27 replies to this topic

[gerdastro]

I have read the TOS but am still struggling about attaching images. Most of the time, they come out just too small so without clicking them to enlarge, they are unreadable.

 

The below is an example. It is the same, unmodified image file, 237KB - 1600x832 pixels. For comparison, it is shown once if embedded from an image gallery in 'My Media', once when simply attached directly in the post ('attach files') and once by embedding as external link from Imgur. 

I thought it is generally advised to upload to My Media and then attach from there. But if I do that I always end up with a Thumbnail size. When I check the gallery in which I uploaded the file, under the file it has 'Options'/'View all sizes' and there I have 'Thumbnail', 'Small', 'Medium' and 'Large' - with the 'Large' one having the original resolution. However, I do not know how to embed the image as large. In a new post if I go to 'MyMedia' --> 'Gallery Images' I can only select the image but without any option to pick any of these sizes. What am I missing?

 

Same for the directly attached image - this is not showing in its original resolution apparently - so how would I need to modify the attachment expression so that it does not automatically resize the image?

 

If I cannot find any other way, I will probably use external spaces like Imgur in the future, but I would very much like to avoid that if possible.

 

 

Attached from My Media

 

Attached directly in post

 

Attached by external link (Imgur)

[Piero DP]

That's a reason why I rate CN high in terms of content, but I feel like going back to the 90s in terms of website features. Yup, paleo internet.. 

 

Regarding your post, that's the main reason why I very rarely post images here.

[vidrazor]

Hmm, I just tried that and got somewhat better image quality, but I saved the file to the largest it would go before hitting the 500k limit. The image below saved as a 435k file.

 

If you're only going to pose one file per thread post or reply, bring it as close as you can to the 500k limit to get the best possible image quality. If you're going to post multiple files on a one thread reply, they must all together add up to 500k.

 

Supposedly there is a way to add larger res .PNG files here, but I've never been able to figure that out.

Attached Thumbnails

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[gerdastro]

Hmm, I just tried that and got somewhat better image quality, but I saved the file to the largest it would go before hitting the 500k limit. The image below saved as a 435k file.

 

If you're only going to pose one file per thread post or reply, bring it as close as you can to the 500k limit to get the best possible image quality. If you're going to post multiple files on a one thread reply, they must all together add up to 500k.

 

Supposedly there is a way to add larger res .PNG files here, but I've never been able to figure that out.

Thanks for trying to reproduce. Actually I am aware of the 500K limit, but my point is a different one.

 

Even if I upload close to the limit, it will - mostly - display with downsized dimensions Yes, one can click on it and then it will enlarge to original size, but I have seen plenty of other posts where people attach images and they are displayed in large size from the get go.

 

Take as example the very first image above. This file is supposed to have 1600x832 px but that is clearly not what we are seeing. Regardless of whether this has 237KB or 499KB file size (~quality), it should at least display in full dimensions - or even better, give the user some control so he can pick the dimensions himself.

In that regard, the options in the image gallery are actually nice (thumbnail/small/medium/large), but there seems to be no way to select this when I am in a post and want to attach one of the media files to a post. Apparently it just defaults to thumbnail or small, unless I am overlooking something.

[Siderius]

I think the threshold for not scaling an in-line image is 800 pixels in the largest dimension.

You can post >500kB images in a gallery and post a link to that image.

[matt_astro_tx]

You can post >500kB images in a gallery and post a link to that image.

Yeah, I stopped trying to attach images to posts on like day 2 of using CN.  The gallery is the way to go.

 

I created a gallery named "Garbage" as a holding area for images I want to attach to posts.  (I guess that was the best gallery name I could think of at the time.). It's located here.  I upload whatever image it is to that gallery, then I open the image in large size, right click the image and select "copy image location/address."  Then I write my post and when I want to insert the image I click the little picture icon and paste in the address.

 

This method gives you a much larger and higher quality image in the post itself and when users click on it they see the large version.  Here's an example of that using an image from my astrophotography gallery.

 

 

There are caveats.  First, CN has a gallery upload limit of 50Mb per file, and you cannot upload TIFFS or FITS files.  So it has to be JPG, GIF, PNG.  I prefer PNGs as they seem to have the best compression/interpolation of the three.  Second, the maximum pixel dimension of any image is 1600.  Now, I downsample my images on my computer to 3000 pixels wide for sharing on my phone.  When I upload these to CN, it automatically shrinks them to 1600 pixels wide.  No biggie.

 

The restrictions on images are part of what makes CN good, IMO.  The entire web site is designed for slow bandwidth connections.  I realize a lot of us have 500Mbps or faster internet service, but if you think about it a lot of astronomers (amateurs and professionals alike) live in remote locations where internet service is scarce.  So maintaining a web site that can be quickly loaded over a Hughesnet connection is important!  And frankly even as a user with a 1Gbps connection, I still appreciate that the pages here load ultra fast.  There's no waiting around for the rest of the page to load; everything is instantaneous.

 

Hope this is helpful in some way.  For users that still don't like the image restrictions they are free to use Astrobin (which has excellent image reposting abilities) or an image hosting service of your choice, like Flickr or Imgur.  FWIW I rarely click through to people's images on those sites though.  I just prefer the CN experience.

[ShaulaB]

Our admins and moderators volunteer their time here. I'm sure they get lots of complaints.

Astronomics kindly hosts this site as a service to the astronomical community.

This thread motivated me to make another donation to help keep CN going.

They take PayPal.

 

[skysurfer]

I also don't understand the outdated 500kb image limit.
I understand that some forummers use a slow connection, so the 500kb limit may apply to *viewing* images, but for uploading, most sites have an almost unlimited upload size and the forum software downscales the image if it is too large. But CN still lags behind.
As a workaround I upload an image to my own rented hosting VPS or sometimes even https://imgbb.com/ where you can upload images without account.

[Bearcub]

I always press "open image in a new tab" and then the new tab only opens image only, meaning it is always at 100% size, if not i click on it and then it becomes 100%.

 

There is "open link in a new tab" option too, but i prefer to open image on my browser.

[gerdastro]

Yeah, I stopped trying to attach images to posts on like day 2 of using CN.  The gallery is the way to go.

 

I created a gallery named "Garbage" as a holding area for images I want to attach to posts.  (I guess that was the best gallery name I could think of at the time.). It's located here.  I upload whatever image it is to that gallery, then I open the image in large size, right click the image and select "copy image location/address."  Then I write my post and when I want to insert the image I click the little picture icon and paste in the address.

 

This method gives you a much larger and higher quality image in the post itself and when users click on it they see the large version.  Here's an example of that using an image from my astrophotography gallery.

 

 

There are caveats.  First, CN has a gallery upload limit of 50Mb per file, and you cannot upload TIFFS or FITS files.  So it has to be JPG, GIF, PNG.  I prefer PNGs as they seem to have the best compression/interpolation of the three.  Second, the maximum pixel dimension of any image is 1600.  Now, I downsample my images on my computer to 3000 pixels wide for sharing on my phone.  When I upload these to CN, it automatically shrinks them to 1600 pixels wide.  No biggie.

 

The restrictions on images are part of what makes CN good, IMO.  The entire web site is designed for slow bandwidth connections.  I realize a lot of us have 500Mbps or faster internet service, but if you think about it a lot of astronomers (amateurs and professionals alike) live in remote locations where internet service is scarce.  So maintaining a web site that can be quickly loaded over a Hughesnet connection is important!  And frankly even as a user with a 1Gbps connection, I still appreciate that the pages here load ultra fast.  There's no waiting around for the rest of the page to load; everything is instantaneous.

 

Hope this is helpful in some way.  For users that still don't like the image restrictions they are free to use Astrobin (which has excellent image reposting abilities) or an image hosting service of your choice, like Flickr or Imgur.  FWIW I rarely click through to people's images on those sites though.  I just prefer the CN experience.

Thanks Matt, this is very helpful And just to be clear, I am not complaining about the image size restriction. One could argue whether it has to stay at 500K or could slightly be adapted after so many years, but that's a different discussion.

 

For me this whole thread is only about not wanting to show an image in thumbnail size when actually I want to display it slightly larger. This is mostly not about actual astrophotos but screenshots of something, occasionally also with text (thus Astrobin et al. do not apply). So it should at least be readable. This can easily be done with far less than 500K and 1600x px wide, as long as the system lets me.

 

For now I will go with what you suggested, although this workflow seems clunky due to the many steps involved. Usually I am already halfway in my post when I realize it is CN and not another board that I write on, so I cannot just easily attach but need to first open a second tab in the browser. From here, it is:

navigate to CN again --> click on My Gallery --> click on user defined Gallery --> upload image to Gallery (assuming it is already resized) --> publish --> click on image in Gallery --> click on Options --> click on 'View all sizes' --> click on 'Large' (or 'medium' if that is sufficient) --> right click on the image --> click on 'copy image location/address' --> switch back to other browser tab --> click on image, paste address and confirm ... a fairly long road.

 

The alternative is using free services to upload like imgur, imgbb etc., which is much faster - but I feel better to keep all my astro stuff on the CN servers, so I guess for now there is no other choice.

[sevenofnine]

I use PicResize.com. It's very easy and now I post too many pictures 

 

.

 

 

[Tony Cifani]

That's a reason why I rate CN high in terms of content, but I feel like going back to the 90s in terms of website features. Yup, paleo internet.. 

 

Regarding your post, that's the main reason why I very rarely post images here.

Remember that this is a free service with no advertising intended for a niche group of users, and unlike Meta social media sites and others, you have full control over your content (you can't delete an image forever from Facebook servers). I've never had a problem uploading/attaching images to posts to Cloudy Nights. This platform may be older, but I think it does the job just fine if you follow the parameters.

[Phil Sherman]

A long time ago I settled on limiting my post's included images to 1024 pixels in the horizontal direction. This was done to guarantee that there wouldn't be long delays downloading the image when CN users were on slow internet connections.

I have a script that uses the "convert" program that's part of "ImageMagick's" toolbox that'll resize any jpeg image to this size and store it with 85% quality. This doesn't work well for screen shots that contain text using small fonts beccause the resizing and compression tend to blur out the small letters. The attached three images show the difference between a 100% and 85% quality saved JPEG clipped section of the screen shot and the full screen shot after resizing and compressing.

 

There's some blurring of the text in the compressed full screen image but it's still readable. Images included in posts aren't supposed to be super high quality. They're supposed to give the viewer a preview of the higher quality image that you've uploaded somewhere else and provided a link for anyone to use to see the image in all of its magnificent glory.

 

Original (clipped) 137774 bytes

 

Original (clipped) at 85% quality  48559 bytes - 35% the size of the original!

 

Compressed full image 250820 bytes

[DirtyRod]

I have similar issues as the OP. I've tried all kinds of file sizes and resolutions and my gallery images are always small when I link them in posts. 

 

I just figured there was some issue with my account as I cannot upload anything but a JPG. Unfortunately, the mods have not been able to resolve it. 

Not complaining about the site or mods as I donate regularly to the site. 

Edited by DirtyRod, 09 February 2025 - 02:00 PM.

[DirtyRod]

 First, CN has a gallery upload limit of 50Mb per file, and you cannot upload TIFFS or FITS files.  So it has to be JPG, GIF, PNG.  

It's supposed to allow TIFFs. I can't because of some issue with my account but it's supposed to allow them. 

 

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[Don W]

Please understand that this site may be free but Astronomics pays a hefty fee for the bandwidth. You don’t see any ads even from them. The money comes out of their pockets.

A few posts up ShaulaB posted a donation button that can be found near the top right of every page.

 

I would like to add that the site is run by unpaid volunteers. You won’t find many sites like this on the net.

 

DonW

[matt_astro_tx]

It's supposed to allow TIFFs. I can't because of some issue with my account but it's supposed to allow them. 

Huh.  Weird. 

[kasprowy]

On Stargazer's Lounge you can upload this, in whatever amount of time it takes you to attach them. I'm not sure why the limitations here are so low. It's run by FLO, and I don't see any ads.

 

"Allowed File Types
gif, jpeg, jpe, jpg, png, webp, flv, f4v, wmv, mpg, mpeg, mp4, mkv, m4a, m4v, 3gp, mov, avi, webm, ogg, ogv · 976.56MB
You may upload a maximum of 990 files"

Edited by kasprowy, 09 February 2025 - 03:47 PM.

[matt_astro_tx]

Remember that this is a free service with no advertising intended for a niche group of users, and unlike Meta social media sites and others, you have full control over your content (you can't delete an image forever from Facebook servers). I've never had a problem uploading/attaching images to posts to Cloudy Nights. This platform may be older, but I think it does the job just fine if you follow the parameters.

I couldn't agree more.  CN is a corner of the internet where decency still prevails (except in very rare instances which our mods are quick to jump on) and, quite frankly, is a "safe space" where I can logon to spend some time reading and talking to people and I don't have to worry about what I'm consuming.  It is a vestige in the true sense of the word.

[matt_astro_tx]

On Stargazer's Lounge you can upload this, in whatever amount of time it takes you to attach them. I'm not sure why the limitations here are so low.

 

"Allowed File Types
gif, jpeg, jpe, jpg, png, webp, flv, f4v, wmv, mpg, mpeg, mp4, mkv, m4a, m4v, 3gp, mov, avi, webm, ogg, ogv · 976.56MB
You may upload a maximum of 990 files"

As I said earlier, this is my understanding of the rules and overall site design.

 

The entire web site is designed for slow bandwidth connections.  I realize a lot of us have 500Mbps or faster internet service, but if you think about it a lot of astronomers (amateurs and professionals alike) live in remote locations where internet service is scarce.  So maintaining a web site that can be quickly loaded over a Hughesnet connection is important! 

[vidrazor]

I created a gallery named "Garbage" as a holding area for images I want to attach to posts....This method gives you a much larger and higher quality image in the post itself and when users click on it they see the large version.  Here's an example of that using an image from my astrophotography gallery.

 

There are caveats.  First, CN has a gallery upload limit of 50Mb per file, and you cannot upload TIFFS or FITS files.  So it has to be JPG, GIF, PNG.  I prefer PNGs as they seem to have the best compression/interpolation of the three.  Second, the maximum pixel dimension of any image is 1600.  Now, I downsample my images on my computer to 3000 pixels wide for sharing on my phone.  When I upload these to CN, it automatically shrinks them to 1600 pixels wide.  No biggie.

This is where I get confused. Supposedly there is a way to upload an image larger than 1600 pixels wide, apparently using .PNG if I understand correctly.

 

Second, you say that "This method gives you a much larger and higher quality image...", then you say that "the maximum pixel dimension of any image is 1600". I've seen images here (not linked from external sources) that are larger, but have no clue how that's done.
 

[matt_astro_tx]

This is where I get confused. Supposedly there is a way to upload an image larger than 1600 pixels wide, apparently using .PNG if I understand correctly.

 

Second, you say that "This method gives you a much larger and higher quality image...", then you say that "the maximum pixel dimension of any image is 1600". I've seen images here (not linked from external sources) that are larger, but have no clue how that's done.
 

Really?  News to me!  I'm interested to learn more.  Any mods that can shed some light on this for us?

[KBHornblower]

This is a test.  The image in my file is 1600 x 1200 pixels in slightly compressed JPEG to get it under 500 kB.  I wish to see for myself what the issue is.

 

 

I see what you mean.  The image in the finished post is 800 x600.

Edited by KBHornblower, 09 February 2025 - 11:07 PM.

[csrlice12]

I use Microsoft Picture (An old Office product).  I still think it's available as a free download.  Resizing is easy peasy.

[matt_astro_tx]

This is a test.  The image in my file is 1600 x 1200 pixels in slightly compressed JPEG to get it under 500 kB.  I wish to see for myself what the issue is.

 

6-inch Dob a.jpg

 

I see what you mean.  The image in the finished post is 800 x600.

Click the image in your post and it opens a larger 1600pix version, I believe.