What's looking good MARCH 2024

The forum handles our photo sizes dynamically as it has to ensure the final display appears the same whether you're viewing on a phone, an old computer or a modern hi-res laptop. My own laptop's screen is set to display at 3200 pixels by 2000 pixels. The display area on this forum occupies about two thirds of the screen width so images will display on my screen at about 2000 pixels wide regardless of the size of the image I've uploaded. As I reduce my photos to jpegs that are 1000 pixels wide (and thus around 500kb), the forum will magnify them to fit the space. Same with Nigels' 800 pixel images.

 

Wasn't going to get the camera out today but in the end I couldn't resist.


Forget Me Nots







Anemone Blanda

 

@pete pixels and mm have nothing in common. mm and inches are print measurements, pixels are monitor measurements.

If you want to edit an image, your file needs to have pixels as measurements.
If you want to add the image to a A4 page and print that out, your file needs to start in mm, and you would need to edit the image so that it fits in size and quality. That is definitely tricky.

If you print an A4 page, then you know it's 210 x 297mm. Print measurements are standards like pint, pound, kg, etc.
If you sit on a 17 inches monitor, then you know how big the monitor is in "Print size".

In 2005 when you joined the forum and uploaded a 1000 pixels wide image, then your monitor was eventually a 17 inches big, and had a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. If you opened the image in full size, it almost covered the entire monitor.
If you had sent your image to me, I saw it like in red, because my monitor was 15 inches and had a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels like most of the people.
19 years later down the road, I remember your image and open it in full size and because I have a 1920 x 1080 pixel monitor resolution, it's only a quarter of the size.

You have experienced that before, I assume: You have a piece of furniture, it fits in your old living room into a corner and has a nice proportion to the overall size of the room.
After moving into a new house, you noticed that your lovely piece gets lost because the new living room is double the size, and the proportions are wrong.

 

Thanks a lot @shiney. It doesn't work so on my system, but I use Linux and Vivaldi. If I do that, the image opens in a new tab. Never mind, I just figured it out.

We had sunshine on Monday at 9 o'clock in the garden, and despite I was busy (WFH), I took the time to go down and to take pictures. What difference a little bit sunshine can make, I thought.

That is neighbour's Cherry tree. If that flowers, then I know it's Spring. Since moving to Wiltshire, I noticed a pattern when it flowers. One year it flowers in April, the next year in March, then again a year later in April and so on.



The greenhouse gets now sunshine at 9 in the morning. This is the time when plants start to grow. Taking pictures is now tricky, because I have to work hard between sunny and shady parts of the garden.



We planted a crap apple tree 2 years ago, on the left of the middle path. It doesn't really grow because it's in the shade during the winter months, but it gets flowers and apples.



The Bleeding heart is now growing and develops first flowers.


I bought this Spirea 2 years ago. I love the colour when the leaves come out. It will turn green after that and red in Autumn again.



The first Fritillarias in the pots come out.



We bought a Lilac tree 3 years ago. Last year, it had only 2 flowers. I counted 26 branches this year and hopefully, we will see it in full in a few weeks time. I'm originally from Berlin and OH used to live in Berlin for 25 years. We love the smell of lilac.



The part in front of the greenhouse. I will take out the one or other Ox-eye daisy and Knapweed that I had grown from seeds last year and planted them all. You can also see the Foxtail lilies on the right side, a Holyhocks in the middle, right side.



We bought this Eremurus robustus in 2016. It needs to be divided because we have now 3 plants for the first time.



With the Erumurus, we had planted a Delphinium, a Giant Magic Fountain white, in 2016. What a beauty it was. In 2021, I listened to Monty Don and cut it down in summer to get a second flush. I normally cut it in October when the first new shoots came out. I wish I hadn't listened to him, because that weakened the plant. It was attacked by slugs the winter after and died in 2023. I had taken many pictures of the Eremurus and the white Delphinium which where the stunner in June. You can imagine how sad we were when that space was empty.
I bought this at Bampton Garden Centre as a replacement last year. It turned out to be blue, but a nice blue. Over winter, I thought it had died, because the old Delphinium was in February already a foot high. Suddenly, there was life and I took a cloche to protect it.

 

My problem has always been that resizing programmes seem to work in pixels, but when you try to upload pictures to a site it usually quotes a max
Mb size.

 

The editor I have shows both @pete . When I alter the pixels, it shows lower down what the KB/MB is.
I'll have a look and see if it's possible to download it, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to really do all the ins and outs. I have a daughter to do that for me
I'll try and do a screenshot of the resizing bit, but hopefully my description is enough.

I gave up on delphiniums a very long time ago @simone_in_wiltshire. Slug magnets. Hope yours revives. I thnk we mentioned before about slugs just going under a cloche though.

 

I've just noticed it says JPG over on the right hand side, which was mentioned yesterday. I don't think I have that setting on the camera though. I'd need to look.
I just alter the number that says width, and it automatically alters the height and shows the KB down at the bottom. That pic would have been 3400 or more originally. I tried doing the percentage option but the pixel one is much easier.

 

Yes that looks better than the ones I've tried in the past, I used to have to reduce the pixels, then save the picture and only then find out what the Mb was.
But that was a few years ago, most sites seem to resize pictures when you upload them now days.

 

I had a good option like that on the last laptop @pete, but not on this one. It made eit all much quicker!

 

Pixels and MB are 2 different things. A high file size is mostly caused by the hardware that makes the picture.
Fuji in 2000 made pictures with a size of 1280 x 960 pix and the image size was 300 KB.
Canon in 2007 made 3600 x 2700 px and file size is 1 MB
Pentax in 2008 offers 3800 x 2600 and file size is 4 MB
Pentax in 2022 offers 8000 x 6000 px and 15 MB
iPhone in 2018 made JPGs with a size 3200 x 2400 px and 4 MB
iPhone in 2023 with HEIC as format is around 15 MB.
Changing the settings on a smartphone leads however often to a loss of quality.

Additionally, the file size depends on what file format (JPG, PNG, DNG, HEIC, raw) you decide, and what colour profile the camera uses. sRGB is the smallest in size and the common profile in Windows.
Some people believe the colour profile Adobe 1998 must be good because it's made by Adobe. That profile, however is a print profile and if you have no intention to print out you pictures on a professional printer, it's the wrong choice because the colours are wrong.
An Apple smartphone profile can't be used in Windows/Linux systems because it will be converted into a different range that sRGB monitor profiles offer.

Using my Pentax from 2008, a flowering tree taken against a blue sky will always be around 400 KB and width of 1000 px, whereas close-up of a flower head will always take less file size with 150 KB, because the pixels don't need to have too strong colours and blending into each other is easier. Black and white take the least, lurid colours the biggest size.
Using the Pentax from 2022, same flowering tree, and my image looks awful because I have now to reduce the pixels from 6000 to 1000 px and it's still higher in file size.

An image with a width of 4000 px needs t get removed 3 out of 4 pixels.
If an image is 10.000 px wide, you have to remove 9 out of 10 pixels in order to upload a 1000 px image.
You need a very good photo-editing software that does this job of removing those pixels and still leaving the impression of the image.
If you edit an image heavily in your photo-editing software, the more effects you use, the bigger is the file size.

Using unedited smartphone images and loading them up, the quality of the image will be lowered by the forum's software that automatically makes images smaller. It depends on the forum software if it removes the embedded colour profile which can add again 300 KB to an image.

Using a photo-editing software is the best way to have full control over good quality and file size, but if your original image is already of high file size, there is hardly a chance to keep the quality without going to low.

 

Thanks @simone_in_wiltshire , I find it all confusing really, but thanks for going to the effort to explain it.

 

I think it's easy to get a bit worked up about the quality of a photo ,especially for posting on a forum. I feel that if it's got a decent composition, is in focus, and has the relevant detail needed for the purpose, then they don't need much tinkering with.
I only sharpen mine, and maybe adjust the contrast/light which can make a difference to the end result. I automatically resize because of using pix on other sites, so it's a habit now.
The biggest problem I have is taking pix of purple plants, but I believe that's quite a common problem.

 

It's all double Dutch to me. I set my little Canon Ixus to under 2 mb and it usually works.

I don't understand how to drag your photos. If I'm looking at my photo files I can't see this site so how on earth do I drag them here?

I do it by Upload a File.

 

You have to minimise the different sites @Busy-Lizzie.
It's easiest if you use a mouse rather than the touch pad. I expect it's difficult if you use a smaller device though. I don't have a phone and I don't use the Kindle for photos.