Website Photo Gallery

[HeldInTheMoment]

Hello All,

Need a little help and advice here. I am having a horrible time finding the right solution to display my example photos on my website (currently being updated).

I want to make sure I have great quality images displayed, but I also do not want the website to take a year and a half to load. Any suggestions on how to resize my photos to give great quality without timing out the server and/or taking forever to load?

Also, if anyone has any Joomla Extensions they prefer for photo galleries, please share.

Thanks!

 

[AceCo55]

I use Smugmug and I'm sure the other photo hosting sites probably do the same.
It is designed for people to upload their high res images but they then create low res DISPLAY versions.
You select what display sizes you want people to be able to view. The idea is t have the high res image for fulfilling printing orders but have small file sizes for viewing the photos on the website.

Because I don't have a shopping cart on my website (people contact me directly and I self-fulfill) I just upload images that have file sizes around 100 - 200kb. No need for ME to upload high res images. YMMV
I upload photos that are resized to 1200pixels on the long side and use Photoshop's "Save for Web" with a quality setting of "40".
These load quickly, no delay for visitors and look great to me (you may disagree!)

 

[HeldInTheMoment]

Thank you very much for your reply and suggestions. After I poked around the web a bit more I found a decent way to display my photos with high quality and low file size using Lightroom...I felt so silly not finding it myself, still learning I guess.

I'll have to look into Smugmug as well, it sounds interesting.

Thanks again!!!

 

[KmH]

Photo size is about pixel dimensions.
File size is about the image file "Quality" setting (bytes).
File size determines how quickly an image file loads on the Internet.

Most web sites will resize your photos, often so they display no more than about 1024 px wide.
Note that if you resize photos for display on the Internet you need to be mindful which resizing interpolation algorithm you choose to use.
One of the bicubic resizing interpolation algorithm varieties usually works best for making photographs smaller.

Save 2 versions of a photograph.
One that is used as your full file and pixel size master file, and one you use online as a portfolio (example) image that is saved at a lower 'quality' setting so it has a smaller file size and that you have resized so it has smaller pixel dimensions.

 

[HeldInTheMoment]

KmH,

Thank you for your additional input, I have a large amount of experience with computers and building websites. I know for someone with as much experience as I have should not have this issue, but I did. I was able to use Lightroom to resize my photos as needed giving good quality on the website without having load time issues.

Thanks!