what does the number of downloads mean?

[Lowell Goudge]

when reviewing the images I have attached to postings, under the image file name is the size of the image and the number of "downloads"

I never really paid attention before to this, and it was only when I went to link an image to another posting that I noticed some og the images have been downloaded 1500-2000 times.

Is this the number of times someone has opened a thread, or have people actually downloaded the image that many times?

I don't specifically care, because I always resize images before posting to a lower resolution, but I am curious.

[Adam]

It's the number of times the file has been requested, which is virtually the same as the number of times someone has opened the thread. In some cases, however, if people link your photo on other sites or in other threads, the download count may be higher. This is especially true of signature tags.

[Lowell Goudge]

Thanks, I was just surprised to see 1500 downloads of a whooping crane although I do use it to illustrate the use of a 2x sigma TC and also K10D 1600 ISO performance