Ehr, about JPG vs PNG: You can spot the difference between 100% quality JPG and a PNG image. JPG has less vibrant colors. I certainly notice a decline in quality when converting them, at least.

If the images are hosted elsewhere, I'm quite certain it doesn't take Neal any bandwidth. After all, it's just a link to an image hosted elsewhere...

Anyway, I disagree with limiting the size of pictures. I think a better solution would be to ask people to post smaller pictures (Unless where it's appropriate, like screenshot threads) and give warnings/infractions to people who refuse to listen.

I agree.

So as not to make this thread self fulfilling........I've resized these down from 1080p @ 6.5mb:

PNG:
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...hamascopy2.png

JPG:
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...o/Bahamas2.jpg

I can't see any difference between the 2, except maybe a slight reduction in the shadows on the JPEG but big whoop, we're talking about game screen shots not nature. The JPEG is even compressed to 70% and I see no artifacts either. Even after my work the PNG is about 6 times larger file.

Didn't say it was a big difference or that it even matters. But you just confirmed what I said:
Alright, it's a "maybe", but I'll take what I can get at this point. :DL

:haha: Fair enough. I could have added the 6.5mb original but I thought it would be taking the pi$$ a little.:)

Point being though, the argument that full resolution PNG files at anywhere from 3 to 6mb are much better looking than equivalently sized JPEGs, is too daft especially when it's game screen captures that don't require that level of detail.

It's just ignorant towards limited bandwidth users.

Agreed, JPG should be the format of choice for posting online. :yep:

If someone wishes the original for use as desktop wallpaper or something, it can always be hosted on a filesharing site and the link posted or PM'd.

Some people already do this; iirc Gunfighter for example posts a web-friendly version and provides a link to the full-size, full-quality original.

And even if the difference was very obvious, it's still somebody else's time and space. It's selfish and rude to put up a picture that takes more than a minute to load.

Mmmkkaayyy... with 10 Mbit/s connection that would be theoretically:
10 Mbit/s * 60 s = 600 Mbit = 75 MB

That's one large pic I tell you :D

Is Steve on a 10mb connection?
Perhaps he's on the Library connection with a limit per PC.
Perhaps he's on a dial up dongle.

Who knows.

People should be more considerate posting pictures. Just because they're on FIOS doesn't mean the next person is not on 54kbs.

Exactly my point.

Talking about loading times is useless because connection speeds vary so much. I don't know the next guy's connection speeds so I use my own as reference and whoopa, insanely large pics are completely "legitimate". A fixed size in KB would be by far the best choice, say 200 KB. Using .jpegs the quality still remains ok and the loading time is bearable even with slower connections.

Fyi that 10Mbit/s is the slowest and cheapest option my ISP offers and completely normal up here.

No, it's normal down there, we still have 2Mbit/s connections available here, think someone's offering 1Mbit/s too. :yep:

As for the topic at hand, I echo what has been already said, JPG's with maximum resolution of 1024x768, over that and make a thumbnail. I personally tend to resize my screenshots from 1280x1024 to 960x768, no need to go any higher than that except if there's something very very very tiny in it that you want people to see.

I agree, JPEG format should be the accepted format combined with an agreed maximum size.

I just checked. It's currently running at 11 Mbps. I do know for a fact that it's taking that long to load, so I don't even see a lot of them.

I did a Properties check on one of them.

Dimensions: 1344 x 840 pixels
Size: 1786972 bytes. Is that not 1.7 Gigabytes?

1,786,972 .......... bytes
1,745.08984375 . kilobytes
1.7041893005 megabytes
0.0016642473 gigabytes
0.0000016252 terabytes
0.0000000015 petabytes

( Rounded to the nearest 10 decimal places )

Oh, yeah, I forgot the kilobytes part. Makes a lot more sense that way. But still pretty big.