Saw this at a rest stop along the interstate.

[edit] Hmmm.... jpeg quality downshifted to 85 in this post. I guess 1200x800 doesn't always get you 100%, bummer.

[2nd edit] Now EXIF shows resolution at 600x900! What gives?

[pichaser]

First rate composition , The depth of field gives the image a three dimensional look from where I am sitting .

[Apet-Sure]

Thank you pichaser, that's very kind. The original on my computer looks much better at 100% jpeg quality. Here's a crop with smaller dimensions to see if I can get the jpeg quality higher than the one above.

[edit] Well, that didn't work. EXIF still shows 85% jpeg quality and wrong pixel dimensions. Maybe PF shrinks and compresses images that exceed certain vertical dimensions. My landscape oriented shots always post at 100% jpeg quality and true dimensions if I keep them at 1200x800 or less. Still trying to figure out this interweb thing.

[ToddK]

Very nice composition and great colors! I understand your frustration with the downsizing that sometimes happens when posting. I have noticed that if my images are right at 1mb or slightly over, they get significantly reduced when posting. I try to keep my image size around the 1200-1400 x 900 but not let the file size get over 900kb and it seems to work. However, some of my images just don't come out that good here.

[Apet-Sure]

Thank you ToddK, I appreciate it. The K10D really does a great job with colors. I dug it back out a couple days ago since I now have some high quality lenses I haven't yet tried on it (Pentax-F 100mm f2.8 Macro and DA* 60-250mm).


The first image was 800x1200 at 845KB; the second was 750x1000 at 689KB. I briefly thought about re-posting the first image rotated 90° for the second image above just to see what the results would be, but decided to trim it instead. In the future if I post portrait oriented images I'll keep the vertical height at 800-900 pixels.

[RGlasel]

Maybe PF shrinks and compresses images that exceed certain vertical dimensions

The forum software reduces the size of images in more than one way, it will downsize it for storage in a gallery, album or attachment and it downsizes it (regardless of where it is stored) to fit within a certain percentage of the browser window, so if you resize your browser (or compare it to how it is displayed in a different window), the display size will change. I haven't tested it, but the forum software probably doesn't use the same quality setting for JPEG compression if it resizes it, either.

I'll keep the vertical height at 800-900 pixels.

If I keep the maximum vertical resolution to 1024 pixels and horizontal to 1280 pixels, the forum software will store it in an album or attachment at that resolution, but will resize it for display regardless. If I'm not submitting a photo for a challenge or contest (or just for visual information that doesn't care about the quality of the image), I'll insert a link to my free Flickr account instead. Images look better here than on Facebook or Instagram, but you lose so much when an image is downsized below 1000 pixels in any dimension.

[Apet-Sure]

Thanks for the comments RGlasel. I have different crop frame sizes set up in my jpeg editor to correspond to the recommended max dimensions for different areas of the forum. These work pretty well, but I almost always post images in landscape format. Apparently things change in portrait format. Like I said above, 800x1200 landscape always results in 100% jpeg quality and full dimensions for me. My 1200x800 and 1000x750 portrait images above got shrunk and compressed. No big deal, I'll just have to try different vertical dimensions to see how small it has to be to keep the quality up.