Posting larger images on the web

Is it worth it?

[timchuma]

I have recently started posting larger sized photos (1024x768) on my website as it seemed a shame to only put small versions of the photos (800x600) after all the work I do to get them to that standard.

It does take a bit longer than usual to upload the images as I only have dialup at the moment. Will people appreciate having larger photos though or would it be better just to stick to the smaller photos and send out the originals to people on CD to the people involved (which is what I am doing now.)

Thanks.

[Don_Hoagie]

Your question is actually a microcosm of the age-old question, "should i do THIS(high bandwith, high reward), or THIS(low bandwith, low reward)?"

It's really up to you, and much moreso, up to your gauge of what kind of bandwith your users have. If people are coming to your site for large, quality imagery, then most likely they either have high bandwith connections, or have low bandwith connections, but are willing to wait it out to see the result. But I don't know for sure what you're doing, and who your user-base is... if I were you, I'd do the largest images possible. But I ain't you.

[collymellon]

give them the choice of size?

Broadband visitors won't notice any speed change / dial-up will but only a second or two..

[timchuma]

I recently bought and extra Gigabyte of storage space and I have 80Gb of bandwidth per month (barely used) at the moment so even if I allowed hotlinking I still wouldn't use it all.

I never hear back from anyone about my site unless I contact them directly.

When I am testing my site at home I just click from page to page to check that they have all uploaded correctly (although this is less of a problem now I use Dreamweaver to upload.)

Thanks.