky, as well.
I'm looking at that shot - my Mac has screen res of 1680 x 1050 - and there is NO major problem with that picture. Email me the shot at 1k wide and I'll gladly put them up in side-by-side windows.

Perhaps you need to visit the Bayshore or Mayfair Apple store and look at some of your shots. Quad Graphics - in about the most extensive testing known to the industry (3 YEARS) - chose Mac monitors (not necessarily Mac cpu's) for printing proofing - where color inspection is critical.


DA MAN: tim@rrpicturearchives.net

Even though hard drive space is getting cheaper, with today's bazillion mega-pixel cameras, even large drives fill-up fast. RR Picture Archives is a place to display train photos but really isn't a place to back-up your originals, therefore (at least in my opinion), I can understand the owner of the web site placing a size restriction on uploads.

From the RR Picture Archives perspective, it doesn't really make sense for them to host thousands of 5 MB+ images when monitors can't display those large, high resolution images. For one, most LCD monitors have a resolution somewhere around 96 dots-per-inch, which is probably much lower than your images are created in. So dropping the resolution of an image alone can greatly reduce the file size w/o reducing the on-screen quality. (Photoshop can reduce an image's resolution w/o reducing it's overall dimensions... I'm not sure if other software can?)

Even though I have 20" monitors, uploading photos that come straight from my camera that far exceed my monitors 1600x1200 screen size doesn't make much sense. Super large, super resolution images are for printed media for the most part. Granted, some railfans might want to zoom in on some tiny detail of a particular locomotive, but providing that ability will come at a great cost to the web site provider.

I host all my photos on a paid account (Fotki) that has unlimited storage. It also allows me to FTP images which turned out to be a nice feature when my hard drive crashed... I was able to FTP all my lost images back to myself.

_________________
Sincerely,
Todd M. Taylor
The Unofficial $oo Line Diesel Roster

Even though hard drive space is getting cheaper, with today's bazillion mega-pixel cameras, even large drives fill-up fast. RR Picture Archives is a place to display train photos but really isn't a place to back-up your originals, therefore (at least in my opinion), I can understand the owner of the web site placing a size restriction on uploads.

From the RR Picture Archives perspective, it doesn't really make sense for them to host thousands of 5 MB+ images when monitors can't display those large, high resolution images. For one, most LCD monitors have a resolution somewhere around 96 dots-per-inch, which is probably much lower than your images are created in. So dropping the resolution of an image alone can greatly reduce the file size w/o reducing the on-screen quality. (Photoshop can reduce an image's resolution w/o reducing it's overall dimensions... I'm not sure if other software can?)

Even though I have 20" monitors, uploading photos that come straight from my camera that far exceed my monitors 1600x1200 screen size doesn't make much sense. Super large, super resolution images are for printed media for the most part. Granted, some railfans might want to zoom in on some tiny detail of a particular locomotive, but providing that ability will come at a great cost to the web site provider.

I host all my photos on a paid account (Fotki) that has unlimited storage. It also allows me to FTP images which turned out to be a nice feature when my hard drive crashed... I was able to FTP all my lost images back to myself.

_________________
Sincerely,
Todd M. Taylor
The Unofficial $oo Line Diesel Roster

They never did host originals. As I stated in my original post, I was fine with how they used to resize the photos (from 5-7 MB+ down to 400-600 KB and 1024 wide).

_________________
Badgerland Rail Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/HighIronofWisconsin
Rail photos: http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net

For the third time:

RRPA has never hosted original-size copies of the photos, at least not ones that were available for downloading. My complaint was that they appear to have changed their compression algorithm to reduce the file size even further, causing a visible loss of quality at least to my eyes. I dunno, I guess something about that ICE 6418 photo just jumped out at me as not looking as good as I thought it would.

Here is a 1024 wide version saved at maximum quality from Microsoft Picture It! Premium 10 (my low-rent PS substitute) with about the same approximate filesize RRPA used to convert to, still far below the 5+ megs of the original. On second glance, it only looks maybe marginally better than the version currently on RRPA.





To answer Karl's question about why I upload at original size, my reasoning is that the higher resolution the image I give the site to work with, the better the downconverted version that it spits out for viewing will look. I'm basically trying to avoid "garbage in, garbage out."

_________________
Badgerland Rail Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/HighIronofWisconsin
Rail photos: http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net

I deleted my post since you have your reasons for uploading high-res shots. Just not something I would recommend - if someone wants a higher-res copy of my shots, they can ask for them (and pay for them too).

And again, you can't really get high-res from RRPA. Even if you upload an original at 4752x3168, the biggest anyone can download is 1024 wide. I just want them to look their best at that size.

_________________
Badgerland Rail Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/HighIronofWisconsin
Rail photos: http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net

Two recommendations for you: 1. Try GIMP. Probably has more features than the Microsoft product. Price is right! Takes a little getting used to (what doesn't?), but I've always had excellent results with it, at least after I got things figured out. 2. Try this out: Process a photo yourself, down to 1024xwhatever, to your quality preferences. Upload both your shot, and the "huge" original, to RRPA. See which one you like better. My theory is, you should be best able to control the final quality by controlling the uploaded quality; the less that RRPA's servers need to do, the better. Probably! YMMV. Try a few different kinds of shots; my experience with GIMP (a past version) included a weird setting that extra-compressed red, so all my CP/CN/SOO/WSOR shots were coming out looking horrible, until I found that setting and knew to change it.

_________________
-Fuzzy
President, Waukesha County Gandy Dancers model railroad club
Adviser, Little WISE Guys & Gals youth model railroad group
DM Rail Group: Milwaukee Franklin & Norway • South Fork • IndustRail • St. Louis Northern • Paris Coal Railway

Photoshop Elements is modestly priced - and it has EVERYTHING you could plausibly want for resizing, rotation and shadow touch-up. (My most common tweaks). RRPA servers should not be doing your work. The largest original I've fed that is 1500 pix wide - and RRPA's display is acceptable. Also - elements take far less RAM than the bloated Photo-chop.
If you want to post BIG shots - start a Flickr account. I've seen full sizes up there as large as 5000 pixels wide. Family Man System regularly include huge originals - the shots of Woodcrest/Markham he posted months ago are freakin' astounding!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/family_man_system/5733853141/sizes/o/in/photostream/ 5184 x 3456