Does Size Really Matter?

Click photo for a LARGE version (256K original - 115K when uploaded to Blogger)

You may need to enlarge your screen window to see the photo in its actual size.

It is 2000 pixels wide.

I just read that Luna Jubilee has started a BLOG BOOT CAMP and I heartily applaud her. Yeah! Her first post was on the Hi Rez snapshot issue. Well, it isn't exactly an issue, but it certainly has been talked about on the blogs and within the groups. During the last couple of months, I have switched to the HiRez camp. Before, I spent all day blogging just by taking screenshots and that was plenty of time spent and plenty of hard disk spaced used.

I do agree that snapshot to disk, high rez photos are sharper, clearer and "better" than a simple screenshot or low rez photo taken in world. What I was wondering about was the idea that huge file sizes ended up with better photos. For 300 dpi print? pngs? tiffs? I had no doubt this was true, but I wondered just how much better a large file sized photo really was when it was resized and turned into a jpg for the web.

So, I did a quick experiment and the results are above. There is NO retouching on anything. The first photo was taken at 4300 pixels and the second at 1400. Both are hi rez and snapshot to disks. The 4300 was resized to 1000 height and they were saved together as a 90% jpg. They both look pretty good to me.

We all have different computer systems and mine is not the newest. I can "almost crash" when taking the very high resolution photo. Add that to having several programs open including a graphics program and I am definitely taxing the system. So, for me, the smaller size will work for now. When I get a new system in the Spring, I may do things differently :D.

I am looking forward to her new articles. It is always great to learn and having all those hints in once place will be very handy.

Edit: It dawned on me after I posted this that there is another layer to the high rez issue. All the the photo services that I use FURTHER compress on upload. I checked my 256K photo and it is now 115K. Many feeds FURTHER (thats three compressions now) downsize photos -- sometimes a lot. Certainly good for those with not too speedy connections, but hard on our original shots.