Best settings for GoPro stills on the net?

[Bill Sherren]

If I take a screenshot of a paused image from a 1080p video shot on my GoPro Hero 3 Black I can get a reasonable image saved as a tiff when viewed at 100% on my 23 inch monitor. Though obviously filming at 2.7K would be even better as source material. And I have yet to try the video/stills option on the GoPro as well. My photo/video software is on the rather budget end and does not handle 2.7 from what I can see . :(

So sticking with the 1080p image what settings should I use to get the best of it when uploading to the web?

My software is the free GoPro suite, Premier elements & Photoshop elements 10 and Photoshop 6. One day I might upgrade to Premiere Pro if I think my "skills" are worth the cost!

cheers

bill

[Scott Wilkinson]

Hi Bill---you generally always want to save as a JPEG before uploading a still image to the web. When saving to JPEG, you have a "quality" choice (or setting) that ranges from 0-100% (or sometimes just the numbers 1-10).

If your software allows you to adjust this quality setting, going with 50-70% is usually a good option (you won't notice much if any difference in quality and the file size will be much smaller).

Scott

[Bill Sherren]

Hi Scott,
Should I resize the original file before I resave it as a jpeg? When I have uploaded pictures from my Nikon D5100 I have to resize them otherwise they are far to big when viewed online and the file size is too large even when saved as a jpeg using a more compressed size.

Here is an example not resized but saved at a lower setting (6 in photoshop- where 12 is the highest option)
As you can see the image is too large and apart from that it also reduces the quality of the image. I did not resize this image in photoshop. But viewed at 100% in photoshop or through the windows live photo gallery the image looks fine and does not fill the screen and you can see the whole photo. What resizing should I do to the image so I get the same sort of size when viewed through Internet explorer etc online?

http://freespace.virgin.net/wb.sherr...%20fields1.jpg

[Scott Wilkinson]

Hi Bill---resizing is less important today than it was a decade ago due to faster connections. People upload 4000-pixel-wide photos at 180dpi and 300dpi to sites like Facebook all the time.

So while it's not essential, I still think it's good practice to resize photos to 72dpi and with a long edge (whether vertical or horizontal) of 1600 pixels.

It also depends on where you're posting the image. For example, a 1600px-wide image is too big for displaying in most forums---so you're better off reducing them to 1024px or 1280px wide for that purpose.

Hope that helps!
Scott

[Bill Sherren]

Thanks Scott for that. One of the reasons I would to "try" to keep to a certain size is to retain the quality of the image. The example I posted above when viewed on my computer either via Photoshop or windows own photo viewers does not take up the whole screen and looks good. But once uploaded and viewed via a browser it fills the screen and in the case of a screenshot from a GoPro video looks poor as you might expect. I realise that everyones setup is different from monitor size to resolution setup so perhaps you can never truly control it. Or would it better to upload to one of those dedicated photo sites like flickr?

cheers

bill

[Scott Wilkinson]

Hi Bill---sorry for the delayed response (been busy!).

Different sites all apply different compression/resizing algorithms to uploaded images. Most sites (including Facebook) are either pretty good about telling you what they do, or someone else online has figured it out (Google is your friend!).

For example, it's common knowledge that Facebook compresses the heck out of photos---so best practice there is throw huge, pristine-quality images at them so when they compress (or RE-compress) them, they still look good. (I save JPEGs going to Facebook at 100% quality regardless of file size.)

Serious photo sharing sites are usually good about maintaining the largest/best resolution you upload (like Flickr, Smugmug, etc.)---the sites will generate smaller versions of your photos but still give viewers the option of viewing the big ones.

As for people's monitor sizes, there are stats online about this. Overall it's gone up as people get bigger monitors. Nowadays many people have 1680x1050 desktop monitors, so you're fine sizing photos to 1600 pixels (long edge)...except for forums, where that often "breaks" the forum layout.

I think 1260px is a good all-purpose size for photos that should look fine on 90% of users' monitors. :-)

Scott