More to come (hopefully).
Woo-Hoo!! I finally got the pictures to post with help from Boofer and Webmaster John.
We spent summer vacation at beautiful and historic Edisto Island in SC. This is the fourth summer there and this was the best one ever, enhanced by a pretty good cheese selection during the course of the week. Reblochon, Gruyere, Stilton, Caerphilly, Emmental, and a few others including a variety of cold smoked cheeses. Most popular was the Reblochon followed by the Stilton and (a surprise to me) the smoked cheeses. My presentation could have been better but the pretty girl to my right really helps :). Anyone who has done a "summer" cheese tray feel free to post a pic.
John-----I think you are creating a politically incorrect category here. What about the other three seasons----don't they have rights, too? Seriously----you could have invited the rest of us to sample that wonderful looking tray of goodies. ;)
Qdog
Hi John. That's a delicious-looking cheese assortment. Congrats.
The pictures are native resolution straight from the camera I guess. They're pretty big...and they take quite a while to load. I'm back on my soap box advocating for folks to take a moment to shrink the size of their pics down to something smaller...like 1024x768. You still retain good resolution, the pics load faster, and the forum software doesn't choke. A)
-Boofer-
Great looking cheeses! AC4U.
I had a cheese tray, actually two, that I did for a class that came over earlier this week -- but I didn't think to get a picture. :( And now some of the varieties are gone! :(:(
On my tray I had Lancashire, cheddar, Gouda, Swiss (Emmentaler), Montasio, Camembert, Gorgonzola, Manchego, and a parma-style. Whew! A lot of work over the last year, all coming together at the same moment.
Nice work, John.
Hopefully mine will look that good as I'm using my PC cube!
AC4U
Quote from: John@PC on July 09, 2015, 03:48:53 AM
Woo-Hoo!! I finally got the pictures to post with help from Boofer and Webmaster John.
My presentation could have been better but the pretty girl to my right really helps :).
That pretty girl would be your lovely daughter, right? ;)
Boofer - how does one shrink photos? does the forum supply a utility or is there an easy way to do it i'm completely overlooking?
We've been discussing that a bit in another thread. Some forum software will resize pictures, but not the software for this forum.
Are you on a Windows machine? If so, check out IrfanView (www.irfanview.com (http://www.irfanview.com)) or Paint.NET (www.getpaint.net (http://www.getpaint.net)) -- these are freeware programs that can convert pictures as needed. (No relation to either one, and in fact I haven't myself used either one, but I've seen strong recommendations for both.)
Basically, you will select the pictures you want to post; do a batch-conversion, saving to a new location; then upload the converted pictures. Yes, it sounds a bit tedious ... but really it takes almost no time (and you may save more time than you lose due to a quicker upload of the picture, especially if your internet is the least bit slow), and quickly the process becomes second nature.
I can change the size through Office Picture Manager in the Windows Photo Gallery ---or on the camera I'm using.
Qdog
A lot of the time sizing pix is the last thing on my mind when I am making cheese, I can do it on my camera if I think about it before hand, if I have left the camera on the highest setting they come out at 5 to 9 megabytes,
if on a medium setting they turn out to be 3 to 6, on the lowest 2 to 4.
Ideally I would love to remember to set it on the low one, I can use most of the medium yet some of them are to big and set on high they are way to big for the forum.
In that case I have to run them through lightroom.
I have found if I just load them into lightroom I can use them all and eliminate any hassle, but I am lazy and screw it up all the time :-[
So sometimes it's all good and others I frustrate myself >:(
My motives may have been ulterior...
I take a lot of pictures and do a lot of filming for materials for publication, etc. and as such all of my various devices are always on the highest possible setting. I often have need to crop out a small section of a large photo to isolate a part of a scene, something like that and also for pictures of things that require further study, sometimes I need super high resolution so I can zoom in on details.
But sometimes I want to share some of my photos and like we are discussing here, that can be a hassle for everyone else. A lot of forums I am involved with do it for me.
For putting materials together for self publication, updating blogs, etc. it's necessary to reduce the size of photos.
Likewise, I always leave my camera on its highest resolution -- I want that if I choose to print anything, or zoom in, or so on. But when I upload, I covert and save a separate set to a lower resolution.
Quote from: awakephd on July 10, 2015, 06:13:24 PM
Likewise, I always leave my camera on its highest resolution -- I want that if I choose to print anything, or zoom in, or so on. But when I upload, I covert and save a separate set to a lower resolution.
What he said.... :)
I snap pics and move them at highest resolution to my specific cheese style in the
Cheese folder. Later I select the best, clearest shot, and resize, crop, and/or adjust the brightness as needed. The tweaked pic is then moved to a
forum subfolder. When I post it's easy then to go to the folder I want to post.
It really takes little time to get it done. On previous occasions I've even posted up to three threads simultaneously, being able to do it because the pics are easy to locate and they're ready to go.
-Boofer-
Quote from: Kern on July 09, 2015, 10:40:30 PM
That pretty girl would be your lovely daughter, right? ;)
"My daughter" will love you for that Kern :). As for picture res I thought I would do a test. I had a 4+MB picture (from Edisto Island, of course) that I tried to post and got the white screen. I then sized down by a factor of around 25 to less than 200kB using MS Paint (which everyone with a PC should have). Takes about 30 sec. to do the conversion and would be glad to give any details if anyone wants.
Also thanks for the nice comments but I regretfully have to say "Where's the
Beef Cheese Tray Pictures" :(.
Update: I posted the comment first and then added the picture and it posted REAL fast! I definately agree with all of the "old dogs" out there to dumb down the pictures before posting!
Your cheese platter looks brilliant John. I wish I was off enjoying the sunny warm weather. Have a cheese from me.
Shane
Quote from: John@PC on July 13, 2015, 09:28:19 PM
dumb down the pictures before posting!
I'd like to put a request in to all picture posters to post reasonably-sized pics that are also not too small. Any pic smaller than 640x480 will not offer the best possible viewing of the masterful cheese craftsmanship that the poster is attempting to convey. 8)
-Boofer-
I second Boofer's request!
Something to keep in mind: reducing resolution is not necessarily the best way to reduce the file size. If you are dealing with .jpg files -- which is far and away the most common format that I see on this and other forums -- you may make a more dramatic difference in file size by adjusting the quality* setting rather than the resolution. As an example, I took John's 600x400 picture of Edisto, posted above, and saved it at 70% quality. (The original was, I am guessing, saved at around 90-95% quality -- that is typical for digital cameras.) The file size dropped from 123K to 51K ... and I can't tell the difference!
I typically convert my pictures for posting to 1024x768, 60-80% quality. This gives me file sizes under 100K, but plenty of resolution for zooming in on details. (And of course, if need be, I still have the full-resolution, full-quality picture that I can post or refer to.)
*What is the "quality" setting on a .jpg file? It has to do with the fact that .jpg uses a "lossy" compression scheme -- even at high quality settings, it does not store the exact bit map of pixels from the original picture. (To get that, you would need to set your camera to the "raw" setting, if available.) Instead, .jpg stores information that lets it re-create the picture. At very low quality settings (<50%), the re-creation gets pretty fuzzy, but it takes up very little room to store; at very high quality settings (>90%), the re-creation is excellent, very, very close to the original; it takes a lot more room, but still a whole lot less than actually storing each and every pixel. In the middle, you get a very good re-creation with relatively small file size -- a perfect compromise for uploading pictures to the internet.
Here's a bit more illustration of the effects of quality settings on a .jpg file.
I have attached 5 pictures of some camembert. The picture began as a 4272 x 2848 resolution picture, high quality setting, requiring about 3.8M to store. If this had been saved in "raw" format, it would have required at least 4272 * 2848 * 3 = 36.5M to store, so even at a high-quality setting, the .jpg "lossy compression" has made a dramatic difference in file size.
All of the pictures below were converted to 1024 x 768 resolution (actually, 1024 x 683 to preserve the aspect ratio), but with different quality settings. Notice how dramatically the file size drops off just by changing from 99% quality to 95% quality to 80% quality -- but it is nearly impossible to tell any difference between the first two, and very hard to see much difference with the third. But when you drop to 50% quality, or 20% quality, you begin to see "artifacts" from the re-creation process. (Look especially at the "blockiness" of the background and the edges of the cheese.)
I usually find the "sweet spot" between good quality and small file size to be somewhere between 60-80% quality, but keep in mind that the file size also is affected by what's in the picture -- a lot of variation of color and detail in the picture requires more information to recreate, while a picture that is more uniform requires much less.
By the way ... my apologies to John for hijacking this thread, and to any and all who already know this stuff, far better than I do!
Quote from: awakephd on July 14, 2015, 03:18:10 PM
Here's a bit more illustration of the effects of quality settings on a .jpg file.
Thanks Andy. Personally I like your first cheese picture best because of the fine texture and paste. The second one looks like it's very earthy and flavorful. The third one.., wait, they're all the same cheese?! Nevamind ::). No hijacking here because the topic (pic posting problems) is worthy of discussion. A cheese for you Andy for your cheese tray minus the tray ;).
Nice job, Andy.
I initially just scanned the pics...hey, waitaminit...wtf? What's going on here? :o
RTFM...oh, diff resolutions. Well, that makes sense then. :P
-Boofer-
Actually, same resolution each time ... different quality settings (i.e., amount of compression). :)
Yes, of course, diff compressions. ::) That's what I meant. ??? Shrinkage. ;)
-Boofer-
Quote from: Boofer on July 21, 2015, 04:36:36 AM
That's what I meant. ??? Shrinkage. ;)
-Boofer-
Not to be confused with Castanza
SHRINKAGE (https://youtu.be/GG2dF5PS0bI) :-[.
Brrr! ;)
-Boofer-