What is the maximum dimension for a photo?

Your guidance please

[reddevil]

I am placing some thumnails on my pages and will link them to the larger image.

I would like to limit these to a certain width but am not sure what the best dimension would be? What general considerations do I need to consider? I was thinking of going for 500px wide?

[Visit Thailand]

Why not have links to large, largest etc. With so many people on broadband the highest image will be ok for some and a lesser image for those on dial up.

[bill]

That's really relative to your page design and how many thumbnails you're going to show on each page. I have pages with thumbnails as small as 80px...and as large as 640px. It depends on the individual site.

[reddevil]

Yeh, I thought it might have something to do with page design.

Basically my thumbnails will be about 300px wide but I wanted them to open into another window at a limited size (eg. not an absolutely flipping huge full size photo)!

My website pages are currently set to 100% width, so the photos will take up differnt widths dependant on what resolution people have chosen for their settings.

What I would like is for the larger photo to appear at about 75% of the screen.

Is this possible or does it depend upon too many other unknown factors - if not, then maybe I could set it to open at 75% of "most peoples" browsers eg. set it for the standard PC settings/resolution?

[bill]

What's wrong with using a percentage width for your images then?

[reddevil]

My latest challenge has been trying to reduce and optimise photos for my website. I have found it difficult to keep an acceptable quality when the images are reduced in size.

Wouldn't this be the same if I used a percentage command for my photos instead of the optimised width and height attributes?

[GuanoLad]

If you use a percentage width, the images will squeeze its full size into an irregular size, causing some distortion. Unless the pixel width is divisible by 8, you will see jaggies and weird re-proportioning.

If you are using two separate images for thumbs and full size, I would recommend around 150 pixels maximum on the longest dimension, and about 600 pixels for the larger image.

But it depends on what kind of detail you wish to show on the pictures. If you need to show people's faces clearly then you may need to choose a dimension that suits. However if iy's just a general image of a landscape you can probably get away with smaller dimensions.

The point is, there are no standards, and you have to consider multiple resolutions.

[limbo]

What's wrong with using a percentage width for your images then?

Have you seen the mess browsers make of photos when you do this? Personally I think it is bad practice to allow a browser to resize a photo. Maybe a transparent gif or two but apart from that I'd not touch that method with a bargepole (till the rendering is better).

As mentioned above it will depend on the content around your image - I'd not take your images any wider than 5/600px max so that at least you have a little room for manouvre on a 800x600 res

[bill]

What's wrong with using a percentage width for your images then?

Have you seen the mess browsers make of photos when you do this?

Agreed. That was a lazy option. ;) My first suggestion was better.

If you really wanted to get complicated you could use JavaScript to get the window width and then automatically present the thumbnails in the appropriate size. However, this tends to be a nightmare in terms of maintenance.

[reddevil]

Mmmm, I didn't think the resizing was the best option either.

I have a 15% left-margin, the main content of 85% is just text flowing around the photos (max 4 photos on one page).

I want quality photos and was thinking about 400px or 500px wide maybe floated left and right alternatively down the page with the text flowing around them?

I am right in saying that with 800x600 res, my 15% margin would take up 120px, leaving 680px in the main content?

Therefore, a 400px photo would have 280px of text flowing around one side......or a 500px photo would have 180px of text.

In this case, probably the 400px wide photo is the best option as 500px would seem to wide?

Is there anything I have missed?